"We have had brave work, lad," he panted. "I am sorry you come late for it--but you were bound on your own business, eh?" He turned with a ghost of his old smile. "Nay, child, and you did right; I am not blaming you--The young to the young, and let the dead bury the dead! Kiss me, lad, if you can find room between these plaguey bandages. Your pardon, Dom Basilio: you have done your best, and, if I seem ungrateful, let me make amends and thank you for giving me this last, best hour. . . . Indeed, Dom Basilio, I am a dead man, but your bandages are tying my soul here for a while, where it would stay. Gervase"--he reached out a hand to my uncle, who was past hiding his tears--"Gervase--brother--there needs no talk, no thanks, between you and me. . . ." I drew back and, touching Dom Basilio by the shoulder, led him to the window. "He has no single wound that in itself would be fatal," the Trappist whispered; "but a twenty that together have bled him to death. He hacked his way up this stair through half a score of Genoese; at the door here, there was none left to hinder him, and we, having found and followed with the keys, climbed over bodies to find him stretched before it." "Emilia!" It was my father's voice lifted in triumph; and the Queen rose at the sound of it, trembling, and stood by the bed. "Emilia! Ah, love--ah, Queen, bend lower!--the love we loved--there, over the Taravo--it was not lost. . . . It meets in our children--and we--and we--" The Queen bent. "O great one--and we in Heaven!" I raised the Princess and led her to the window fronting the dawn. We looked not toward the pillow where their lips met; but into the dawn, and from the dawn into each other's eyes. CHAPTER XXVII. MY MISTRESS RE-ENLISTS ME. "If all the world were this enchanted isle, I might forget that every man was vile, And look on thee, and even love, awhile." _The Voyage of Sir Scudamor_. We had turned from the bed, that no eyes but the Queen's might witness my father's passing. Her arm had slipped beneath his head, to support it, and I listened dreading to hear her announce the end. But yet his great spirit struggled against release, unwilling to exchange its bliss even for bliss celestial; and presently I heard his voice speaking my name. "Prosper," he said; but his eyes looked upward into the Queen's, and his voice, as it grew firmer, seemed to interpret a vision not of earth. "Learn of me that love, though it delight in youth, yet forsakes not the old; nay, though through life its servant follow and never overtake. Even such service I have paid it, yet behold I have my reward! "To you, dear lad, it shall be kinder; yet only on condition that you trust it. "You will need to trust it, for it will change. Lose no faith in the beam when, breaking from your lady's eyes, it fires you not as before. It widens, lad; it is not slackening; it is passing, enlarging into a diviner light.