ard tone
returning. "Did you advise him to go?"

"He consulted me," answered Francesca, rather coldly. "I told him to
follow his own impulse. He did not go. He did not believe that she was
sincere."

"I do not blame him. When a woman has done that sort of thing, there is
no reason for believing her."

"He should have gone. I should have influenced him, I think, and I did
wrong. She wrote him one more letter and then killed herself. She
suffered horribly and only died two days afterwards. Shall I tell you
more?"

"If there is more to tell," said Lord Redin, less hardly.

"There is not much. I went out there last year. They had refused her
Christian burial. Paul Griggs bought a piece of land amongst the rock,
on the other side of the torrent, and buried her there. It is surrounded
by a wall, and there is a plain slab without a name. There are flowers.
He pays Stefanone to have it cared for. They told me all they knew--it
is too terrible. She died singing--she was out of her mind. It must have
been dreadful. Old Nanna, Stefanone's wife, was in the room, and fainted
with terror. It seems that poor Gloria, oddly enough, had an
extraordinary resemblance to that unfortunate nun of our family who was
burned to death in the convent, and whom Nanna had often seen. She sang
like her, too--at the last minute Nanna thought she saw poor sister
Maria Addolorata standing up dead and singing. It was rather strange."

Lord Redin said nothing. He had bowed his head so that Francesca could
not see his face, but she saw that his hands were trembling violently.
She thought that she had misjudged the man, and that he was really very
deeply moved by the story of his daughter's death. Doubtless, his
emotion had made him wish to control himself, and he had overshot the
mark and spoken cruelly only in order to seem calm. No one had ever
spoken to him of his wife, and even now he could hardly bear to hear her
name. It was long before he looked up. Then he rose almost immediately.

"Will you allow me to come and see you occasionally?" he asked, with a
gentleness not at all like his usual manner.

Francesca was touched at last, misunderstanding the cause of the change.
She told him to come as often as he pleased. As he was going, he
remembered that he had not asked after his son-in-law. Reanda had always
seemed to belong to Francesca, and it was natural enough that he should
inquire of her.

"Where is Reanda to be found?" he asked.

"He