She trembled under the ardour of his utterance, and her eyes filled with tears.

“I was not afraid!” she said.  “I should have called Katrine,—­only I knew that if I once did so, she also would be involved, and he would be unscrupulous enough to ruin my name with a few words in order to defend himself from all suspicion.  But you, Aubrey?—­how did it happen that you were here?”

“I was here from the first!” he replied triumphantly.  “I followed on Gherardi’s very heels.  Your Arab boy admitted me—­he was in my secret.  He showed me into the anteroom just outside, where by leaving a corner of the door ajar I could see and hear everything.  And I listened to your every word!  I saw every bright flash of the strong soul in your brave eyes!  And now those eyes question me, sweetheart,—­almost reproachfully they seem to ask me why I did not interfere between you and Gherardi before?  Ah, but you must forgive me for the delay!  I wanted to drink all my cup of nectar to the dregs—­I could not lose one drop of such sweetness!  To see you, slight fragile blossom of a woman, matching your truth and courage against the treachery and malice of the most unscrupulous priestly tool ever employed by the Vatican, was a sight to make me strong for all my days!” He kissed her passionately.  “My love!  My wife!  How can I ever thank you!”

She raised her sweet eyes wonderingly.

“Did you doubt me, Aubrey?” “No!  I never doubted you.  But I wondered whether your force would hold out, whether you might not be intimidated, whether you might not temporize, which would have been natural enough—­whether you might not have used some little social art or grace to cover up and disguise the absoluteness of your resolve—­but no!  You were a heroine in the fight, and you gave your blows straight from the hilt, without flinching.  You have made me twice a man, Sylvie!  With you beside me I shall win all I might otherwise have lost, and I thank God for you, dear!—­I thank God for you!”

He drew her close again into his arms, pressing her to his heart which beat tumultously with its deep rejoicing,—­no fear now that they two would ever cease to be one!  No danger now of those miserable so-called “religious” disputes between husband and wife, which are so eminently anti-Christian, and which make many a home a hell upon earth,—­disputes which young children sometimes have to witness from their earliest years, when the mother talks “at” the father for not going to Church, or the father sneers at the mother for being “a rank Papist”!  Nothing now, but absolute union in spirit and thought, in soul and intention—­the rarest union that can be consummated between man and woman, and yet the only one that can engender perfect peace and unchanging happiness.

And presently the lovers’ trance of joy gave way to thought for others; to a realization of the dangers hovering over the good Cardinal, and the already ill-fated Angela Sovrani, and Aubrey, raising the golden head that nestled against his breast, kissed the sweet lips once more and said—­