Light as a gazelle she rushed into his embrace, pressing her cheek to his.

“Oh, my soldier! my soldier!” she murmured.  “My soldier and my Love!”

“What a circuit I have made to reach you!” D’Rubiera said at length, holding her back at arm’s length to look at her.  “Are you glad to have me back, signora duchessa?  Are you happy, my red rose?”

“And to think that you have entered the army again!” she said, drawing a caressing finger-tip along the gold-work on his sleeve.

“I did it to please you,” he declared.

The sudden tide of joy and surprise made speech and thought almost impossible.

“I do not believe it all,” Aurora said.  “It is a dream I have been conjuring up.”  She withdrew from him.  “Stay here, vision of a soldier.  Do not stir.  I am going to get my reason back.”  She turned, and walked slowly away the length of the room.  “He is not here:  it was a dream,” she said, then turned again, uttered a sweet cry of joy, and, holding her arms out, met him half-way, and dropped against his breast again.

“I feel the motions of the earth as it flies around the sun and turns on itself,” she said,—­“two dizzinesses in one.  As at first, so now, and so forever, without you I fall, D’Rubiera.”

CHAPTER XXXV.

A FOUNTAIN.

That evening Mr. Churchill dined with his cousin and Mrs. Graham at their hotel, and afterward sat with his cousin in their balcony.

He found Edith wonderfully improved.  She was either prettier, or her educated taste made her look so.  She knew how to dress now, and her manner was better.  She was cheerful, and she carried her head higher.  The hair he once had thought red he knew now was the color the Venetian painters loved, and he looked admiringly at the rich coils that crowned her graceful head.

Besides, there was no sign of that too evident love which had driven him from her.  She looked at him calmly, and spoke with a familiarity which had an undefined coolness in it.

While they sat there alone, talking pleasantly, a servant brought a note for Mr. Churchill.  It had been taken to his house and forwarded to him.  Excusing himself, he went into the room to read it by the shaded lamp.

His cousin turned her head, and watched him unseen.  She saw his face grow crimson as he read, the veins standing out on his forehead, then grow pale again.  She had thought while they sat at dinner that he was looking pale.

He stood bent down, with his eyes fixed on the page, and, without turning the leaf, gazing at what he had read as if he did not understand it.

“My dear friend,” Mrs. Lindsay had written, “after a certain conversation which we had some time ago, I think I ought to tell you my news without delay.  The Duke of Sassovivo is with us, and this evening he has presented Aurora to us as his future wife.”