Audouin\'s recovery was slow, of course; but, he did recover; and as soon as he was safely out of all danger, Gwen and Hiram, now fairly on the road to fortune, proposed that they should forthwith marry. The colonel had almost given up active opposition by this time; he knew that that girl\'s temper was absolutely ungovernable; and besides, they said the shock-headed Yankee fellow was beginning to make quite a decent livelihood out of his painting business. So the colonel merely answered when Gwen mentioned to him the date she had fixed upon, \'You\'ll go your own way, I suppose, Miss, whatever I choose to say to you about it,\' and threw no further obstacles in the way of the ceremony.

\'And, Gwen,\' Hiram said to her, as they walked together down the path by the Casca-telli at Tivoli a few days before the wedding, \'we\'ll take the Tyrol, if you\'d like it, for our wedding tour, darling.\'

\'Yes,\' Gwen answered, \'we will, and we\'ll never come back again to Rome, to live I mean, Hiram, but go to Switzerland, or Wales, or Scotland, or America. You must go, you know, where you can find what you most want to paint—your own beautiful delicate landscapes. I always knew that that was what you could do best; and I always told you that there at least you had real genius.\' Hiram\'s answer was of a sort that cannot readily be put down in definite language; and yet Gwen understood it perfectly, and only murmured in a low soft tone, \'Not here, Hiram, not here, there\'s a dear good fellow.\'

The bushes around were fairly thick and screening, to be sure, but still, in the open air, you know, and in a place overrun with tourists, like Tivoli—well, it was certainly very imprudent.

When Colin Churchill heard that Hiram and Gwen had definitely fixed the day for their own wedding, he put on his hat and went round to the English quarter to call for Minna. They walked together up from the Piazza del Popolo, by the Pincian and Esquiline, towards the straggling vineyards on the Colian Hill. There the young vines were coming into the first fresh leaf, and the air was thick with perfume from the jonquils and lilacs in the neighbouring flower gardens.

\'Minna darling,\' Colin began quietly, and Minna flushed crimson and thrilled through to her inmost marrow at the sound of the words, for Colin had never before called her \'darling.\' She looked at him full of tender surmise, and her bursting heart stood still for a moment within her bosom, waiting to know whether it was to bound again with joy, or flutter feebly in disappointment. After all, then, Colin Churchill really loved her!

Colin noticed the evident tokens of suspense upon her dark cheek, with the hot blood struggling red through the rich gipsy complexion, and wondered to himself that she should feel so deeply moved by the simple question he was going to ask her. Had they not always loved one another, all their lives long, and was it not a mere question of time and convenience, now, the particular day they fixed upon for their marriage? He could hardly understand the profoundness of her emotion, though he was too practised an observer of the human face not to read it readily in her flushed features: for, after all, it was nothing more than settling the final arrangements for a foregone conclusion.

\'Minna darling,\' he said once more, watching her narrowly all the time, \'Win-throp and Miss Howard-Russell are going to be married on Thursday fortnight. I was thinking, dearest, that if you could arrange it with your people so soon, it\'d be a good plan for us to have our wedding at the same time, for I suppose you don\'t think a fortnight too short notice after such a long engagement?\'

Minna trembled violently from head to foot as she answered, with a little tremor in her voice, \'Then Colin, Colin, oh Colin, you really love me!\'

Colin caught her small round hand tenderly in his and said, with a tone of genuine surprise, \'Why, you know perfectly well, my own darling little Minna, I\'ve always loved you dearly. All my life long, darling, I\'ve always loved you.\'

It was well that Colin held the round brown hand tight in his, that moment, for as Minna heard those words—those words that her heart had longed so long to hear, and whose truth she had doubted to herself so often—she uttered a little loud sharp cry, and fell forward, not fainting, but overcome with too sudden joy, so that her head reeled, and she might have dropped unconscious, but that Colin caught her, and pressed her in his arms, and kissed lier, and cried to her in surprise and self-reproach, \'Why, Minna, Minna, darling Minna, my own heart\'s darling, you knew I loved you; you must have known I always loved you.\'

Minna\'s heart fluttered up and down within her bosom, and heaved and swelled as though it would burst asunder that tight little plain black bodice. (Why do not dressmakers allow something for the natural expansiveness of emotion, I wonder.) It was so sweet to hear Colin say so; and yet even now she could hardly believe her life-long daydream had wrought out at last its own fulfillment. \'Oh, Colin, Colin,\' she murmured through her tears—for she had found that relief—\'you never told me so; you never, never told me you loved me.\'

\'Told you, Minna!\' Colin cried with another kiss upon the trembling lips (and all this on the open Colian too); \'told you, Minna darling! W............