“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 perplexities.  Here the history moves in veils.  How he extorted from her the promise to renounce her Albano for ever is a mystery watched and hidden by the Great Sphinx of the oath she swore to him.

On the next day Albano was summoned, and stood with quivering lips before the beloved.

“I am true to you—­even unto death,” she said; “but all is over.”

He looked upon her, wild, wondering.

“I have resigned you,” she said; “and my parents are not to blame.  There is a mystery that has constrained me—­”

“Oh, God!” he cried.  “Is it thus with external fidelity and love?” In whirling, cruel passion he pictured his love, her coldness, his pain, her violated oath.

“I did not think thou wert so hard,” she said.  “Oh, it grows dark to me; let me to my mother!”

Albano gazed into the groping, timid face, and guessed all—­her blindness had returned!

The mother rushed up.  “May God bring you retribution for this!” cried Albano to her.  “Farewell, unhappy Liana!”