Vera tore open the envelope, and looked wonderingly at the page, where nothing in the strong, stern penmanship indicated sorrow and agitation.
"My girl is at rest," he wrote. "She knew very little acute suffering, only three days and nights of weariness. She gave me her good-bye kiss after three o'clock this morning, and the light faded out of the eyes that have been my guiding stars. To make her happy is what I have lived for, since I knew that I was to lose her on this side of my grave. If prayer could reverse the Omnipotent's decree, mine would have been the mortal disease, and I should have gone down to death leaving her in this beautiful world, lovely and full of life.
"You have been very kind, and have helped me to make these last weeks happy for her. I shall never forget you, and never cease to feel grateful for your sweetness and sympathy. When she knew that she was dying she begged me to lay her at rest in this place where she had been so happy. Those were the words she wrote upon her slate when she was dying, her last words, the last effort of her ebbing life, and I shall obey her. You will go with us to the cemetery to-morrow morning, I hope, though you are not of our Church."
CHAPTER III
The sky over a funeral should be low and grey, with a soft, fine rain falling, and no ray of sunshine to mock the mourners' gloom; but over Giulia Provana's funeral train the sky was a vault of unclouded blue, reflected on the blue of the tideless sea, and olive woods and lemon groves were steeped in sunlight. It was one of those mornings such as Giulia had enjoyed with her utmost power of enjoyment, the kind of morning on which the pretty soprano voice had burst into song, from irrepressible gladness—brief song that ended in breathlessness.
The cemetery of San Marco was a white-walled garden between the sea and the hill-side, where the lemon trees and old, grey olives were broken here and there by a cypress that rose, a tall shaft of darkness, out of the silvery grey.
Never till to-day had those dark obelisks suggested anything to Vera but the beauty of contrast—a note that gave dignity to monotonous olive woods; but to-day the cypresses were symbols of parting and death. Their shadow would fall across Giulia's grave in the sunlight and in the moonlight. Vera would remember them, and visualise them when she was far away from the place where she had known and loved Signor Provana's daughter. She was thinking this, as she stood beside Grannie's chair by the gate of the cemetery—watching the funeral procession. There were no carriages. The priest and acolytes walked in front of the bier. The white velvet pall was covered with white flowers, and behind the coffin, with slow and steady step, followed Provana, an imposing figure, tall and massive, with head erect; calm, but deadly pale.
Miss Thompson, the two nurses, and Giulia's Italian maid followed, carrying baskets of violets; and Lady Felicia, who had left her chair as the priest and white-robed acolytes came in view, walked feebly behind them, with Vera by her side. They, too, had brought their tribute of flowers, roses white and red, roses which were now plentiful at San Marco.