g the books she read. But her
judgment had rarely failed her at critical moments. Once only, she
remembered having committed a great mistake, of which the sudden and
unexpected consequences had almost wrecked her life. But in that case
she had suffered her heart to lead her, an innocent girl's good name had
been at stake, and she had rashly taken a responsibility too heavy for
love itself to bear. Those days were long past now; twenty years
separated Corona, the mother of four tall sons, from the Corona who had
risked all to save poor little Faustina Montevarchi.

But even she knew that a state of such perpetual and unclouded happiness
could hardly last a lifetime, and she had forced herself, almost
laughing at the thought, to look forward to the day when Orsino must
cease to be a boy and must face the world of strong loves and hates
through which most men have to pass, and which all men must have known
in order to be men indeed.

The people whose lives are full of the most romantic incidents, are not
generally, I think, people of romantic disposition. Romance, like power,
will come uncalled for, and those who seek it most, are often those who
find it least. And the reason is simple enough. The man of heart is not
perpetually burrowing in his surroundings for affections upon which his
heart may feed, any more than the very strong man is naturally impelled
to lift every weight he sees or to fight with every man he meets. The
persons whom others call romantic are rarely conscious of being so. They
are generally far too much occupied with the one great thought which
make their strongest, bravest and meanest actions seem perfectly
commonplace to themselves. Corona Del Carmine, who had heroically
sacrificed herself in her earliest girlhood to save her father from ruin
and who a few years later had risked a priceless happiness to shield a
foolish girl, had not in her whole life been conscious of a single
romantic instinct. Brave, devoted, but unimaginative by nature, she had
followed her heart's direction in most worldly matters.

She was amazed to find that she was becoming romantic now, in her dreams
for Orsino's future. All sorts of ideas which she would have laughed at
in her own youth flitted through her brain from morning till night. Her
fancy built up a life for her eldest son, which she knew to be far from
the possibility of realisation, but which had for her a new and strange
attraction.

She planned for him the