"If Giulia had lived," she thought to-night, as she crouched over the lonely hearth, sitting in that low chair in which she used to sit, as it were, at her husband's feet, sometimes in the dreamy twilight letting her drooping head rest upon his knee, while his hand hovered caressingly over the blonde hair. Had Giulia lived, would everything have been different? Would Mario have loved and married her, and would they three have lived in a trinity of love? It seemed to her that Giulia would have been a hallowing influence. They two would have been like sisters, loving and understanding the man who loved them both. No cloud of jealousy could have come between them; all would have been sympathy and understanding. That wall of separation which had risen up between her and her husband would never have been. Neither pride on her part nor distrust upon his part would have killed love. Giulia would have sympathised with both; and her love would have kept them united. She mused long upon the life that might have been, the life without a cloud. She thought with longing of the girl who had died sinless, in the morning of an unsullied life. Was not such a life, wrapped round with love, and free from the shadow of sin--such a death, before satiety had come to change the gold to dross--the happiest fate that God could give to His chosen? "And to think that I was sorry for her, that I pitied her for being taken from such a beautiful world, from such a devoted father. How could I know that Death was the only security from sin?" She sat long in that melancholy reverie, only rousing herself and taking up a book from the table at her side, when she heard the door opening, and a servant came in to put fresh logs on the fire. She told the man that her maid, Louison, was not to sit up for her. Nobody was to sit up. She would not be going upstairs for some time. She wanted nothing, and she would switch off the lights. In a house lighted by electricity the lights were of very little consequence. The footman took elaborate pains with the fire, piling up the logs, and arranging the large brass guard that fenced the hearth, and then retired with ghostly step to remote regions, where his fellows were lingering over the supper-table, some of them talking of the journey to Rome, and those who were to remain in charge of the house complaining of the dullness of a long winter, and the low figure of board wages, which had remained more or less stationary, while everything else was going up by leaps and bounds.