The mule came on and was led beside the trunk of the cork tree, and the man who led it called aloud to her, 'Is it you who live beneath the ground here? If it be you indeed, I have a letter———'
At that word she leapt to her feet, changed in an instant, as the dry wood is changed when the rosy flame catches it.
'Is he well?' she cried. 'The letter! the letter! Give me, quick.'
'The Count d'Este, my master, is well and in Mantua,' the man answered. 'He sent me here with these; he bade me get a mule at a town on the shore; he bade me see you myself and take him all tidings———'
'The letter! the letter!' she cried, with her hands outstretched.
He gave it to her.
'Oh, dear God! what a blessed thing it is that I can read!' she thought as she seized it; herself transformed, her cheeks the colour of the wild rose that was burning on a hundred hills and vales, all her whole face instinct with life and rapture and gratitude and wonder; wonder that he had remembered, he who never in any moment of her life was absent from her memory.
'Wait without,' she said to him, and
