"Better so," he thought--"better so! He and May will be happy together, for I know he loves her and she him. The memory of my leave-taking shall never come to cloud their united lives." One last backward glance at the eastern windows turning to gold; at the sea blushing back the first glance of the day-king; at the waving trees and swelling meadows, and then he had passed down the avenue, out through the massive entrance-gates, and was gone. CHAPTER XV. AFTER FIVE YEARS. Moonlight falling like a silvery veil over Venice--a crystal clear crescent in a purple sky shimmering on palace and prison, churches, squares and canals, on the gliding gondolas and the flitting forms passing like noiseless shadows to and fro. A young lady leaned from a window of a vast Venetian hotel, gazing thoughtfully at the silver-lighted landscape, so strange, so unreal, so dream-like to her unaccustomed eyes. A young lady, stately and tall, with a pale, proud face, and a statuesque sort of beauty that was perfect in its way. She was dressed in trailing robes of crape and bombazine, and the face, turned to the moonlight, was cold and still as marble. She turned her eyes from the moonlit canal, down which dark gondolas floated to the music of the gay gondolier's song; once, as an English voice in the piazza below sung a stave of a jingling barcarole-- "Oh! gay we row where full tides flow! And bear our bounding pinnace; And leap along where song meets song, Across the waves of Venice." The singer, a tall young man, with a florid face and yellow side-whiskers, an unmistakable son of the "right little, tight little" island, paused in his song, as another man, stepping through an open window, struck him an airy, sledge-hammer slap on the back. "I ought to know that voice," said the last comer. "Mortimer, my lad, how goes it?" "Stafford!" cried the singer, seizing the outstretched hand in a genuine English grip, "happy to meet you, old boy, in the land of romance! La Fabre told me you were coming, but who would look for you so soon! I thought you were doing Sorrento?" "Got tired of Sorrento," said Stafford, taking his arm for a walk up and down the piazza; "there's a fever there, too--quite an epidemic--malignant typhus. Discretion is the better part of valor where Sorrento fevers are concerned. I left." "When did you reach Venice?" asked Mortimer, lighting a cigar. "An hour ago; and now who's here? Any one I know!" "Lots. The Cholmonadeys, the Lythons, the Howards, of Leighwood; and, by-the-bye, they have with them the Marble Bride." "The which?" asked Mr. Stafford. "The Marble Bride, the Princess Frostina; otherwise Miss Aileen Jocyln, of Jocyln Hall Devonshire. You knew the old colonel, I think; he died over a year ago, you remember." "Ah, yes! I remember. Is she here with the Howards, and as handsome as ever, no doubt?"