"D'Rubiera has come!" Madama announced. "What other coming could be so
joyful to us? He has left the boy in England, has himself been to Rome on
a flying visit for business purposes, and is come back to see us. Is it
not delightful? That was all I needed to make this the loveliest day of my
life."
"Did you see him?" Aurora asked.
"Why, no! His note was left immediately after you started. I sent a reply
instantly to his hotel, asking him to dine with us. His acceptance was
handed me while we were taking coffee. Did you not see Febiano present the
note? It was a comedy. That man cannot resign the idea that we are
official people, I and John both, and he never lets a note wait, whoever
may be with me. He comes with a solemn, gliding discretion, a sort of
secret-stairway manner, and half presents, half slides the note to me, as
if it were a call to a council of inquisitors in the ducal palace."
"I hope that the duke is not so unhappy as he was when last I saw him,"
Aurora said gravely.
"What should he be unhappy about?" demanded Madama, who seemed indeed to
be in the highest of spirits. "He has youth, health, wealth, rank, a
character worthy all these blessings, and a beautiful boy. Do you imagine
that he is going to mourn forever for a woman whom he never really loved,
and who disgraced and tormented him? Poor thing! let her rest. It is
almost a year since she died, and he has paid sufficient respect to her
memory. I take it for granted that the duke is as full of life and spirit
and joy as a man can be."
"Madama Teresa mia," said Aurora, "whom are you scolding? Allow me to
remind you that I expressed a wish that the duke would _not_ prove to be
unhappy."
"And the wish implied a doubt," her friend retorted. "And your reference
to the past was a shadow. And I will have no shadows to-day. Now I am
going to have my repose, and I advise you to do the same. And you will
wear the same dress at dinner, will you not? It is so pretty. Besides, you
are looking rather pale, and it gives you a glow."
She went; and Aurora, instead of following her advice to go to rest, took
refuge in the ball-room, which was her in-door promenade. She was never
interrupted there. When she was in the ball-room, and they heard her light
step going to and fro, it was taken for granted that she was composing,
and the room became a sanctuary. No profane foot must cross the threshold.
She was very far from composing verses on this May afternoon. She was
trying to tranquillize her mind, which Mrs. Lindsay's news had disturbed.
She would be glad to see the duke, surely, dear kind friend that he was!
Yet what meant the shrinking which accompanied that pleasant anticipation?
She felt that she should tremble at his approach, and that her voice would
falter. It would be a strange folly; and yet she feared that it would be
impossible to control herself.
"It is because of all that happened before I left Sassovivo," she murmured
to herself. "I have got him tangled up in my mind with those miserable
affairs. I am certainly growing nervous, and it will never do. Away with
all that has passed since he became Duke of Sassovivo! _Su_, Rubiera, whom
I knew a soldier years ago, who bade me sing, and laid your drawn sword
across the keys of my piano-forte for a motive, --Rubiera, who came across
a chasm to me as I stood clinging to the broken wall, and smiled courage
into my sinking heart. _Su_, Rubiera, who divided the olive-twig with me,
promising to challenge me when we met again with _Fuori il verde!_ It was
I who showed the green and gave the challenge when we met, and I have the
three leaves yet." She drew a locket from her breast, and opened it to
look at the memento, and at her mother's miniature enclosed with it.
She was smiling now. That bright past had thrust aside all painful
recollections, and the old cordial, loving confidence was coming up again.
The sun, declining to the palace roofs opposite, flooded the room with
light. It made Aurora's red dress brilliant, and played and sparkled on
the gold she wore. Twenty little golden chains of Venice hung around her
neck, slender thread after thread from throat to girdle, invisible now
with fineness, and now showing a misty flash in the sun. There was a gold
filigree rose in her hair, which at certain movements changed to a red
rose, and then to a pallid flame, and in the shadow it had all the
softness of a yellow rose just blown.
Aurora walked to and fro in the light, a brilliant figure, counting over
the treasures of her memory.
"I wonder what I sang that night!" she murmured. "I never copied it. It
was something about my country. When I ended they crossed their swords
above my head, D'Rubiera and General Pampara. What did I sing? I wish I
could remember."
She was so absorbed that a step crossing the next room failed to attract
her attention. She did not even hear the light tap at the door. But when
it opened, and some one entered, closing the door behind him, she turned
abruptly and faced the intruder, fully conscious now.
He was an officer, who tossed his cap away at sight of her, and he had the
face she had been thinking of,--the same face, full of life, and more full
of joyous excitement than she had ever seen it.
They stood so for a moment, the length of the room between them, gazing at
each other, with some sense of floating in all that light, as if they were
far up in the sky, they two alone, on their way to heaven.
Then the soldier held up some tiny object in his hand, and came rapidly
forward.
"_Fuori il verde!_!" he cried out.
As in a dream, as though they were indeed being sucked up through the blue
unsteady air, Aurora tried to pull the locket from her bosom, and desisted,
for, throwing aside the faded leaf, D'Rubiera extended his arms with an
"Aurora!" which held all pleading and all command, all passion and all
delight, that love can give to the human voice.
Light as a gazelle she rushed into his embrace, pressing her cheek to his.
"Oh, my soldier! my soldier!" she murmured. "My soldier and my Love!"
"What a circuit I have made to reach you!" D'Rubiera said at length,
holding her back at arm's length to look at her. "Are you glad to have me
back, signora duchessa? Are you happy, my red rose?"
"And to think that you have entered the army again!" she said, drawing a
caressing finger-tip along the gold-work on his sleeve.
"I did it to please you," he declared.
The sudden tide of joy and surprise made speech and thought almost
impossible.
"I do not believe it all," Aurora said. "It is a dream I have been
conjuring up." She withdrew from him. "Stay here, vision of a soldier. Do
not stir. I am going to get my reason back." She turned, and walked slowly
away the length of the room. "He is not here: it was a dream," she said,
then turned again, uttered a sweet cry of joy, and, holding her arms out,
met him half-way, and dropped against his breast again.
"I feel the motions of the earth as it flies around the sun and turns on
itself," she said,--"two dizzinesses in one. As at first, so now, and so
forever, without you I fall, D'Rubiera."