When, in thy dreaming,
        Hours li’ke these shall shine again,
      And morning beaming
        Prove thy dream is vain,
      Wilt thou not, relenting,
        For thine absent lover sigh,
      In thy heart consenting
        To a prayer gone by? 
  Nita, Juanita, let me linger by thy side! 
  Nita, Juanita, be my own dear bride!

Silence fell, continued, and pressed.  There was no note of music from below, no response from above.  Then there was a stroke of oars lightly falling, then ceasing, and again silence.  Not a sign of response.  Slowly the gondola glided away and disappeared in the night.

“I am so sorry for him!” Aurora murmured, and softly closed her window.  “So sorry!”

She recollected what Mrs. Lindsay had said of the fascination of this serenade:  “If the woman who hears this sung to her—­well sung—­on a beautiful night does not at once accept the singer, it is because she is in love with some one else.”

“I am in love with freedom and with poetry,” Aurora exclaimed, and hastily put the subject away.

The cortege that accompanied the babe to church the next morning was a picturesque one.  A dozen gondolas brought their loads to the palace steps, and the company entered and paid their respects to the mother while waiting for the procession from the nursery.

Mrs. Lindsay, on this her first appearance, received in one of the front salons,—­a room lined with gold-colored satin, with sofas and chairs covered with maroon velvet flowers on a gold satin ground.  She wore a marvellous toilet, which looked like sea-foam, so covered was it with laces.

“The difficulty with these rooms is that they extinguish almost anything that you can wear,” she said.  “Nothing looks well against these draperies but old point-lace.  That asserts itself anywhere.”

She certainly contrived to make herself a very lovely and interesting object seen against those rich cushions.  No color reflected upon her but light, in her slight languor and pallor of convalescence, her cheeks delicately thinned, she was like a white rose drooping in the heat of noonday.

The nursery sent down its treasure.  First came Aurora in her Madonna dress, and was received with acclamations.  Then came a footman, then two wondrously-dressed nurses, with their heads a halo of silver filigree pins, one of the nurses bearing the lace-wrapped infant in a white embroidered mantle that fell almost to the floor.  Two maids followed.

This little company filled the babe’s gondola, that swept out, the others following and surrounding it as they glided down to San Marco.  The place of honor was the infant’s, and Aurora sat at her left hand, and bent to talk to her and keep her in good humor.

“She looks at you, Donna Aurora,” the nurse said.  “And, see! she smiles.”

In fact, it had been found that Aurora had the right magic “Coo-coo!” and the cunning hand and soothing cheek which babies require.