tonio leaned over her with
their boy in his arms. "Carina," he cried imploringly, "our little one
needeth thee!"

She half-opened her arms, but this wraith of the mother, he remembered,
frightened the child, who clung sobbing to his father.

Marina fell back with a cry of grief, struggling for the words which
came slowly--her first connected speech since her illness. "It is the
curse! It parts even mothers and children!"

A strange strength seemed to have come to her; a sudden light gleamed in
her eyes; she turned from one to the other, as if seeking some one in
authority to answer her question, and fixed upon Santorio's as the
strongest face.

"The official acts of a Pope are infallible?" she questioned, with
feverish insistence, after the first futile attempt to speak. "The Holy
Father who succeeds him may not undo his acts of mercy?"

"Yes, yes, it is true," Santorio assented, waiting eagerly for the
sequence.

A little color had crept into her cheeks; her hands were burning; they
grasped the physician's arm like a vise; the change was alarming.

"The edict cannot hurt my baby! Santissima Maria, thou hast saved him!"
she cried. "For he hath the special blessing of his Holiness Pope
Clement, and our Holy Father cannot reach him with this curse of
Venice!"

"We cannot keep her mind from it," said Santorio, aside to Marcantonio;
"it is essential to calm it with the right view--no argument, it might
induce the most dangerous excitement. Send for some bishop or theologian
who takes the right view; let him present it as a fact, and with
authority; her life depends upon it."

He leaned down to his patient in deep commiseration to tell her that all
was well--that Venice was under no ban, that God's blessing still
shielded her churches and her children; but she raised her eyes steadily
to his, and the strength of the belief, which he saw clearly written
within them, filled him with awe and hushed his speech. How was it
possible to make her understand!

"Nay," said Marina faintly, still holding him with her sad, solemn eyes,
"do not speak. Since Fra Francesco comes no more there is but one who
speaketh truth to me. It is the vision of my beautiful Mater Dolorosa of
San Donato, which leaveth me not."

There was a stir in the depths of the streets below--a noise of the
populace coming nearer, following along the banks of the Canal Grande,
as if the cause of their excitement were in some hurried movement on
its pla