e wore but one ring. When the visitor
entered, she was nursing her child, a boy of four years old, named
Gregorius, but at once she put him to sit upon a little stool beside
her.

'Welcome, dear cousin Basil,' was her greeting. 'We hoped this time of
gladness would turn your thoughts to us. My husband has been called
forth; but you will await his return?'

'It was you, lady cousin, whom I wished to see,' Basil replied. As he
spoke, he touched the curly head of the boy, who looked up at him with
large, grave eyes. 'Why is he so pale?'

'He has had a sickness,' answered the mother, in a low, tender voice.
'Not many days ago, one might have feared he would be taken from us.
Our prayers prevailed, thanks to the intercession of the holy Cosma and
Damian, and of the blessed Theodore. When he seemed to be dying, I bore
him to the church in the Velabrum, and laid him before the altar; and
scarcely had I finished my prayer, when a light seemed to shine upon
his face, and he knew me again, and smiled at me.'

Listening, the child took his mother's hand, and pressed it against his
wan little cheek. Then Silvia rang a bell that was beside her, and a
woman came to take the child away, he, as he walked in silence from the
room, looking back and smiling wistfully.

'I know not,' pursued Silvia, when they were alone, 'how we dare to
pray for any young life in times so dark as ours. But that we are
selfish in our human love, we should rather thank the Omnipotent when
it pleases Him to call one of these little ones, whom Christ blessed,
from a world against which His wrath is so manifestly kindled. And
yet,' she added, 'it must be right that we should entreat for a life in
danger; who can know to what it may be destined?--what service it may
render to God and man? One night when I watched by Gregorius, weariness
overcame me, and in a short slumber I dreamt. That dream I shall never
forget. It kept me in heart and hope through the worst.'

'May I hear your dream?' asked Basil.

'Nay,' was the gentle reply, with a smile and a shake of the head, 'to
you it would seem but foolishness. Let us speak of other things, and
first of yourself. You, too, are pale, good cousin. What have you to
tell me? What has come to pass since I saw you?'

With difficulty Basil found words to utter the thought which had led
him hither. He came to it by a roundabout way, and Silvia presently
understood: he was indirectly begging her to use her influence w