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CHAPTER XXVII.
"Farewell! but not for long."
Summer had come—bright and beautiful as her prophecy, spring, had foretold, in the sweet oracles of opening buds and expanding leaves; but Francesca wandered no more through the shadowy depths of the forest, nor loitered amid the pleasant paths of the garden. The green grass and the wild flowers of the meadow were being mown; but she only thought of the cheerful season when the air came laden with the scent of the fragrant hay, and Guido would ask what new and delicious odour came upon the morning air. Francesca's sole haunt was now the darkened chamber of the dying. There her light step suited its silent fall to the feint throbbing of the sick man's pulse; there her eye wore the tender guile of unshed tears, suppressed even when the sufferer slept, lest he should mark their traces when he
