love thee!"

She stepped back, and drew her white veil over her face.

"Wouldst thou love the dead?" she said.

He knew her meaning. Her friend Caroline, whom she had loved and who had
died, had appeared in a vision, and announced that she would die in the
next year.

"The vision was not true!" cried Albano.

"Caroline, answer him!" Liana folded her hands as if in prayer; then she
raised the veil, looked at him tenderly, and said, in a low tone, "I
will love thee, good Albano, if I do not make thee miserable."

"I will die with thee!" said he.

Charles appeared with Rabette; he, also, had spoken frantic words of
love, and Rabette clung around him compassionately, as a mother around
her child.

A few more days of joyous life at Blümenbuhl, and Liana returned to her
home at Pestitz. Then for weeks Albano saw nothing of her, heard nothing
of her. Liana was in sore trouble. Her father had disapproved of the
match; what mattered much more to her, her mother also. The mother's
opposition was on the quite decisive ground that she could not endure
Albano.

The Minister von Froulay had more specific reasons for his hostility--