"I believe it," cried My Lady, with generous quickness, "though I saw your lips upon her forehead, and though she poured her whole heart out to me, poor little thing, when she was begging to be brought." "I can swear it," he said, "by all that is most holy to me: by my hopes for my country--by anything." "I am not jealous," she said; "you can be a better lover than I saw then?" "I do not love her," he said; "though I think she is a sweet, beautiful, gracious, noble woman." "But I know how she loved you," said My Lady, "for she confessed, and that is why I entreated her to be brought." I could see that she was in a way jealous, for every look as it were, every little gesture while she was questioning him, had been in the nature of a caress. "I think it was the purest kind of hero-worship, though she besought me to receive her love--that is to say if I am a hero, and I am sure I doubt it now." Oblivious of my very existence, My Lady flung her arms round him, and wooed him with those lovely lips, crying "My king of heroes!" Then she murmured again--"Poor little Rusidda! what a brave, true woman, and the best I think in Sicily!" Then she added aloud, "You are not afraid of death?" He looked at her inquiringly. "I am not afraid of my own death," he said, and truly. "You have seen it in a hundred forms; you have seen your most faithful friends and servants--a handful at a time, perhaps...?" I could see his hand tighten round hers. "I am a sad coward at that, dearest Emma: I have wept in the midst of victory at a comrade's falling beside me." "Then, Nelson," she said, "you have need of all your courage now, for the woman who broke her heart for you is dead." "Dead?" he gasped, almost falling. "Dead," she repeated. "Do you not remember her saying, 'We Sicilians fear pain, but not death'?" I do not think I ever saw such a well of silent grief, even in a woman, as there was then in the Admiral for Donna Rusidda. Certain I am that if the spirits of the late departed hover round those they love best on earth, the spirit of Donna Rusidda craved no other monument than those great tears which splashed down on the quarter-deck of the old _Foudroyant_. * * * * * And here I may be permitted to digress to say what I saw when, years and years later, Will and Katherine, and my wife--Will's veritable sister, a more imperious but sweeter Will--journeyed to Sicily, a trip on I forget what excuse, the reality being that my wife had a trouble, happily passed, with her lungs, which made Will carry us all off travelling _en prince_, to the serene skies of Palermo. The first thing we did--it was Katherine suggested it, thinking it must be uppermost in Will's heart, and that he, who was still so madly her lover, might hesitate to speak about the other woman--was to ask where we could find Donna Rusidda's grave.