San Giorgio moved slightly, then caught his breath in a gasp of pain and lay still. Through the open window opposite fluttered a breeze, stirring his damp hair with cool compassionate touch and bringing with it the perfume of semi-tropic blossoms and the long wash of the sea on the cliffs. Sighing, he returned to his contemplation of the girl across the room.

She was sewing, drawing the thread in and out evenly and carefully. San Giorgio found a certain pleasure in observing the reversion to the old Greek type in her straight delicate features, the modeling of her small head and masses of dark hair shot with gold. Evidently she still fancied him asleep; quite as evidently she was his cousin, Maria Emilia de Loria.

“Signorina,” he ventured.

She turned toward him, her deft fingers halting.

“You awake, then! Maso said it would be to-day, I—there is something you wish?”

Her low rich voice carried the faintest, hint of the island accent and he smiled a little.

“I am afraid I wish a great deal. Donna Emilia; it is Donna Emilia?”

“Yes.”

“I kiss your hand, my cousin. My throat is touched with fire.”

She rose at once and offered a tray bearing a glass of some cordial. San Giorgio’s movement in response failed miserably, draining the last trace of color from his very lips.

“I am desolated––” he panted.

Very reluctantly she passed her arm behind the pillow and raised his head, herself holding the glass.

“Your graciousness overwhelms,” he began, and was obliged to leave the speech unfinished.

With compressed mouth the girl rearranged the pillows and went back to her sewing. When San Giorgio slowly recovered she spoke again:

“You have been ill six weeks, signore; it would be better that you should not talk.”

“Six weeks,” he echoed dreamily. “Six weeks since De LaRue’s yacht came—Donna Emilia, does the island know yet that it was not I who showed the passage in the cliff, who brought the French?”

“Signore, there is no one else suspected.”

The slim hand on the coverlet closed sharply.

“It was not I. I came on De LaRue’s yacht and brought our party as guests. There was no harm intended to Isola Bella; why, the island is mine, my own! The other boat was separate, strange to us as to you. Will they not understand? We were not politicians, we cared nothing for the Empire’s plots. Simply we were cruising in the Mediterranean and I playfully invited them to visit my island as my guests. And then, the people refuse to let us land, they chatter of another boat on the other coast; there is a night attack on us, a volley of bullets, and I am accused of selling Isola Bella.”

“Signore, at your trial––”

“My trial! I remember a ring of faces in the lantern-light, a storm of accusations, and trying to deny them while two or three bullet holes sucked my strength.”

“You fainted after the first questions. It was stated that you, although lord of Isola Bella, had become French through living in Paris since you were ten years old. That you had spent much of your fortune and, needing money, brought the French to despoil the chapel of those gems and paintings which are priceless. Your party was repelled on one side, upon which you told them of the secret cliff passage on the opposite coast; and through this they succeeded in carrying away the treasures. Owing to your wounds, you were captured.”

The level calmness of her tone contrasted vividly with the fiery anger that shook San Giorgio’s weak frame.

“I tell them it was the other ship that robbed the chapel; we came as peaceful visitors. I never was on the cliff side of the island. Someone else betrayed the passage.”

“The evidence was believed enough, signore.”

“It lied; I am not guilty.”

“I know that,” she answered.

More stunned than by any attack, he stared at her.

“You know?”

“I know, because my brother opened the cliff gate.”

San Giorgio’s dark head sank back on the pillows, his dark eyes questioned hers in utter incredulity.

“Valerio!” he gasped.

“Valerio,” she assented wearily. “You know nothing of us, signore; you have lived elsewhere. Valerio is a year younger than I, and ill. He will not live many months; his hope of living those depends on going far from here. He had little money, and he sold the Madonna of the chapel to some foreigners. I learned too late. That you chose the same night to visit Isola Bella was a mere chance.”

“You tell me this?”

Emilia regarded him quietly.

“Yes, because no one to whom you repeat it will believe. Valerio is not here to be questioned. Moreover, they love him; you are, in fact, a stranger.”

San Giorgio drew a quick breath.

“And I must bear this disgrace forever? Is that your decision, my cousin?”

“While Valerio lives,” she corrected. “It will not be long, signore. Then I will tell the truth.”

Her absolute composure had the effect of leaving the other dazed. He lay still for some moments; during which the shining needle went regularly in and out. As her lace sleeves fell back they disclosed the supple white wrists and the small fine hands which held the linen so firmly.

“There is a little more. Donna Emilia,” San Giorgio said presently, a slight smile curving his lip. “I know our Mediterranean people: of Sicily, of Corsica, of my own Isola Bella. If they have tried and convicted me, they have also done something more.”

Emilia’s head bent lower over her work.

“What was my punishment to be, my cousin?”

“It would have been death for Valerio, signore; that is why—  For you, because you are after all San Giorgio dell’ Isola Bella, it is imprisonment in this room forever.”

“That is why,” he echoed, enlightened. “And you are my jailer, Donna Emilia?”

“All Isola Bella would prevent your escape. This is your house, I am your kinswoman; for that you are left in my hands.”

“Chateau-Duclos, Jacques de Marchant, I suppose they all believed me dead,” he mused languidly. “They must be again in Paris; on the boulevards, in the old club—  A pleasant city, is Paris.”

The girl glanced at him with a touch of anxiety, then rose and went to him.

“This is for the fever, signore; drink.”

San Giorgio obeyed docilely, but put his hot hand detainingly on her cool one.

“Donna Emilia, if I die, you will still clear my name when Valerio is safe?”

“That I swear, signore.” She lifted to her lips the tiny ebony cross of her rosary.

Satisfied, he waited to recover strength for the next sentence; and she waited also.

“I have to thank you, my cousin, for your gracious care. You might not have explained so thoughtfully. I am grateful––”

Her calm broke; she drew back so swiftly that the glass fell crashing to the floor between them.

“How can you, how can you even in mockery?” she cried fiercely. “Do I not realize what I have done, what you must think? Oh, you are of us, of those whose veins run flame—who hate or love once and never forget. Your day will come, and you will watch for it no less bitterly because on the surface you play. I will not,” she stopped abruptly as San Giorgio feebly held out the handkerchief that had fallen from her belt.

“I am afraid that medicine stained it, my cousin,” he murmured, and the darkness shut in again as his lashes fell before a spasm of pain.

The white curtains fluttered into the room before the steady breath of the Sirocco, the rose vines about the windows rustled and whispered indignantly as one after another their tinted petals were sent whirling on airy voyages down the wind.

“E disse: Io vo, Marsilio, che tu muoja––”

The childish, monotonous drone came drowsily on the warm air, and with brightening eyes San Giorgio leaned forward to listen.

“And I who taught them that!” he ejaculated. “At least, I taught it to my playmates. Dio, I had forgotten that so many years. I must see out.”

He surveyed the wide room eagerly, measuring the distance between his sofa and the window, then rose impulsively and commenced the transit.

“I am almost well,” he told himself firmly, “almost well––”

But nevertheless he was obliged to stop halfway to lean on the back of a chair, and as he stood there some one tapped on the door.

“Enter,” called San Giorgio expectantly, a sparkle of mischief in his animated face.

It was not Emilia who complied, however, nor old Maso her assistant. And although consciously San Giorgio had not seen the spare erect visitor since childhood, he needed no introduction.

“Padre Guido!” he exclaimed, taking a step forward and holding out his hand warmly.

The brown eyes of the old priest were very keen; he first heartily returned the clasp, then passed his arm around San Giorgio’s shoulders and guided him towards a chair.

“By the window, please,” insisted the invalid smilingly. “Consider that I have seen nothing beyond this room for two months, padre mio.”

The windows were deepset but low of sill; San Giorgio leaned back in Emilia’s chair and gazed hungrily across the sunny stretch of field to the cobalt-blue sea all crested with glittering foam. The child’s voice floated up again:

“Disse Turpino: Io voglio fare il boja––”

“I taught Marzio and Gaetano that,” sighed San Giorgio. “Poor Pulci’s romance served a boy’s game. Cushions, mi padre?” as the other slipped the pillows from the couch behind him. “You are very good––to an outlaw.”

“The crime that keeps you here is not yours, signore; let us not speak folly.”

San Giorgio’s black eyes flashed wide.

“You know, you know the truth?” he demanded.

The Padre Guido raised his hand deprecatingly.

“I know nothing in a way that can aid you; the confessional. But as gentleman to gentleman.”

The history that had kept the curé of Isola Bella in the quiet island was not far from tragic; there were many points where these two nobles met, even after one’s forty-five years among the peasants.

“With two people in Isola Bella who understand,” answered San Giorgio with his wonderful smile, “I am rich. You will come to see me often, non e vero? Even a prisoner may claim the consolation of the church. Tell me, Don Guido, how long do you imagine my cousin Valerio will remain in this world?”

“Not long, I hope. I cannot tell,” was the grim reply.

“One must have patience. Padre mio, I am ashamed to tax you so far, but I left my cigar-case on the couch.”

The other fetched the Russia-leather and silver toy.

“You are in pain, signore,” he commented, watching the white face.

“Hence the cigar-case; it is only when things are very troublesome that I smoke this abominable trash.”

“I wonder,” he added, a trifle wistfully, “just how it will seem to be again so nothing hurts, anywhere. They are good shots, my people.”

“I will get you cigars, or anything you want,” Padre Guido volunteered curtly, his glance clouding with a singular expression.

“Really?” San Giorgio exclaimed, looking up gratefully. “Then, padre mio, get me books. There are so many I want to show Donna Emilia, to read her. Consider how limited her fine mind in this place! Only yesterday I tried to amuse her with some lines from Athalie, and failed halfway. Thank you, thank you, Don Guido.”

Padre Guido stirred uneasily, the doubt in his eyes increasing.

“I will bring all you desire, certainly. You, you are causing Donna Emilia much anxiety, my son.”

“I am causing Donna Emilia anxiety!”

“How can it be otherwise? Let us be frank; you have suffered, are suffering intolerably, and never yet did a San Giorgio suffer but some one paid. And never was one more dangerous than when he played at concealment. I remember when Onofrio di San Giorgio brought home the friend who had deceived him—. Bah, such things should be forgotten!” He shuddered and shook his head impatiently. “Signore, as a child your temper was not to be dared; you cannot blind Emilia to the day of reckoning to come. For the people loved your name; when they learn the truth you will be unquestioned and absolute master of the island.”

San Giorgio tossed the end of his cigarette out the window and gazed undecidedly at the cigar-case.

“We have gentle reputations, we of my house,” he remarked. “I have assured Donna Emilia that I deeply appreciate her marvellous nursing, her kindness in accompanying some of my long hours, her consideration in telling me all she might have concealed. What more must I say?”

“Signore, she is a woman.”

“Undoubtedly; et après?”

Padre Guido made a gesture of despair and remained silent. San Giorgio looked out of the window in apparent contentment, but after a while he put out his hand toward the Russia-leather case.

“That means you are again in pain?” asked his companion.

“Always, more or less; just now, more. Do you fancy, padre mio, that one could find an Italian edition of Molière, in Messina. Donna Emilia speaks no French.”

“Signore,” cried Padre Guido, “Signore, what do you plan to do?”

“Nothing,” returned San Giorgio coolly. “Just, nothing.” The unlighted cigarette crumbled between his suddenly closed fingers, his brows tangled.

“The water? You are faint––”

“No; call Maso, please,” he gasped. “It will not last––”

Padre Guido vanished.

It was not Maso, but Emilia who entered a moment later. San Giorgio was lying on his cushions, heavy dark circles beneath his eyes, his colorless lips set. She carried a glass of some cordial and crossed swiftly to him, herself scarcely less pale.

“I am so much trouble, my cousin,” he apologized.

“You should not have walked here alone,” she said in sharp reproach. You should have called Maso, signore. You will kill yourself.”

“Addio a Cesare di San Giorgio? No not yet, signorina,” and as she took the glass from him, he smiled into her eyes. “You are most kind to me, my cousin.”

“I deserve it,” she answered quietly. “But you might spare me while you suffer these attacks, for I have enough in witnessing.”

“If I spoke in good faith––”

She lifted her eyebrows incredulously and turned away to arrange the curtains, shake up the pillows of the couch and set all right with feminine orderliness. He followed the grace of her movements admiringly, the faint color creeping back to his face.

“Donna Emilia, is it permitted to ask if you have heard from Valerio?” he inquired, after a while.

“I have not, signore.” “My people still detest me?”

“Signore, they wipe their lips after speaking your name.”

San Giorgio’s breathing quickened involuntarily.

“Do you think if I spoke to them now––without accusing Valerio––if I told them clearly of my real visit here with my friends, that they would believe me?”

“No, signore.”

“One must have patience, evidently,” he replied, the briefest pause before he spoke. “But when my day comes––”

Emilia turned to him then, trembling, wide-eyed; one hand over her heart.

“When it comes,” she repeatedly eagerly. “When it comes, what will you do? Signore, what will you do?”

It was Padre Guido’s question again, and received the same answer, the same surprised shrug.

“Nothing; just nothing. Why, am I so forbidding, my cousin?”

“You are a San Giorgio. Oh, we have earned it; I do not complain.”

He laughed outright, meeting the girl’s defiant eyes with the amused steadiness of his own.

“Perhaps I am a modern San Giorgio, signorina. Pardon, may I smoke; it comes back a little? And I wonder if you would stay a golden moment; let me watch you sewing. I want to consult you as to the list of books Padre Guido is to bring.”

Emilia went slowly to the chair opposite.

“The books,” she echoed vaguely.

“The books which are to pass the hours; I have a premonition that there will be many hours. Ah, and that other window looks into the street. I need to study Isola Bella.”

In three days Padre Guido brought the books, and San Giorgio thanked him charmingly.

“With these, padre mio, and being able to watch my village each day, I am surfeited with diversions,” he smiled.

Padre Guido retired a little more sallow than usual.

“He must design something not to be endured,” he confided to Emilia gloomily. “‘Un San Giorgio ridente’––”

And Emilia nodded silent assent. She knew the old saying quoted; knew also that her prisoner laughed most on his hardest days.

Life in the Castello had already begun to settle into a regular routine. As the third month glided into the fourth, the fourth into the fifth, this way of living pushed the old father out of tangibility. San Giorgio read aloud to Emilia or chatted with Padre Guido, gave them vivid stories of the France he had left in the glory of the first Empire; and watched Isola Bella from his window.

This last amusement never failed. Quite soon he learned to recognize the faces of all those who passed, even the flocks of rosy dark children. Emilia never had to tell him more than once their names or little histories. But the window was above the street, and heavily shaded with draperies; no one ever looked up to the watcher.

Meanwhile San Giorgio gained strength, the attacks of pain grew less violent and frequent. One day when the door was carelessly left unlocked, he strolled into the next room and startled the household by awakening an ancient piano found there. He could play; the feeble instrument under his fingers became a glory of sound.

“You must go back,” Emilia panted, finding him.

“At your order, signorina. Only, I may come here again?”

She shook her head, stirring all the odd glints of gold in the massive dark braids wound around and around it; avoiding San Giorgio’s velvet eyes. But next morning Maso moved the piano into the other room.

“Music of Lucifer” reluctantly fascinated Isola Bella called the sounds that escaped through many a drowsy hour.

In the sixth month, when all the island was harvesting joyously, San Giorgio made a proposition. He was seated by his window, as usual, and Emilia was busied opposite with the inevitable sewing.

“My cousin, I have made Isola Bella a model prisoner, have I not? Except, of course, for the trouble my illness gave you and which I shall never cease to regret. Do you not think I might ask a little indulgence?”

“Signore?” Emilia breathed inquiringly. The noonday heat had set a richer crimson on her cheeks and lips, a rose was tucked in her hair by San Giorgio’s especial request.

“You see it scarcely hurts me at all to walk now, and even this charming room becomes a trifle monotonous when you are not here. Suppose you let me out for an hour or so these moonlit nights? I will come back and no one will suspect.”

“They might believe you escaping, fire at you––”

San Giorgio winced reminiscently.

“If they shoot again, Donna Emilia, I hope it is more straight—or less. But I would take that chance. Ah, and I will beg you to do another thing for me. Pasquale Forti is too old for that work of harvesting he is doing; I have observed him. Will you commission some one to buy him one of those ridiculous gray donkeys they prefer? I will tell Padre Guido how to use my check at Messina, and you could let Pasquale believe it a gift from you.”

Her hands fell in her lap as she gazed at him.

“Signore, signore, Pasquale was one of the two who voted for your death!”

“What of that? You will inform me next that I cannot send a hundred lire or so to the widow of that poor Gaetano who was drowned last week, merely because I saw him put this troublesome bullet in my side.”

“You mean to do that?”

“Yes. See, I have been a careless lord of my island for so long; only now I appreciate it. And now I have lost it. When my day comes, cousin, what I shall value very much will be the friendship of the lame Syndic Marzio Russo; he whom I taught Il Morgante Maggiore when we were boys. Such tact he has, such patience with disputes and anxieties. One has time to notice, here.”

Emilia turned away her head and the tears fell down her face.

“Do you want very much to go out, signore?” she asked, her exquisite voice blurred.

“Very much, my cousin,” returned the unseeing San Giorgio, his eyes on the sunbright street where the pigeons cooed and strutted.

She folded her work methodically, then rose. San Giorgio imitated her and held open the door with his delightful touch of ceremony.

“A rivederci, signorina; my gratitude for a delicious hour.

Left alone, he paused for a moment undecidedly. Only one distinct sound pierced the noonday hush; the voice of a child singing an old, old ballad of giant and knight and battle, singing in Florentine pure as San Giorgio’s own. Smiling, he moved to the window above the field and looked down, leaning on the broad sill.

“You should be Marzio Russo’s son,” he remarked lazily.

The diminutive boy stared back, speechless.

“You know me, Jorio?”

“Il signor traditore” came the swift reply.

San Giorgio winced and flushed.

“I am not that, Jorio, as you will learn some day. Stay here a while and talk to me.”

“No, signore.”

“Why?”

“Because the signore brought the French here and sold the miraculous Madonna who made Teresa well of the fever.”

“That is not true.”

The bare brown toes were dug into the sandy field, silent conviction spoke in every line. San Giorgio sighed and reached for a plate of sweetmeats on the table.

“Stay, I will give you cakes.”

“No, signore.”

“I,” boyish mischief lit the fine dark face, “I will teach you the rest of that song you have.”

“Signore?”

“Signore––”

San Giorgio rested his folded arms on the ledge and gravely began to recite Pulci’s romance. The child sat down on the ground, mesmerized, helpless.

An hour later when Emilia pushed open the door, they were still busy.

“My cousin?” San Giorgio exclaimed, turning laughingly. “So soon; I am favored indeed––”

Her expression as she leaned against the wall halted him abruptly.

“I have ruined all,” she said, with the frozen calm of the first day he saw her. “Signore, I have no way to clear your name now.”

“Valerio?”

“He has nothing to do with it, I have been to see Marzio Russo and Gian Berti; I asked them to permit that you go out a little every day––”

San Giorgio quietly set a chair for her and poured a goblet of the cool spring water.

“Do not distress yourself, my cousin. They refused?”

She covered her face with her small hands.

“Worse, worse. They refused, and they thought—they fancy I pity you too much. They say it is natural; we are kinsmen and you have suffered. Maso has talked––”

“Cousin, they think no wrong of you!”

The menace that slipped like steel through the silk and velvet voice was distinctly not modern; Emilia shrank even although it was not for her.

“No, no; how should they? But do you not understand? When I tell the truth they will not believe; they will say we invented that story and waited Valerio’s death so he could not deny.”

“Padre Guido?”

“He knows nothing he can use.”

San Giorgio looked away, his old pallor creeping back.

“Never mind,” he answered. “When you give me permission we will find a way to prove the facts. You—pardon me—exaggerate a trifle, perhaps.”

She lifted her head to regard him.

“You play, signore?”

“Perhaps. But I have not struggled back to existence to miss my day after all. I will have it.” His smile flashed out again.

Emilia shivered.

“Yes you will have it. Let me think, let me search.”

“Surely, but first I beg you to take this; in your great kindness you exhaust yourself.”

As once before, she drew back so hastily that the glass crashed to the ground.

“Not to-day,” she cried passionately. “Not now! Signore, however you hate me, can you not see I am in earnest now and cease to mock me for a while? If you would be frank one hour; if you would threaten, rage, speak! ‘San Giorgio ridente’—I know what must lie behind the laughter; what you feel towards me, who deceived Isola Bella and brought you to this.”

“You know nothing about it at all, my cousin, if you will pardon me. Why should I hate you? You shield your brother; good, it is the woman who fights for her own whom I admire. And I admire you very much, Donna Emilia.”

She passed her handkerchief across her eyes and moved to the door. As San Giorgio opened it for her, she looked full into his face.

“What will you do?” she whispered. “On your day, what will you do?”

“Nothing,” he answered gently. “Just nothing.”

She bent her head wearily and passed out.

When the dusk had fallen completely, she returned. San Giorgio’s caressing fingers were drawing the magnificent chords of the Sonata Pathétique from the old piano, tapestrying the twilight with the rich violets and crimsons of sound, but at the snap of the latch he turned.

“I have found the way,” she announced, remaining on the threshold. “Signore, I will write to Valerio and bid him send me a letter telling the truth; a letter not to be used until—it cannot harm him. They will believe that,”

“Undoubtedly,” San Giorgio replied serenely. “That occurred also to me as the best way, my cousin; but naturally it was not for me to suggest. I owe another debt to your goodness. Only––”

They were indistinct figures to one another in the dusk, yet Emilia knew his reflective smile.

“Signore?”

“I will not be rude enough to question his assent.”

“He will not dare refuse me,” she answered dully. “Signore, you can read him so well, and yet ask me to believe in a forgiving San Giorgio.”

He made a gesture of disclaimer.

“But no, my cousin; I never asked that. Indeed, I am afraid I am not at all of a forgiving disposition. It is only that I understand the other points of view, and when one quite understands the other man’s point of view there is rarely anything to forgive. E vero?”

“No, it is not true. What you say there is not natural, is folly.”

“Well,” returned San Giorgio composedly, “from what I learn of the traditions of my house, it is to be hoped that we are unnatural, not the normal. What a world it would be, my cousin!”

Emilia stepped back and closed the door between.

The days went on, differing from one another as little as the roses that bloomed in brief generations around the windows. San Giorgio discovered a new employment in teaching Emilia French. More and more he drew the affairs of the village into his hands through Padre Guido, until all unknowingly Isola Bella was governed by the seigneur as of old.

But, although San Giorgio made no complaint, the long confinement told and his recovery was very slow.

When the imprisonment had lasted nearly a year, at the end of a particularly bad day Padre Guido stopped in the middle of a sentence to scrutinize the face set cameo-like against the sunset-tinted square of the window.

“Go on, please,” directed San Giorgio, after waiting a moment. “Pietro Aldi’s fishing boat––”

“You are ill; you are losing,” the other said irrelevantly. “Signore, up to a certain point you gained strength; now you are losing.”

“It has been a hot summer, padre mio,” was the tranquil reply. “And Valerio does not hasten his answer. I believe I am tired, to-night.”

Padre Guido stood up, his face quite pale.

“It is a crime which goes on,” he exclaimed hotly. “Signore, I know well enough that you play with us, that you mean none of this grace of speech and patience; but you have won for all that. I, I grow almost to hate Isola Bella when I see you. Signore, I myself will go in search of Valerio and force him to speak I––” he broke off aghast, as a long shout rang from the seashore and all the village rose in a great answering cry.

“What?” he gasped.

Louder and louder swelled the chorus of cries and shouts; doors crashed, women’s voices called shrilly, the rush of many feet increased.

“La Madonno––. Nostra Signora––. Il signorino e qui––”

“What?” faltered Padre Guido again.

San Giorgio turned his velvet black eyes on the other.

“If our Valerio is actively untruthful, my captivity will probably end in scarlet,” he answered coolly. “I think he has returned.”

Padre Guido stared blankly, then literally fled from the room. Quite alone, San Giorgio leaned on the windowsill, and saw the crowd sweep and circle into the little plaza opposite around a laughing young man whom they left before Marzio Russo and the elders of the village.

“He has brought them home,” cried a dozen hysterical voices. “The Santa Madre—the gems––”

“Silence,” commanded Marzio Russo loudly; and the sudden hush fell, the ring formed as San Giorgio had seen happen on his own first night of return. “Signorino, you have found the treasures that were sold?”

“But they were never sold,” protested Valerio gayly. “They were merely loaned.”

Stupefaction chained all.

“Loaned, as I tell you. Listen, my children, and you, Signor Russo; you know that I had to leave Isola Bella or die of the fever, and I had no money for travel. So when an English madman offered me a fortune for permission to take the chapel treasures to some exhibition and have them copied, I seized that. To die at nineteen; pah—one shudders! But I knew you would never consent, signori, so we planned a little joke and pretended to steal them. After all, they are not yours or mine; they are San Giorgio’s, and not at all would our Parisian Marchese heed. Oh, there is no use of being angry; it is all over. Moreover, I go back to France to-night and leave you in peace. I have brought you a barrel of richer wine than grows on Isola Bella; have it up and forget all this.”

But there was neither festival nor forgetfulness in the faces which stared at him.

“And San Giorgio?” asked Marzio Russo, in the absolute stillness.

“San Giorgio? What has he to do with it? It was wretchedly bad luck that he should choose that night to come here. Of course I knew he could explain if you confused us; and the confusion helped me. Has he gone back to his Paris?”

The significance of the continued hush slowly dawned in his expression as he looked around.

“What of San Giorgio?” he repeated.

Padre Guido stepped into the central space, his lean fine jaw set.

“I will tell you of San Giorgio,” he declared clearly. “You have enough to hear and learn, my people, one and all. Now, listen.” He told them; and while he spoke the stealthy twilight descended, veiling man from man in the gray dusk. He told each one of the gifts and hidden kindnesses, whose care had supplied the harvest marred by rain; he spared them nothing of the long weeks of pain, the year of unrelieved captivity, the denied wish for an hour of freedom in his own island. He spoke of the days at the window, the unfailing patience and dignity; and last of the light charm of speech. There he lingered, and out in the crowd a girl broke into nervous sobbing.

“‘San Giorgio ridente––’” he quoted meaningly. “Go make your peace with him—if you can.”

Silence succeeded. It was dark now, and through the dark Valerio cried out sharply:

“What do you mean? Why do you hold me?”

“To wait the judgment of the signore?” breathed a strained voice at his side.

“The master of Isola Bella decides,” said Marzio Russo’s shaken tones. “Why are we standing here?”

At last the tension snapped and Isola Bella burst into uproar as the crowd by one impulse turned toward the doors of the Castello.

San Giorgio moved from his window as a latch clicked and a ray of light shot across the room. On the nearest table Emilia set down her lamp, swaying as she stood.

“You know?” she asked faintly, her hand pressed on her heart. “You heard?”

“Surely, my cousin.”

“It is your day; what will you do?”

“Nothing,” answered San Giorgio gently. “Just, nothing. I love you, Emilia.”

The excited voices, the trampling feet, were at the building itself now. Emilia flung out her hands to keep him away, her eyes a dark fire.

“Even now, even yet? Do not touch me. If that is how you meant to hurt me, take your victory. I love you, love you, Cesare di San Giorgio; I would give the rest of my life for these last months over again. I knew you played, but I loved you. And I hate Valerio who tricked us both. Go back to Paris; here in this room I live out my years. ‘San Giorgio ridente’; you will have laughter enough remembering me—show pity to Valerio.”

The feet and voices were at the door; she sank into the nearest chair and hid her face on her arm.

“I tried to tell you,” he said, and turned to meet his visitors.

After all they found very few words, the crowd of eager, shaken men that poured into the room. Padre Guido asked simply if he had heard, and San Giorgio nodded toward the window; then Valerio was pushed to the front and the cousins left facing each other.

“It is, I think, the first time we have met, Don Valerio,” San Giorgio remarked pleasantly. “The occasion is unfortunately rather melodramatic.”

Valerio drew a quick breath of relief. He was decidedly pale and nervous, knowing his fellow-countrymen, but San Giorgio was reassuringly modem.

“It has been a wretched mistake, Signor Marchese” he responded, groping for the right words. “Of course, I never dreamed of serious harm to you—I left so hurriedly—and I had to get away from Isola Bella.”

“Of course; pray say no more,” the other assented serenely; but he did not offer his hand, and the intent watchers saw the omission perfectly. “I understand you are returning to France?”

“To-night, signore,” Valerio replied eagerly. “If you consent––”

“I? What have I to do with your movements, Don Valerio? Only before you go, I will ask you to honor me with your approval of my approaching marriage to your sister, Donna Emilia de Loria.”

A gasp came from the crowd, the dazed Padre Guido wiped his brow. All looked from the motionless girl to the smiling San Giorgio.

“Signor Marchese, I––  we are honored,” stammered Valerio, stunned.

“Thank you,” the brilliant eyes swept the people. “And I will ask you to accept my house in Paris as a wedding gift, Don Valerio; I will not need it, for I shall pass my life at Isola Bella.”

“Signore!” cried Marzio Russo impulsively, then constraint gave way and the wave rolled over San Giorgio with southern violence.

Remorse, admiration, the old loyalty and reverence; the din of voices, the passionate apologies and protests, the actual tears—so Isola Bella made her peace. Padre Guido shamelessly dried his eyes in public, old Pasquale Forti made solemn avowal of his intention to sell the donkey and buy candles for the Madonna unless the signore could pardon the vote of that dark night.

When the room was finally cleared again and the people withdrew to wild rejoicing, some one came to kneel by the chair where Emilia still lay veiled in her own black hair.

“My day,” said San Giorgio tenderly, and drew her into his arms.