To Colorno, with its unutterable memories; to paradise regained; to the gardens where the wild love-flower grew, which his lips, and hers, had kissed! That she was bidden on her way thither seemed like a tacit surrender by authority to the inevitable. It must have known what associations that restoration would awake. All the journey hitherto she had lain back in a blissful trance, listening to the ponderous rolling of the wheels as they gathered up the reluctant miles, incessantly framing in her mind a picture of the reunion that was to be, with its joys, its tender reproaches, its loving reassurances. The past was to be resumed, as if no black winter of separation had ever interposed. And spring was coming--spring with its wakening birds, and the blossoms breaking in its orange-groves. Smiling, she looked at the faithful little basil-pot by her side, and secretly caressed its leaves, now long recovered from the neglect to which she had once in her cruelty committed them. She would have bent and kissed them but for Fanchette. The maid, setting her lips resolutely, did not answer for awhile. “Then, _I_ am not,” she said suddenly. Isabella glanced at her, a little surprised. “You do not like the country, Fanchette?” “O! as for that,” said the girl, “the value of a place to me is the value of its company.” “Well, you will have plenty in a little while.” “Plenty, and to spare,” said Fanchette, drily. “What do you mean, child?” “I foresee just one too many for my peace of mind, that is all.” “One! What one?” “Cannot your Highness guess? Yet I saw very well that I was not the only one of us two to make note of somebody’s reappearance in Parma yesterday.” Isabella gave a little gasp; but subterfuge was impossible to her. Only she sat silent, and breathing quickly, for a few moments. “Well,” she said presently, with difficulty: “what if you were not? I do not see how your peace of mind is affected by M. Tiretta’s return.” “Hush, I implore your Highness!” said Fanchette. “I would not betray the poor man, whatever distress his persistence may cause me. Possibly your Highness may have observed the recklessness of the act which brought us for that one instant together. I shuddered, I can tell you, for his safety--and it was all that he might whisper to me to meet him later on the Mezzo bridge.” “And you met him?” There was soft eagerness, a restrained rapture, but no least suspicion in the fervid tone. Fanchette shrugged her shoulders perceptibly. “What would you! One in the last extremity must take a bull by the horns. It is safer, at least, than to run away from him. Yes, I met him, mademoiselle.” She hardened herself to the passionate entreaty of the eyes, of the lips that mutely questioned her. “He had in truth,” she said, “been to the wars; and now, taking advantage of a truce, had come back like a roaring devil to renew his assault upon me.” “To renew--what?”