"On the contrary," said San Giacinto, "we have come to tell you that nothing is the matter. This paper may amuse you; but it is worth keeping, as Campodonico and my cousin can testify, for their names appear in it as witnesses."

Ghisleri read the contents carefully, and they could see how his brow cleared at every word.

"You have been the best friend to me that any man ever had," he said, grasping San Giacinto's huge hand.

"You could have done it quite as well yourself, only I knew you would not do it at all," answered the latter. "I have no scruples in dealing with such people, nor do I see why any one should have any. But you would have gone delicately and presented Donna Adele with the confession, and then when she had burned it before your eyes, you would have told her that you trusted to her sense of justice to right you in the opinion of the world."

Ghisleri laughed. He was so happy that he would have laughed at anything. After giving him a short account of what had taken place, all three left him, going, as they said, to breakfast at the club, and inform the world of what had happened. And so they did. And before the clock struck eight that night, Bonifazio had received a hundred visiting cards, each with two words, "to congratulate," written upon it in pencil, and four invitations to dinner addressed to Pietro Ghisleri. For the world is unconsciously wise in its generation, and on the rare occasions when it has found out that it has made a mistake, its haste to do the civil thing is almost indecent. In eight and forty hours the whole Savelli family and the Prince and Princess of Gerano had left Rome, and Ghisleri found it hard to keep one evening a week free for himself.

But in the afternoon of that day on which San Giacinto had so suddenly turned the tables upon Pietro's adversaries, Pietro went to see Laura Arden. She, of course, was in ignorance of what had occurred, and was amazed by the change she saw in his face when he entered.

"Something good has happened, I am sure!" she exclaimed, as she came half-way across the room to meet him with outstretched hands.

"Yes," he said, "something very unexpected has happened. The confession has been found, Donna Adele has admitted that the whole story was a fabrication, and she has signed a formal denial of every accusation, past, present, and to come. I am altogether cleared."

"Thank G.o.d! Thank G.o.d!" Laura cried, wringing his two hands, and gazing into his eyes.

"You are glad," he said. "I suppose I knew you would be, but I could not realise that it would make so much difference to you."

"In one way it makes no difference," she said more quietly, as she sat down and pointed to his accustomed place. "I knew the truth from the beginning. But it is for you. I saw how unhappy you were yesterday. Now tell me all about it."

He told her all that had taken place since he had left her on the previous day, as it has been told in these pages, and his heart beat fast as he saw in her eyes the constant and great interest she felt.

"And so I am quite free of it all at last," he said, when he had finished.

"And you will be happy now," answered Laura, softly. "You have been through almost everything, it seems to me. Do you realise how much I know of all your life? It is strange, is it not? You are not fond of making confidences, and you never made but one to me, when you could not help yourself. Yes; it is very strange that I should know so much about you."

"And still be willing to call me your friend?" added Ghisleri. "I do not know how you can--and yet--" He stopped. "The reason is," he said suddenly, "that you have long been a part of my life--that is why you know me so well. I think that even long ago we were much more intimate than we knew or dreamed of. There were many reasons for that."

"Yes," Laura answered. "And then, after all, I have known you ever since I first went out as a young girl. I did not like you at first, I remember, though I could never tell why. But as for your saying that you cannot see why I should still be your friend, I do not understand how you mean it. It seems to me that you have done much to get my friendship and to strengthen it, and nothing to lose it. Besides, you yourself know that you are not what you were. You have changed. You were saying so only yesterday, and you said the change was for the better."

"Yes, I have changed," said Ghisleri. "It is of no use to deny it. I do not mean in everything, though I do not lead the life I did. Perhaps it all goes together after all."

"That is not very clear," observed Laura, with a low laugh.

Ghisleri was silent for a moment.

"I do not think of you as I did," he said. "That is the greatest change of all."

Laura did not answer. She leaned back in her seat, and looked across the room.

"I never thought it would come," he said. "For years I honourably believed I could be your friend. I know, now, that I cannot. I love you far too deeply--with far too little right."

Still Laura did not speak. But she turned her face from him, laying her cheek against the silken cushion behind her.

"Perhaps I am doing very wrong in telling you this," said Ghisleri, trying to steady his voice. "But I made up my mind that it was better, and more honest. I do not believe that you love me, that you ever can love me in the most distant future of our lives. I am prepared for that.

I will not trouble you with my love. I will never speak of it again--for I can never hope to win you. But at least you know the truth."

Slowly Laura turned her face again and her eyes met his. There was a deep, warm light in them. She seemed to hesitate. Then the words came sharply, in a loud, clear voice, unlike her own, as though the great secret had burst every barrier and had broken out against her will by its own strength, sudden, startling, new to herself and to the man who heard it.

"I love you now!"

Ghisleri turned as deadly pale as when Gianforte's bullet had so nearly gone through his heart. The words rang out in the quiet room with an intensity and distinctness of tone not to be described. He had not even guessed that she might love him. For one moment they looked at one another, both white with pa.s.sion, both trembling a little, the black eyes and the blue both gleaming darkly. Then Ghisleri took the two hands that were stretched out to meet his own, and each felt that the other's were very cold. As though by a common instinct they both rose, and stood a moment face to face. Then his arms went round her. He did not know until long afterwards that when he kissed her he lifted her from the ground.

It had all been sudden, strange, and unlike anything in his whole life, unexpected beyond anything that had ever happened to him. Perhaps it was so with her, too. They remembered little of what they said in those first moments, but by and by, as they sat side by side on the sofa, words came again.

"I knew it when you went away last summer," said Ghisleri. "And then I thought I should never tell you."

"And I found it out when I left you," answered Laura. "I found that I could not live without you and be happy. Did you guess nothing when I made you come to me yesterday? Yesterday--only yesterday! It seems like last year. Did you think it was mere friendship?"

"Yes, I thought it was that and nothing more--but such friendship as I had never dreamed of."

"Nor any one else, perhaps," said Laura, with a happy smile. "For I would have come, you know, in spite of every one. What would you have done then, I wonder?"

"Then? Do not speak of yesterday. What could I have done? Could I have told you that I loved you with such an accusation hanging over me? No, you know that. It was only yesterday that I asked you to let me leave you rather suddenly--did you not guess the reason?"

"I thought you were ill--no--well, it crossed my mind that you might be a little, just a little, in love with me." She laughed.

"I felt ill afterwards. I was horrified when I thought how nearly I had spoken."

"And why should you not have spoken, if it was in your heart?" asked Laura, taking his hand again. "Why should you have thought, even for a moment, that I could care what people said. You are you, and I am I, whether the world is with us or against us. And I think, dear, that we shall need the world very little now. Perhaps it will change its mind and pretend it needs us."

"There is no doubt of that. It always happens so. Why should we care?"

He paused a moment, then, as his eyes met hers, the great dominating pa.s.sion broke out again: "Ah--darling--heart's heart--beloved! There are not words to tell you how I love you and bless you, and worship you with all my soul. What can I say, what can I do, to make you understand?"

"Love me, dear," she said, "and be faithful, as I will be." And their lips met again.

They loved well and truly. Strange, some may say, that a love of that good kind should have begun in friendship on the one side, and indifference if not dislike on the other. But neither had understood the other at all in the beginning. The world-tired and world-weary man had not guessed at the real woman who lived so humanly, and could love so pa.s.sionately, and whom nature had clothed with such saint-like, holy beauty as to make her seem a creature above all earthly feeling and all mortal weakness. Her eyes had seemed fixed on far-distant, heavenly sights, gazing upon the world only to wonder at its vanity and to loathe its uncleanness. Her best and her greatest thoughts had been, he fancied, of things altogether divine and supernatural, of love celestial, of beatific vision, of the waters of paradise, of goodness and of G.o.d. And something of all this there was in her, but there was room for more both in heart and soul, and more was there--the deep, human sympathy, the simple strength to love one man wholly, the singleness of thought and judgment to see the good in him and love it, and to understand and forgive the bad--and far down in the strong, quiet nature was hidden the pa.s.sion but newly awakened whose irresistible force would have broken every barrier and despised every convention, respecting only its own purity in taking what it loved and desired, and would have at any cost, save the defilement of the soul it moved. Small wonder that when it awoke at last unresisted and meeting its like, it burst into sight with a sudden violence that startled the woman herself, and amazed the man who had not suspected its existence.

But she, on her side, had learned to know him more slowly, not ever a.n.a.lysing him, nor trying to guess at his motives, but merely seeing little by little how great and wide was the discrepancy between the hard, sceptical, cynic thoughts he expressed so readily, and the constant, unchangingly brave effort of his heart to do in all cases what was honourable, just, and brave according to his light. She saw him ever striving, often failing, sometimes succeeding in the doing of good actions, and she saw the strange love of truth and simplicity which pervaded and primarily moved the most complicated character she had ever known. He who at first had seemed to her the most worldly of all worldly men, was in reality one whose whole life was lived in his own heart for the one, or two, or three beings who had known how to touch it. To all else he was absolutely and coldly indifferent. She had, indeed, as she said, guessed at last that he loved her a little and more than a little, and she had known for months before he spoke that he was really a part of her life and of all her thoughts and actions. But she had not asked herself what she would do or say when the great moment came, any more than she had accused herself of being unfaithful to the memory of the man whose dying words had bidden her to be happy, if she would have him rest in peace. And now that she loved again, so differently, so pa.s.sionately, so much more humanly, she realised all the great unselfishness of him who was gone and who had not been willing to leave in her heart the least seed of future self-accusation or the least ground for refusing anything good which life might have in store for her. She saw that she could take what was offered her, freely, without one regret, without one p.r.i.c.k of conscience, or one pa.s.sing thought that Herbert Arden would have suffered an instant's pain could he have known what was pa.s.sing in the existence of the woman who had loved him so well.

Late on that afternoon, Ghisleri went to see Maddalena dell' Armi. There was a drop of bitterness in his cup yet, and something hard for him to do, but he would not let the woman who had sacrificed everything for him in days gone by learn the news from a stranger.

"I have come to tell you that I am going to marry Lady Herbert Arden,"

he said gently, as he took her hand.

She looked up quickly, and for a moment he felt a strange anxiety.

"I knew that you would, long ago," she answered. "I am glad of it. No, do not think that is a phrase. I do not love you any more. Are you glad to know it? I wish I did. But I am far too fond of you not to wish you to be happy if you can. You are my dearest and best friend. It is strange, is it not? Think of me kindly sometimes, in your new life.

And--and do not speak my name before her, if you can help it. She knows what we were to each other once, and it might hurt her."

"How changed you are!" exclaimed Ghisleri. But he pressed the hand that lay near him.

"I am trying to be a good woman," she answered simply.

"If there were more like you, the world would be a better place," he said.