"More than ever I think I love thee, now that I am grieving thee," he added after a pause, in a tone so full of comprehension that it smote her.
"Nay, Marco—nay," she said, and drew him closer, clasping her hand in his. But they sat quite silent, while the mother's love intensified, displacing selfishness.
He raised her hand to his lips with a new reverence. "In all this have I asked so much of thee I think thou never canst forgive me, madre mia, until—until thou knowest Marina!"
She touched his hair with her beautiful white hand caressingly, as she had often done when he was a little child; but now, in this sudden deepening of her nature, with a new yearning.
"Marco, when thou wert a babe," she said, "there was little I would not give for thine asking. And now, when my soul is bound up in thine, I seem not to care for the things I once sought for thee—but more for happiness and love. Yet, if I go with thee—I seem to know thou wilt not change to me—?" She paused, wistfully.
"Save but to prove a truer knight!" he cried radiantly. "So more than gracious hast thou been!"
"Nay, it will be sweet to have part in thy happiness," she cried bravely. "To-night, at sunset, will I go with thee, quite simply, in thy gondola, to bid my daughter welcome—as our custom is. I will not fail in honor to my Marco's bride! And since it is love that her father asketh, I will give her this rose, for thy dear sake. But the bridal must be soon, to make this endless talking cease. And before we leave her—for she will learn to love me, Marco mio, and she will not take thee from me?—I will give her the token that is fitting for a daughter of our house."
* * * * *
Among the members of the Senate, meeting by twos and threes in the
Broglio, Marcantonio's name was often heard. "It would be well when this
marriage was over, for verily it was likely to turn the heads of
Venice—the pageant, and the beauty of the maid, and the favor of the
Collegio——"
"Nay, not that," said an older senator, resentfully; "those are but trifles. But the young fellow himself is the danger; too positive and outspoken, revolutionary and of overturning methods, withal persuasive——"