Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/253



T was May before Anne sailed for America, and her last weeks with Gino remained everlastingly in the memory of both as a time of entire happiness and peace. The element of uncertainty and peril that had seemed at times to walk hand in hand with her love retreated to distant regions of her consciousness, and now every day bound her closer to the man who was to be her husband. It was not so much the flood-tides of rapturous feeling that gave her this sense of security, as the dear and daily communion of domestic details. Together they examined and put in order all personal effects of Gino’s mother, and his loyalty to her memory, the now quiet though vivid evidences of his grief for her loss, made the girl love him more, if that were possible, than she had done before.

During the summer months of separation there seemed to be no danger of Gino’s fulfilling the prophecy of Lady Fitz-Smith and finding another woman charming. He wrote from Rome, where he lingered through a part of the hot lonely summer,