ridge; overhead was a heaven filled with a life-intoxicated,
tumultuous creation, as the sun-god stalked away over his evening-world.
He seized Liana's hands and pressed them wildly to his breast; flames
and tears suffused his eyes and his cheeks, and he stammered, "Liana, I
love thee!"

She stepped back, and drew her white veil over her face.

"Wouldst thou love the dead?" she said.

He knew her meaning. Her friend Caroline, whom she had loved and who had
died, had appeared in a vision, and announced that she would die in the
next year.

"The vision was not true!" cried Albano.

"Caroline, answer him!" Liana folded her hands as if in prayer; then she
raised the veil, looked at him tenderly, and said, in a low tone, "I
will love thee, good Albano, if I do not make thee miserable."

"I will die with thee!" said he.

Charles appeared with Rabette; he, also, had spoken frantic words of
love, and Rabette clung around him compassionately, as a mother around
her child.

A few more days of joyous life at Bluemenbuhl, and Liana returned to her
home at Pestitz. Then for weeks Albano saw nothing of her, heard nothing
of her. Liana was in sore trouble. Her father had disapproved of the
match; what mattered much more to her, her mother also. The mother's
opposition was on the quite decisive ground that she could not endure
Albano.

The Minister von Froulay had more specific reasons for his hostility--
the most specific of all being that he had designed his daughter for one
Bouverot, a disreputable court intriguer, his leaning towards Bouverot
being based on financial liabilities, and stimulated by financial
expectations. The minister's lady detested Bouverot, but in desiring
separation between Liana and Albano, she was her husband's ally. Behold,
then, Liana torn between duty towards her mother and love for Albano.

Once Albano saw her, but heard no explanation. The prince was wedded to
the Princess of Haarbaar, and it was at a wedding festivity in the
grounds of the pleasure palace of Lilar that Albano looked upon his
beloved. But she was pledged for the time to tell him nothing, and she
told him nothing. The princess looked curiously at her, for Liana
exactly resembled the princess's younger sister, the philanthropic
Idoine, who devoted herself to the idyllic happiness of her peasantry in
the Arcadian village that it was her whim to rule.

To the aged and saintly court chaplain, Spener, Liana at last brought
her per