he remembered--just your name, and I hated it, because he had forgotten
all other names, even his own, and his mother, and everything. He was
like a little child that learns, to-day this, to-morrow that, one thing
at a time. What could I do? I taught him. I also taught him to love
Regina. But when the memory came back, I knew how it had been before."

Her voice broke and she coughed, and raised one hand to her chest.
Aurora supported her tenderly until it was over, and when the weary head
sank back at last it lay upon the young girl's willing arm.

"You are tiring yourself," Aurora said. "If it was to ask my forgiveness
that you wished me to come, I forgave you long ago, if there was
anything to forgive. I forgave you when we met, and I saw what you were,
and that you loved him for himself, just as I do."

"Is it true? Really true?"

"So may God help me, it is quite true. But if I had thought it was not
for himself--"

"Oh, yes, it was," Regina answered. "It was, and it is, to the end. Will
you see? I will show you. For what the eyes see the heart believes more
easily. Signorina, will you bring the little box covered with old
velvet? It is there, on the table, and it is open."

Aurora rose, humouring her, and brought the thing she asked for, and sat
down again, setting it on the edge of the bed. Regina turned her head to
see it, and raised the lid with one hand.

"This is my little box," she said. "What he has given me is all in it. I
have no other. Will you see? Here is what I have taken from him. You
shall look everywhere, if you do not believe."

"But I do believe you!" Aurora cried, feeling that tears were coming to
her eyes.

"But you must see," Regina insisted. "Or perhaps when I am gone you will
say to yourself, 'There may have been diamonds and pearls in the little
box, after all!' You shall know that it was all for himself."

To please her Aurora took up some of the simple trinkets, simpler and
cheaper even than what she had herself.

"There are dresses, yes, many more than I wanted. But I could not let
him be ashamed of me when we went out together, and travelled. Do you
forgive me the dresses, Signorina? I wore them to please him. Please
forgive me that also!"

Aurora dropped the things into the open box and laid both her hands on
Regina's, bending down her radiant head and looking very earnestly into
the anxious eyes.

"Forgiveness is not all from me to you, Regina," she said. "I want yours