The severe fasts of Lent had left their mark upon the young face, yet it was fresh and smooth in its delicate pallor, and almost maidenly in its gentle smile.  Silvia had blue eyes, and hair of the chestnut hue; a simple, white fillet lay above her forehead; her robe was of pale russet, adorned with the usual purple stripes and edged with embroidery; on each hand she wore but one ring.  When the visitor entered, she was nursing her child, a boy of four years old, named Gregorius, but at once she put him to sit upon a little stool beside her.

‘Welcome, dear cousin Basil,’ was her greeting.  ’We hoped this time of gladness would turn your thoughts to us.  My husband has been called forth; but you will await his return?’

‘It was you, lady cousin, whom I wished to see,’ Basil replied.  As he spoke, he touched the curly head of the boy, who looked up at him with large, grave eyes.  ‘Why is he so pale?’

‘He has had a sickness,’ answered the mother, in a low, tender voice.  ’Not many days ago, one might have feared he would be taken from us.  Our prayers prevailed, thanks to the intercession of the holy Cosma and Damian, and of the blessed Theodore.  When he seemed to be dying, I bore him to the church in the Velabrum, and laid him before the altar; and scarcely had I finished my prayer, when a light seemed to shine upon his face, and he knew me again, and smiled at me.’

Listening, the child took his mother’s hand, and pressed it against his wan little cheek.  Then Silvia rang a bell that was beside her, and a woman came to take the child away, he, as he walked in silence from the room, looking back and smiling wistfully.

‘I know not,’ pursued Silvia, when they were alone, ’how we dare to pray for any young life in times so dark as ours.  But that we are selfish in our human love, we should rather thank the Omnipotent when it pleases Him to call one of these little ones, whom Christ blessed, from a world against which His wrath is so manifestly kindled.  And yet,’ she added, ’it must be right that we should entreat for a life in danger; who can know to what it may be destined?—­what service it may render to God and man?  One night when I watched by Gregorius, weariness overcame me, and in a short slumber I dreamt.  That dream I shall never forget.  It kept me in heart and hope through the worst.’

‘May I hear your dream?’ asked Basil.

‘Nay,’ was the gentle reply, with a smile and a shake of the head, ’to you it would seem but foolishness.  Let us speak of other things, and first of yourself.  You, too, are pale, good cousin.  What have you to tell me?  What has come to pass since I saw you?’

With difficulty Basil found words to utter the thought which had led him hither.  He came to it by a roundabout way, and Silvia presently understood:  he was indirectly begging her to use her influence with eminent churchmen at Rome, to discover whether Veranilda was yet detained in Italy, or had been sent to the East.  At their previous interview he had kept up the pretence of being chiefly interested in the fate of Aurelia, barely mentioning the Gothic maiden; but that was in the presence of Gordian.  Now he spoke not of Aurelia at all, and so dwelt on Veranilda’s name that his implied confession could not be misunderstood.  And Silvia listened with head bent, interested, secretly moved, at heart troubled.