But--dear me![#]--if you know anything of life in youth, and of the golden thread of Love that is shot though it in the weft, and starts out somewhere always, here or there, whatever light you hold it in--if you know this, there is no more to be said of why, when they met again, in the _Stanza delle Quattro Corone_, each heart should leap out to meet the other, and then shrink back chilled, at the thought of what they were now that they were not once, and of what perforce they had to be hereafter. But the moment was their own, and none pauses in the middle of a draught of nectar because, forsooth, the cup will soon be empty. La Maddalena became, in one magic instant, a Maddalena whose laugh rang out like the song of the little brown bird I told you of but now, and filled the wicked old room with its music. And as for our poor Giacinto--well!--are you a man, and were you ever young? He could promise the withered old _Duca_ that he would make a merry picture of _la Duchessa_; none of your sinister death's-head portraits, but with the smile of _sua Altezza_. For all Maddalena's heart was in her face, and that face wore again the smile of the old, old days, the days long before her bridal. And you see that face before you now. [#] Probably the words Mr. Pelly heard were "_Dio mio!_" which some consider the original of the English "Dear me!" Many of the expressions are evidently literal translations.--EDITOR. Now, if only this old shrunken mummy will begone! If he will only go away to count over his gold, to rack his tenantry for more than his share of the oil-crop, to get absolution for his sins, or, better still, to go to expiate them in the proper place! If he will only take his venerable presence and his cold firm eye away--if it be but for an hour!... He went--sooner than we had hoped. And then when he was quite, quite gone, and the coast was clear, then the laughter broke out. And Marta Zan wondered was this really the new _Duchessa_?--she who had brought from her bridal no smile but a sad one, no glance unhaunted by the memory or the forecast of a tear, no word of speech but had its own resonance of a broken heart. The beldam chuckled to herself, and saw money to come of it, if she winked skilfully enough, and at the right time. But in this she was wrong, for she judged these young people by her bad old self; and indeed they thought no harm, of her sort. Neither could she see their souls, nor they hers. But the laughter and the voices filled the place, and each felt a child again, and back in the old Castello in the hills. "And was it really you, Giacinto? You, your very self--the little Giacintino grown so great a man! _Dio mio_, how great a man you have grown!" "And was the _Duchessa_ then _la nostra Maddalena_, grown to be a great Signora! Was it all true?"