, he
made the great sign of the cross. "Benedictas vos omnipotens Deus--" and
he spoke all the benediction.

He closed his eyes a moment in instant prayer. When he opened them and
looked down, his face turned whiter still. On each side, before him,
knelt the living, Veronica and Taquisara, their hands clasped and
wedded, as they had been when he had spoken the high sacramental words,
and between them, white, motionless, the halo of his fair hair about
his marble brow, lay Gianluca della Spina, like an angel dead on earth.

"Merciful Lord! What have I done!" cried the priest.

At the sound of his voice Taquisara turned quickly. But Veronica did not
hear. The Sicilian saw where Don Teodoro's starting eyes were fixed, and
he understood, and his own blood shrieked in his ears, for he was
married to Veronica Serra. Married--half married, wholly married,
married truly or falsely, by the sudden leap of violent chance--but a
marriage it was, of some sort. Both he and the priest knew that, and
that it must be a voice of more authority than Don Teodoro's which could
say that it was no marriage. For the Church's forms of office, that are
necessary, are few and very simple, but they mean much, and what is done
by them is not easily undone. But Veronica neither saw nor heard.

CHAPTER XXVI.

"I think--I assure you that nobody knows anything--but I think that Don
Gianluca will improve rapidly after this crisis."

That was the opinion of the great doctor, when he had seen the patient
on the afternoon of that memorable day. For Veronica, Taquisara, and Don
Teodoro had all three been mistaken when they had thought that Gianluca
was dead. As the doctor said, there had been a crisis, an inward
convulsion of the nerves, a fainting which had been almost a catalepsy,
and, several hours later, a return to consciousness with a greatly
increased chance of life, though with extreme momentary exhaustion.

It was Taquisara who went to find the doctor, leaving Veronica on her
knees, while Don Teodoro stood motionless at the foot of the couch, his
hands gripping each other till his nails cut the flesh, his grotesque
face invested for the moment with an almost sublime horror of what he
had unwittingly done.

And then had come the physician's systematic and painful search for
life, his doubts, his hopes, his suspicions, his increasing hope again,
his certainty at last that all was not over--and then the necessity for
instantly carryin