‘I will try to make you as happy and as contented as you were with Minna. I will never think of anyone else. You know I can carry things out when I wish to do it; and, oh, how I wish it now!’ Quite overcome, Signor Oriole had risen from his chair, and was walking about the room, clearing his throat every now and then. Fulvia suddenly sprang from hers, and interrupted him in his walk to and fro, put her hands on his shoulders, and said: ‘You will trust me to try, will you not?’ The next moment she was lying in his arms, weeping in one wild, unquenchable flood all the tears due to her outraged innocence, her blighted youth, her darkened future; and in spite of it all--in spite of the agony, of the hopelessness, of the bitter hardness of it all--there was, deep down in both hearts, the consciousness, unspoken, unformulated, but felt, that at this moment the healing of the gaping wounds had begun, and that the future might bring entire restoration. CHAPTER XXVI. Only three years have passed since that night when Fulvia made confession to her father of what had happened. They pursued their journey South on the following day, and presently arrived at what was to be their home. There, in profoundest quiet, they live, returning more and more to the customs and the habits of their own land, throwing off more and more the stamp of foreign life and an existence amongst aliens. They are not without their joys, and they have at least rest for their souls. Marchmont still lives; still hangs on to his fretful, joyless existence. No word has ever passed between him and his wife. She has not asked for a separation; he has not dared to suggest her to return to him. Neither money nor written words have ever passed between them. He has had himself conveyed to London; and his house is presided over by a widowed sister, from Australia. Letters pass between the Sicilian _castello_ and the old English country house, and Minna thinks, from the tone of them, that perhaps after a little time she may broach the project which is at present the desire of her heart--a journey to Catania, and beyond, to see those two who hold in her heart the same places as her brother Richard, and her niece Rhoda, to whom she has to be mother. Up to now she has not dared to hint at it, so intensely strong was the desire for solitude and rest breathed through every one of Fulvia’s infrequent letters, and echoed by those of her father. But Minna waits, and says, ‘The day will come.’ Hans Riemann started off rather abruptly on his tour to the Caucasus, with the firm intention of remaining away for a long time.