"She is more worthy of thee."

"Ah, forgive, forgive!" sobbed Albano.

"Farewell, beloved!" she said calmly, while her feeble hand pressed his.
For a while she was silent. Suddenly she said, with a low tone of
gladness, "Caroline! Here, here, Caroline! How beautiful thou art!"
Liana's fingers ceased to play; she lay peaceful and smiling, but dead.


_II.--Linda De Romeiro_


Albano's state for a long time was one of fever. He lay dressed in bed,
unable to walk, in a burning heat, talking wildly, and as each hour
struck on the clock, springing up to kneel down and utter the prayer,
"Liana, appear, and give me peace!" to the high, shut-up heavens.

"Poor brother!" said Schoppe the librarian, his old preceptor and dear
friend. "I swear to thee thou shalt get thy peace to-day."

He went to Linda de Romeiro, now in Pestitz after long wandering, and
placed his design before her. Would the Princess Idoine, Liana's
likeness, appear before Albano as a vision and give him peace? Linda
consented to plead with Idoine. But Idoine made a difficulty. It was not
the unusualness and impropriety of the thing that she dreaded, but the
untruthfulness and unworthiness of playing false with the holy name of a
departed soul, and cheating a sick man with a superficial similarity.

At length Idoine gave her decision. "If a human life hangs upon this, I