Giulia gazed at her friend with those too-brilliant eyes, and touched her lips with a pale and wasted hand, as a sign that she must not speak, and then she wrote on her slate eagerly: "I have wanted to see you so long, so long, and now this may be the last time. I did not know I was so ill, but I know now. Oh, who will care take of my father when he is old; who will love him as I have done? I thought I should always be there, always his dearest friend. You must be his friend, Vera. He will be fond of you for my sake. You will find my place by and by." "Never, darling. No one can fill your place," Vera said, in a quiet voice, full of calm tenderness. A strange, suppressed sound, half sigh, half sob, startled her, and looking at the window she saw Signor Provana sitting on the balcony, motionless and watchful. Again Giulia's tremulous hand wrote: "Don't go till they send you away. Sit by me, and let me look at you. Oh, what happy days we have had--among the lovely hills. You will think of me in years to come, when you are in Italy." "Always, always, I shall think of you and remember you, wherever I am. And now I won't talk any more, but I will stay till Miss Thompson takes me away." Miss Thompson came very soon, and Vera bent over the dying girl and kissed the cold brow. "_A riverderci, Carissima_; I shall come again when Miss Thompson fetches me." She left the bedside with that word of hope, the luminous eyes following her to the door. The dogs did not stir, nor the figure in the balcony. Miss Thompson and the nurse sat silent and motionless. A stillness so intense seemed strange in a sunlit room, gay with flowers. It was late next morning when Vera fell into a troubled sleep, filled with cruel dreams--dreams that mocked her with visions of Giulia well and joyous--in one of those romantic scenes where they had been happy together, in hours that were so bright that Vera had forgotten the shadow that followed them. Lidcott came with the morning tea, and there was a letter on the tray. "From the foreign gentleman," said Lidcott, who had never attempted Signor Provana's name. Vera tore open the envelope, and looked wonderingly at the page, where nothing in the strong, stern penmanship indicated sorrow and agitation. "My girl is at rest," he wrote. "She knew very little acute suffering, only three days and nights of weariness. She gave me her good-bye kiss after three o'clock this morning, and the light faded out of the eyes that have been my guiding stars. To make her happy is what I have lived for, since I knew that I was to lose her on this side of my grave. If prayer could reverse the Omnipotent's decree, mine would have been the mortal disease, and I should have gone down to death leaving her in this beautiful world, lovely and full of life.