“As a hostage—­a surety?” asked Corona, breathlessly.

“No.  He would not have accepted that, for he was prejudiced against her.  I gave myself up as the murderer.”

He spoke quite calmly, as though he had been narrating a commonplace occurrence.  For an instant she stood before him, dumb and horror-struck.  Then with a great heart-broken cry she threw her arms round him and clasped him passionately to her breast.

“My beloved!  My beloved!”

For some moments she held him so closely that he could neither move nor see her face, but the beating of his heart told him that a great change had in that instant come over his life.  The cry had come from her soul, irresistibly, spontaneously.  There was an accent in the two words she repeated which he had never hoped to hear again.  He had expected that she would reproach him for his madness.  Instead of that, his folly had awakened the love that was not dead, though it had been so desperately wounded.

Presently she drew back a little and looked into his eyes, a fierce deep light burning in her own.

“I love you,” she said, almost under her breath.

A wonderful smile passed over his face, illuminating the dark, stern lines of it like a ray of heavenly light.  Then the dusky eyelids slowly closed, as though by their own weight, his head fell back, and his lips turned white.  She felt the burden of his body in her arms, and but for her strength he would have fallen to the floor.  She reeled on her feet, holding him still, and sank down until she knelt and his head rested on her knee.  Her heart stood still as she listened for the sound of his faint breathing.  Had his unconsciousness lasted longer she would have fainted herself.  But in a moment his eyes opened again with an expression such as she had seen in them once or twice before, but in a less degree.

“Corona—­it is too much!” he said softly, almost dreamily.  Then his strength returned in an instant, like a strong steel bow that has been bent almost to breaking.  He scarcely knew how it was that the position was changed so that he was standing on his feet and clasping her as she had clasped him.  Her tears were flowing fast, but there was more joy in them than pain.

“How could you do it?” she asked at length, looking up.  “And oh, Giovanni! what will be the end of it?  Will not something dreadful happen?”

“What does anything matter now, darling?”

At last they sat down together, hand in hand, as of old.  It was as though the last two months had been suddenly blotted out.  As Giovanni said, nothing could matter now.  And yet the situation was far from clear.  Giovanni understood well enough that the cardinal had wished to leave him the option of telling his wife what had occurred, and, if he chose to do so, of telling her in his own language.  He was grateful for the tact the statesman had displayed, a tact which seemed also to show Giovanni the cardinal’s