"It cannot but be right that you should know the worst; of me. I call you my husband, and tremble to be permitted to lean my head on your bosom for hours, my sweet lover! And yet my cowardice, if I had let the king go by without a reverential greeting from me, in his adversity, would have rendered me insufferable to myself. You are hearing me, and I am compelled to say, that rather than behave so basely I would forfeit your love, and be widowed till death should offer us for God to join us. Does your face change to me? "Dearest, and I say it when the thought of you sets me almost swooning. I find my hands clasped, and I am muttering I know not what, and I am blushing. The ground seems to rock; I can barely breathe; my heart is like a bird caught in the hands of a cruel boy: it will not rest. I fear everything. I hear a whisper, 'Delay not an instant!' and it is like a furnace; 'Hasten to him! Speed!' and I seem to totter forward and drop-- I think I have lost you--I am like one dead. "I remain here to nurse our dear friend Merthyr. For that reason I am absent from your mother. It is her desire that we should be married. "Soon, soon, my own soul! "I seem to be hanging on a tree for you, swayed by such a teazing wind. "Oh, soon! or I feel that I shall hate any vestige of will that I have in this head of mine. Not in the heart--it is not there! "And sometimes I am burning to sing. The voice leaps to my lips; it is quite like a thing that lives apart--my prisoner. "It is true, Laura is here with Merthyr. "Could you come at once?--not here, but to Pallanza? We shall both make our mother happy. This she wishes, this she lives for, this consoles her--and oh, this gives me peace! Yes, Merthyr is recovering! I can leave him without the dread I had; and Laura confesses to the feminine sentiment, if her funny jealousy of a rival nurse is really simply feminine. She will be glad of our resolve, I am sure. And then you will order all my actions; and I shall be certain that they are such as I would proudly call mine; and I shall be shut away from the world. Yes; let it be so! Addio. I reserve all sweet names for you. Addio. In Pallanza:--no not Pallanza--Paradise! "Hush! and do not smile at me:--it was not my will, I discover, but my want of will, that distracted me. "See my last signature of--not Vittoria; for I may sign that again and still be Emilia Alessandra Ammiani. "SANDRA BELLONI" The letter was sealed; Luigi bore it away, and a brief letter to Countess Ammiani, in Pallanza, as well.