For many days Albano lived without love or hope, in bitter self-reproach; every recollection darted into him a scorpion-sting.  And to him in his agony came the tormenting news that the fickle Roquairol had deserted Rabette.  He drove the false one from his presence; sister and brother, beloved and friend, were now utterly lost to him.

At length he learned that Liana had recovered her sight, and that she was dying.  Once more, for the last time, he was admitted to her presence.  She reclined in an easy-chair, white-clad, with white, sunken cheeks.

“Welcome, Albano!” she said feebly, but with the old smile.  “Some day thou wilt know why I parted from thee.  On this, my dying day, I tell thee my heart has been true to thee.”  She handed him a sheet with a sketch she had made with trembling hand of the noble head of Linda de Romeiro.  “It is my last wish that them shouldst love her,” she said.  “She is more worthy of thee.”

“Ah, forgive, forgive!” sobbed Albano.

“Farewell, beloved!” she said calmly, while her feeble hand pressed his.  For a while she was silent.  Suddenly she said, with a low tone of gladness, “Caroline!  Here, here, Caroline!  How beautiful thou art!” Liana’s fingers ceased to play; she lay peaceful and smiling, but dead.

II.—­Linda De Romeiro

Albano’s state for a long time was one of fever.  He lay dressed in bed, unable to walk, in a burning heat, talking wildly, and as each hour struck on the clock, springing up to kneel down and utter the prayer, “Liana, appear, and give me peace!” to the high, shut-up heavens.

“Poor brother!” said Schoppe the librarian, his old preceptor and dear friend.  “I swear to thee thou shalt get thy peace to-day.”

He went to Linda de Romeiro, now in Pestitz after long wandering, and placed his design before her.  Would the Princess Idoine, Liana’s likeness, appear before Albano as a vision and give him peace?  Linda consented to plead with Idoine.  But Idoine made a difficulty.  It was not the unusualness and impropriety of the thing that she dreaded, but the untruthfulness and unworthiness of playing false with the holy name of a departed soul, and cheating a sick man with a superficial similarity.

At length Idoine gave her decision.  “If a human life hangs upon this, I must conquer my feeling.”

As eight o’clock struck, Albano knelt in the dusk, crying, “Peace, peace!”

Idoine trembled as she heard him; but she entered, clothed in white, the image of the dead Liana.

“Albano, have peace!” she said, in a low and faltering tone.

“Liana!” he groaned, weeping.

“Peace!” cried she more strongly, and vanished.

“I have my peace now, good Schoppe,” said Albano softly, “and now I will sleep.”

Time gradually unfolded Albano’s grief instead of weakening it.  His life had become a night, in which the moon is under the earth, and he could not believe that Luna would gradually return with an increasing bow of light.  Not joys, but only actions—­those remote stars of night—­were now his aim.  As he travelled with his father in Italy after his recovery, the news of the French Revolution gave an object to his eagerness.