My Friend Prospero Part 32

"Yes," moodily consented John, "I suppose we must. But oh me, what a dreary, blank, stale, and unprofitable desolation this garden will become,--and at every turn the ghost of some past joy!"

Annunziata looked up with eyes that seemed omniscient.

"I was thinking about you," she greeted them.

"About which of us?" asked John.

"About both of you. I always now, since a long while, think of you both together. I think Maria Dolores is the dark woman whom Prospero is to marry."

John laughed. Maria Dolores looked out of the window.

"And I was thinking," Annunziata went on, "how strange it was that if you hadn't both at the same time just happened to come to Sant'

Alessina, you might have lived and died and never have known each other."

"Perish that thought," laughed John. "But I have sometimes thought it myself."

"And then," Annunziata rounded out her tale, "I thought that perhaps you had not just happened--that probably you had been led."

"That is a thing I haven't a doubt of," John with energy affirmed.

"You look as if you were very glad about something--both of you," said Annunziata, those omniscient eyes of hers studying their faces. "What is it that you are both so glad of?"

"We are so glad to find you feeling so well," answered Maria Dolores.

But Annunziata shook her head, as one who knew better. "No--that is not the only thing. You are glad of something else besides."

"There's no taking you in," said John. "But we are under bonds to treat that Something Else as the Pope sometimes treats Princes of the Church."

"He gives them red hats," said Annunziata.

"I shall give this thing a crown of myrtle," said John.

"You sometimes say things that sound as if they hadn't any sense,"

Annunziata informed him, with patient indulgence, nodding at the ceiling.

Maria Dolores leaned over the bed, and kissed Annunziata's brow. "Good night, carina," she murmured.

Annunziata put up her little white arms, and encircled Maria Dolores'

neck. Then she kissed her four times--on the brow, on the chin, on the left cheek, on the right. "That is a cross of kisses," she explained.

"It is the way my mother used to kiss me. It means may the four Angels of Peace, Grace, Holiness, and Wisdom watch over your sleep."

But early next morning, John being still on duty, Maria Dolores came back,--booted and spurred for her journey, in tailor-made tweeds, with a little felt toque and a veil: a costume of which Annunziata's eyes were quick to catch the suggestion.

"Why are you dressed like that?" she asked, uneasily. "I never saw you dressed like that before. You look as if you were going away somewhere."

"I have got to go away--I have got to go to my home, in Austria. I have come to bid you good-bye," Maria Dolores answered.

Annunziata's eyes were dark with pain. "Oh," she said, in a voice of deep dismay.

"We shan't be separated long, though," Maria Dolores promised. "I have asked your uncle to lend you to me. As soon as you are strong enough to travel, you are coming to Austria to pay me a long visit. Then I will come back with you to Sant' Alessina. And then--well, wherever I go you will always go with me. For of course I can never live happily again without you."

"One moment, please," put in John. "Here is a small difficulty. I can never live happily without her, either. I also have asked her uncle to lend her to me. And wherever _I_ go, she is always to go with me. How are we to adjust our rival claims?"

Annunziata's eyes lighted up.

"Oh, that will be easy enough," she pointed out. "You will have to go everywhere together."

THE END