harridan stopped in surprise, showing her tooth.

"What has become of Peppina?"

"Maria Santissima!" she ejaculated, moving back a step in the darkness.

She paused. Then she said:

"You know Peppina!"

She came forward again, quite up to him, and peered into his face,
seeking there for an ugly truth which till now had been hidden from her.

"What had you to do with Peppina?"

"Nothing. Tell me about her, and--"

He put his hand to the inside pocket of his coat, and showed her the
edge of a little case containing paper notes. The woman misunderstood
him. He knew that by her face, which for the moment was as a
battle-field on which lust fought with a desperate anger of
disappointment. Then cunning came to stop the battle.

"You have heard of Peppina, Signore? You have never seen her?"

Artois played with her for a moment.

"Never."

Her smile widened. She put up her thin hands to her hair, her bonnet,
coquettishly.

"There is not a girl in Naples as beautiful as Peppina. Mother of--"

But the game was too loathsome with such a player.

"Beautiful! Macche!"

He laughed, made a gesture of pulling out a knife and smashing his face
with it.

"Beautiful! Per Dio!"

The coquetry, the cunning, dropped out of the long, pale face.

"The Signore knows?"

"Ma si! All Naples knows."

The old woman's face became terrible. Her two hands shot up, dropped,
shot up again, imprecating, cursing the world, the sky, the whole scheme
of the universe, it seemed. She chattered like an ape. Artois soothed
her with a ten-lire note.

That night, when he went back to the hotel, he had heard the
aunt's version of Peppina, and knew--that which really he had known
before--that Hermione had taken her to live on the island.

Hermione! What was she? An original, clever and blind, great-hearted and
unwise. An enthusiast, one created to be carried away.

Never would she grow really old, never surely would the primal fires
within her die down into the gray ashes that litter so many of the
hearths by which age sits, a bleak, uncomely shadow.

And Peppina was on the island, a girl from the stews of Naples; not
wicked, perhaps, rather wronged, injured by life--nevertheless, the
niece of that horror of the Galleria.

He thought of Vere and shuddered.

Next day towards four o'clock the Marchesino strolled into Artois' room,
with a peculiarly impudent look of knowledge upon his face.

"Buon giorno, Caro Emilio," he said. "Are