is very ill," said Francesca, in a low voice. "I am afraid you
cannot see him."

"Where does he live? I will at least inquire. I am sorry to hear that he
is ill."

"He lives here," she answered with a little hesitation. "He is in his
old rooms upstairs."

"Oh! Yes--thank you." Their eyes met for a moment. Lord Redin's
glittered, but Francesca's were clear and true. "I am sure you take good
care of him," he added. "Good-bye."

He left her alone, and when he was gone, she sat down wearily and laid
her head back against a cushion, with half-closed eyes. Her lips were
almost colourless, and her mouth had grown ten years older.

Reanda was dying, and she knew it, and with him the light was going out
of her life, as it had gone out long ago from Dalrymple's, as it had
gone out of the life of Paul Griggs. The idea crossed her mind that
these two men, with herself, were linked and bound together by some
strange fatality which she could not understand, but from which there
was no escape, and which was bringing them slowly and surely to the
blank horror of lonely old age.

The same thought occurred to Lord Redin as he slowly threaded the
streets, going back to his hotel, to his lonely dinner, his lonely
evening, his lonely, sleepless night. He alone of the three now knew all
that there was to know, and in the chronicle of his far memories all led
back to that day at Subiaco, long ago, when he had first knocked at the
convent gate--beyond that, to the evening when poor Annetta had told him
of the beautiful nun with the angel's voice. Many lives had been wrecked
since that first day, and every one of them owed its ruin to him. He
felt strangely drawn to Francesca Campodonico. There was something in
her face that very faintly reminded him of his dead wife, her
kinswoman, and of his dead daughter, another of her race. His gloomy
northern nature felt the fatality of it all. He never could repent of
what he had done. The golden light of his one short happiness shone
through the shrouding veil of fatal time. In his own eyes, with his
beliefs, he had not even sinned in taking what he had loved so well. But
all the sorrow he saw, came from that deed. Francesca Campodonico's eyes
were as clear and true as her heart. But he knew that Reanda's life was
everything on earth to her, and he guessed that she was to lose that,
too, before long. He would willingly have parted with his own, but
through all his being there was a rough, manly