No friend could have done more." "I know it," Regina answered; but still there was something in her tone which he could not understand.
"Then why do you say that he means to separate us ?" Regina did not reply, but she opened her eyes and looked into Marcello's long and lovingly.

She knew something that he did not know, and which had haunted her long.

When Folco had come to the bedside in the hospital, she had seen the abject terror in his face, the paralysing fear in his attitude, the trembling limbs and the cramped fingers.

It had only lasted a moment, but she could never forget it.

A child would have remembered how Folco looked then, and Regina knew that there was a mystery there which she could not understand, but which frightened her when she thought of it.