“And—­are you?” asked Aubrey with a slight smile.

“Changed?  I?  No—­I shall never change.  I loved her at first sight—­I love her still more now.  Yet I see the truth—­she is broken-hearted!”

“Time and great tenderness will heal the wound,” said Aubrey gently.  “Meanwhile have patience!”

Cyrillon gave him a look more eloquent than speech, and by mutual consent they said no more on the subject of Angela just then.

Next morning at the American Consulate, Sylvie, Comtesse Hermenstein, was quietly married by civil law to Aubrey Leigh.  The ceremony took place in the presence of the Princesse D’Agramont, Madame Bozier, and Cyrillon Vergniaud.  When it was over the wedded lovers and their friends returned to the Sovrani Palace, there to join Angela who had come down from her sick room to grace the occasion.  She looked as fair and fragile as the delicate “Killmeny” of the poet’s legend, just returned from wondrous regions of “faery,” though the land poor Angela had wandered away from was the Land of Sweet Delusion, which enchanted garden she would never enter again.  Pale and thin, with her beautiful eyes drooping wearily under their dreamy tired lids, she was the very ghost of her former self;- -and the child-like way in which she clung to her father, and kept near her father always, was pathetic in the extreme.  When Sylvie and Aubrey entered, with their three companions, she advanced to greet them, smiling bravely, though her lips quivered.

“All happiness be with you, dear!” she said softly, and she slipped a chain of fine pearls round Sylvie’s neck.  “These were my mother’s pearls,—­wear them for my sake!”

Sylvie kissed her in silence,—­she could not say anything, even by the way of thanks,—­her heart was too full.

“We shall be very lonely without you, darling,” went on Angela.  “Shall we not, father?” Prince Pietro came to her side, and taking her hand patted it consolingly—­“But we shall know you are happy in England—­and we shall try and come and see you as soon as I get strong,—­I want to join my uncle and Manuel.  I miss Manuel very much,—­he and my father are everything to me now!”

She stretched out her hand to Aubrey, who bent over it and kissed it tenderly.

“You are happy now, Mr. Leigh?” she said smiling.

“Very happy!” said Aubrey.  “May you be as happy soon!”

She shook her head, and the smile passed from her eyes and lips, leaving her face very sorrowful.

“I must work,” she said.  “Work brings content—­if it does not insure joy.”  Her gaze involuntarily wandered to her great picture, “The Coming of Christ,” which now, unveiled in all its splendour, occupied one end of her studio, filling it with a marvellous colour and glow of light.  “Yes, I must work!  That big canvas of mine will not sell I fear!  My father was right.  It was a mistake”—­and she sighed—­“a mistake altogether,—­in more ways than one!  And what is the use of painting a picture for the world if there is no chance to let the world see it?”