'Oh, that I could see him!' sighed Venetia.
'You will,' replied Plantagenet; 'your destiny requires it. You will see him as surely as you beheld that portrait that it was the labour of a life to prevent you beholding.'
Venetia shook her head; 'And yet,' she added musingly, 'my mother loves him.'
'Her life proves it,' said Cadurcis bitterly.
'I think it does,' replied Venetia, sincerely.
'I pretend not to understand her heart,' he answered; 'it is an enigma that I cannot solve. I ought not to believe that she is without one; but, at any rate, her pride is deeper than her love.'
'They were ill suited,' said Venetia, mournfully; 'and yet it is one of my dreams that they may yet meet.'
'Ah, Venetia!' he exclaimed, in a voice of great softness, 'they had not known each other from their childhood, like us. They met, and they parted, alike in haste.'
Venetia made no reply; her eyes were fixed in abstraction on a handscreen, which she was unconscious that she held.
'Tell me,' said Cadurcis, drawing his chair close to hers; 'tell me,
Venetia, if—'