"Au revoir," said Giovanni, and went on his way.
He found Corona in an inner sitting-room, reading beside a great wood-fire. There were soft shades of lilac mingled with the black of her dress. The year of mourning was past, and so soon as she could she modified her widow's weeds into something less solemnly black. It was impossible to wear funeral robes on the eve of her second marriage; and the world had declared that she had shown an extraordinary degree of virtue in mourning so long for a death which every one considered so highly appropriate. Corona, however, felt differently. To her, her dead husband and the man she now so wholly loved belonged to two totally distinct classes of men. Her love, her marriage with Giovanni, seemed so natural a consequence of her being left alone—so absolutely removed from her former life—that, on the eve of her wedding, she could almost wish that poor old Astrardente were alive to look as her friend upon her new-found happiness.
She welcomed Giovanni with a bright smile. She had not expected him that evening, for he had been with her all the afternoon. She sprang to her feet and came quickly to meet him. She almost unconsciously took the morocco case from his hands, not looking at it, and hardly noticing what she did.
"My father has come back. It is all settled!" cried Giovanni.
"So soon! He must have flown!" said she, making him sit down.
"Yes, he has never rested, and he has found out all about it. It is a most extraordinary story. By the by, he sends you affectionate messages, and begs you to accept these diamonds. They were my mother's," he added, his voice softening and changing. Corona understood his tone, and perhaps realised, too, how very short the time now was. She opened the case carefully.
"They are very beautiful; your mother wore them, Giovanni?" She looked lovingly at him, and then bending down kissed the splendid coronet as though in reverence of the dead Spanish woman who had borne the man she loved. Whereat Giovanni stole to her side, and kissed her own dark hair very tenderly.
"I was to tell you that there are a great many more," he said, "which my father will offer you on the wedding—day." Then he kneeled down beside her, and raising the crown from its case, set it with both his hands upon her diadem of braids.
"My princess!" he exclaimed. "How beautiful you are!" He took the great necklace, and clasped it about her white throat. "Of course," he said, "you have such splendid jewels of your own, perhaps you hardly care for these and the rest. But I like to see you with them—it makes me feel that you are really mine."
Corona smiled happily, and gently took the coronet from her head, returning it to its case. She let the necklace remain about her throat.