“Lady Maud is my cousin,” he said.  “She is a woman carved in alabaster.”

Mrs. Lindsay gave Aurora the letter to read when she went to her room, and she sat there by her window after having read it, the open sheet in her lap.

“Exquisitely beautiful,” she repeated, looking down at the words.  “He will marry her.  I am glad that he is going to marry an Englishwoman.  She must be good, if she is like her cousin.”

She looked out at the bright April sunlight dreamily, and for a long time without stirring.  She was considering if she had not better accept Mrs. Lindsay’s invitation to accompany them to America in June.  She would like to see that wonderful golden land where nobody is ragged and nobody poor, —­to see its prairies and forests, its cities sprung up since yesterday, its wide, clean streets with trees in them, its people, unresting, truth-telling, generous and courageous, if not always polite.

“Fancy a country where the people drink water!” exclaimed a Frenchman, on seeing water sold in the streets of Seville.

“Fancy a nation where the people are for the most part truthful!” thought this Italian, sitting in the window of a Venetian palace and looking out into the Canal Grande.

“I had better go,” she said.  “I shall never again have so good an opportunity.  And I really do not know what else to do.  There is nothing to keep me here.”

And then, with the thought that she might indeed go to the ends of the earth and never come back, for any tie that held her, came the bitter remembrance of her losses.

“Oh, mamma!” she whispered, and began to cry,—­not with the passion of her first sorrow, but piteously and low, with a sense of desolation.

The next day Mrs. Lindsay wrote the duke, “A name you mention in your letter opens the way to a story I have to tell you.  Lady Maud Churchill has a cousin in Venice who is a frequent visitor of ours, and more than an admirer of Aurora’s.  It has been on my mind, to write you of this gentleman, but I always put off doing so with the expectation of having something of importance to communicate concerning him the next time.  Last evening he confided to me that he offered himself to Aurora a month ago, and was refused, but so kindly that he could not give up all hope.  She told him that she was free, and had a sincere regard for him, but that she did not mean to marry any one.

“Of course no man would believe his case hopeless with such a reply; and Mr. Churchill seems to think that Aurora is softening toward him.  It really seems so to me also.  Last evening she sat apart and talked with him nearly two hours; and this morning, as we sat alone, she suddenly exclaimed, ‘I wish that Mr. Churchill would come in!’

“It is true that, having refused him once, she may feel free to show that she likes him as a friend.  However it may turn out, I hope that she may be as happy as she deserves.  For my part, I could not wish her a more honorable and devoted lover.  He is a man calculated to win affection and esteem.”