the whole side of her house, would not have afforded Elisabetta a tithe of the rapture that this sheet of parchment gave her. She used to go in and survey it as if it were the certificate, too, of Sebastian's right to Heaven, as if it were his painted portrait, as it it were himself. She kept the shades down in that room, lest it should fade or tarnish, but now and then she drew them up and threw open the blinds, and let a dash of sunshine fall across it, and sat down before it as if her perfect work were done.
All that was in the early years; since then three times their number had slipped by, and still Elisabetta sat alone, with Nora in the next room, and the crow and the hound on either side. So quiet had these years all been, so even their flow, so filled—save for seasons of sickness—with placid satisfaction or scarcely less placid yearning, that one might be forgiven for doubting if any radical change that broke up all their current would be truly welcome. But only those might doubt who did not know Elisabetta. Not welcome her son's return? Not rejoice over Heaven?
And now the long score of absence was drawing to its close, the year was dying with it, and Sebastian was coming home. It was August when she opened the letter. He would be with her, it said, before the New Year. He was already then upon his homeward path. Elisabetta's prayers for his safety flocked up to heaven so that they might have darkened the way; she had found something to do for her child. Still, if the truth must be told, the prayers were, more than otherwise, a measure of precaution, a sacrifice to unpropitious fortunes. She had a certain sort of assurance that he would be wafted with fair gales to her door. After depriving her of him for twenty years, she felt, perhaps, as if Heaven owed her that much; sometimes, though, she remembered herself and trembled lest she should be found like those people of antiquity who were blasted as they became impious over their successes and defied the gods. But, for all that, never a happier woman walked than this little woman hobbled; she was ecstacised, the world was a reservoir of joy from which she drew exhaustlessly; she shed her wealth of content on all around—on Nora, on old Fly, on Bessie, and the bird. Now, she told herself, the good ship Falconer was speeding down the Indian seas. She pictured its passage day by day through splendid waters under splended skies, as if traversing the liquid heart of some enormous sun-smitten jewel, speeding, speeding, whether Elisabetta walked, or sat, or slept—always hurrying toward her, always the great swans of the sails curving out their snowy bosoms on the breeze, always the sea ploughed into foam before the bows, yielding a dazzling furrow as the buoyant thing careered away. She put herself to sleep at night fancying the edges of low, palm-plumed islands which perchance it skirted; she rose in the dead of the dark to look up at the soft skies hazed
