angrier for Piero's professions of loyalty.
"Shall her father do less than thou?" he questioned, wrathfully. "On the
morrow will I go to her, and leave her no more until she forgets."

"By all the saints in heaven, and every Madonna in Venice, and our Lady
of every traghetto!" Piero exclaimed, as he wrenched himself away from
Girolamo's angry grasp, while the old man staggered against the wall,
still holding a bit of cloth from the gondolier's cloak in his closed
hand, "I am vowed to my mission before this dawn! What I have spoken is
for duty to thine house, and not in anger--though I could color my
stiletto in good patrician blood and die for it gaily, if that would
help her!"

But Girolamo could not yet find his voice, and Piero, with his hand on
the latch of the great iron gates of the water-story, turned and called
back: "Women are not like men, and Marina is like no other woman that
ever was born in Venice. Whether it be the priests that have bewitched
her--may the Holy Madonna have mercy, and curse them for it!--or whether
she be truly the Blessed Virgin of San Donato come to earth again, one
knows not. But, Messer Magagnati,"--and the voice came solemnly from the
dark figure dimly outlined against the gray darkness beyond the iron
bars,--"thy daughter is dying for this curse of the Most Holy
Father--'il mal anno che Dio le dia!' (may heaven make him suffer for
it!)--and she hath no peace in Venice. _She will never forget nor
change_. If thy love be great, as thou hast said, thou wilt find some
way to help her. _For in Venice she hath no peace_."

The old merchant, dazed by Piero's hot words, was a pitiful figure,
standing, desolate, behind the closed bars of his gate, the night wind
lifting his long beard and parting the thin gray locks that flowed from
under his cap, while he called and beckoned impotently to Piero to
return, repeating meanwhile mechanically, with no perception of their
meaning, those strange words of Piero's--"_In Venice she hath no
peace_." He stood, peering out into the gray gloom and listening to the
lessening plash of the oar, until the gondola of the gastaldo was
already far on the way to San Marco, where sat the Ten.

But it was not of Piero's mission he was thinking, but of his
child--saying over and over again those fateful words, "In Venice she
hath no peace." Had Piero said that?

Suddenly the entire speech recurred to him--insistent, tense with
meaning. She could not live in Ve