's
as good as dead. Let us go in--I want to have a look at the latest
English papers."

The two men passed in, out of the moonlight, off the piazza, all
unconscious that they had had a listener. The pale watcher in the
trailing black robes scarcely heeding them at first, had grown more and
more absorbed in the careless conversation. She caught her breath quick
and hard, the dark eyes dilated, the slender hands pressed tight over
the throbbing heart. As they went in off the balcony, she slid from her
seat and held up her clasped hands to the luminous night sky.

"Here me, O God!" the white lips cried. "I, who have aided in wrecking a
noble heart, hear me, and help me to keep my vow! I offer my whole life
in atonement for the cruel and wicked past. If he dies, I shall go to my
grave his unwedded widow. If he lives--"

Her voice faltered and died out, her face dropped forward on the
window-sill, and the moonlight fell like a benediction on the bowed
young head.

CHAPTER XVI.

AT SORRENTO.

The low light in the western sky was fading out; the bay of Naples lay
rosy in the haze of the dying day; the soft, sweet wind floated over the
waters; the fishing boats were coming in; and on this scene an invalid,
looking from a window high up on the sea-washed cliff of Sorrento, gazed
languidly.

For he was surely an invalid who sat in that window chair and gazed at
the wondrous Italian sea, and that lovely Italian sky. Surely an
invalid, with that pallid face, those spectral, hollow eyes, those
sunken cheeks, those bloodless lips; surely an invalid, and one but very
lately risen from the very gates of death, a pale shadow, worn and weak
as a child.

As he sits there, where he has sat for hours, lonely and alone, the door
opens, and an English face looks in--the face of an Englishman of the
lower classes.

"A visitor for you, sir--just come, and a-foot; a lady, sir. She will
not give her name, but wishes to see you most particular, if you
please."

"A lady! To see me?"

The invalid opens his dark eyes in wonder as he speaks.

"Yes, sir; an English lady, sir, dressed in black, and a wearing of a
thick veil. She asked for Mr. Rupert Thetford as soon as she see me, as
plain, as plain, sir--"

The young man in the chair started, half rose, and then sunk back; an
eager light lit in the hollow eyes.

"Let her come in, I will see her."

The man disappeared; there was an instant's pause, then a tall, slender
fig