Ah, how she gazed on him, what longing question there was in her eyes!

He took from his breast a velvet case which might have held a miniature, but did not.

“Look—­look,” he prayed, “at this.  Tis a dead rose.”

“A rose!” says she, and then starts and looks up from it to him, a dawning of some thought—­or hope—­in her face.  “A rose!” she uttered, scarcely breathing it, as if half afraid to speak.

“Ah!” he cried, “I pray God you remember.  When it fell from your breast that night——­”

She broke in, breathless, “The night you came——­”

“Too late—­too late,” he answered; “and this fell at my feet, and you passed by.  No night since then I have not pressed it to my lips.  No day it has not lain upon my heart through all its darkest hours.”

She took it from him—­gazed down at it with stormy, filling eyes, and pressing it to her lips, broke into tender, passionate sobbing.

“No night, no day!” she cried.  “Poor rose! dear rose!”

“Beloved!” he cried, and would have folded her to his breast, kissing her tears away which were so womanly.  But she withdrew herself a little—­holding up her hand.

“Wait, your Grace; wait!” she said, as if she would say more, almost as if she was shaken by some strange trouble and knew not how to bear its presence.  And, of a sudden, seeing this, a vague fear struck him and he turned a little pale.

But the next moment he controlled himself; ’twas indeed as if he himself called the receding blood back to his heart, and he took her hand and held it in both his own, smiling.

“I have waited so long,” he pleaded, caressingly.  “I pray you—­in Love’s name.”

And it was but like her, he thought, that she should rise at this and stand before him, her hand laid upon her breast, her great eyes opening upon him in appeal, as if she were some tender culprit standing at judgment bar.

“In Love’s name!” she cried, in a low, panting voice.  “Oh, Love should give so much.  A woman’s treasury should be so filled with rich jewels of fair deeds that when Love comes she may pour them at his feet.  And what have I—­oh, what have I?”

He moved towards her with a noble gesture, and she came nearer and laid one hand upon his breast and one upon his shoulder, her uplifted face white as a lily from some wild emotion, and imploring him—­the thought coming to him made him tremble—­as some lost, helpless child might implore.

“Is there aught,” she panted, “aught that could come between your soul and mine?” And she was trembling, and her voice trembled and her lips, and crystal drops on her lashes which, in quivering, fell.  “Think,” she whispered; “your Grace, think.”

And then a storm swept over him, a storm of love as great as that first storm of frenzy and despair.  And he cried out in terror at the thought that Fate might plan some trick to cheat him yet, after the years—­the years of lost, lost life, spent as in gyves of iron.