And the mortal body of her tragedy? She never learnt or tried to learn where they had laid it. What did it signify? That poor broken prison was no more concerned now with the ideals which had once made it animate and beautiful than was her own body with the little mortal lusts and policies which contended over its brief possession. To all that its life-tribute meant to her at last the basil contained the clue. It was there alone her real being centred and became volitional. Alone with it, her soul seemed to return into her from the spaces where it had hung aloof, and to become articulate with a remembered ecstasy. She would dream with the green thing, and talk softly with it, as if it were he himself, recalling a hundred little secrets of love and loving converse. “She had no knowledge when the day was done,” but only that the darkness meant the joyful nearing of her basil-time. And always and for ever she prayed it wooingly to flower, growing more pathetic in her sweet entreaties as the third month from that night drew to its close. But still the stubborn sprays showed no sign of breaking--not for all her tender plaints and bedewing tears. Alas, it was not to be yet! CHAPTER XXIX. AT REST “Sound mournfully upon the winds and low; For simple Isabel is soon to be Among the dead ...” She was married early in September. When she had been told that it was to be, she had simply acquiesced, quite quietly, quite gravely. “To make _him_ happy”--she had not forgotten the wistful words--almost his last--and the withholding of the sign was proof that the sacred injunction was not rescinded. If his dear ghost still held her to that sacrifice, there must be reasons for it hidden among the inscrutable silences. Perhaps that way alone lay the end she so wearied for. If this poor residue from all which exalted life above its material perishableness was enough for Joseph’s content, she valued it too little to grudge it him. Let him be happy with it, if he would and could. And so she was married, quite quietly, as befitted her mourning, in the ducal palace at Parma. The ceremony was performed by proxy, the Prince of Liechtenstein representing his royal master, and immediately following it the new archduchess set out for Vienna. It is enough for our remaining purpose to record the whole-heartedness of her reception there by that susceptible young man, her husband, who had only once before in his life seen the face which was now to awaken in him the liveliest emotions of love. Isabella much more than justified the archduke’s earlier impression of her: he found her beautiful and desirable beyond all expectation, and he laid his soul then and there at her feet, with assurances of its eternal dedication to her love and service.