In an atmosphere glowing with mild warmth, on soft beds they were placed, inert and white as frozen clay, their condition being apparently so hopeless that it seemed mere imaginative folly to think that the least breath could ever again part their set lips or the smallest pulsation of blood stir colour through their veins. But Morgana never wavered in her belief that they lived, and hour after hour, day after day she watched with untiring patience, administering the mysterious balm or portion which she kept preciously in her own possession,--and not till the fifth day of her vigil, when Manella showed faint signs of returning consciousness, did she send to Rome for a famous scientist and physician with whom she had frequently corresponded. She entrusted the dispatch of this message to Rivardi, saying-"It is now time for further aid than mine. The girl will recover--but the man--the man is still in the darkness!"

And her eyes grew heavy with a cloud of sorrow and regret which softened her delicate beauty and made it more than ever unearthly.

"What are they--what is HE--to you?" demanded Rivardi jealously.

"My friend, there was a time when I should have considered that question an impertinence from you!" she said, tranquilly--"But yours is the great share of the rescue--and your magnificent bravery wins you my pardon,--for many things!" And she smiled as she saw him flush under her quiet gaze--"What is this man to me, you ask? Why nothing!--not now! Once he was everything,--though he never knew it. Some quality in him struck the keynote of the scale of life for me,--he was the great delusion of a dream! The delusion is ended--the dream is over! But for that he WAS to me, though only in my own thoughts, I have tried to save his life--not for myself, but for the woman who loves him."