sed it with a sort of effort, as it
were in indignation or defiance. He muttered to himself as he opened the
door, and he paused in the hall-way as though hesitating to go forward.
After a moment he made a piteous gesture of his hand towards the
kitchen, and whispered to himself in a kind of reassurance. Then he
entered the room and stood still. All was dark save for the glimmer of
the fire.

"Guida! Guida!" he said in a shaking, muffled voice. There was no
answer. He put by his hat and stick in the corner, and felt his way to
the great chair-he seemed to have lost his sight. Finding the familiar,
worn arm of the chair, he seated himself with a heavy sigh. His lips
moved, and he shook his head now and then, as though in protest against
some unspoken thought.

Presently he brought his clinched hand down heavily on the table, and
said aloud:

"They lie--they lie! The Connetable lies! Their tongues shall be cut
out. ... Ah, my little, little child!... The Connetable dared--he
dared--to tell me this evil gossip--of the little one--of my Guida!"

He laughed contemptuously, but it was a crackling, dry laugh, painful in
its cheerlessness. He drew his snuff-box from his pocket, opened it, and
slowly taking a pinch, raised it towards his nose, but the hand paused
half-way, as though a new thought arrested it.

In the pause there came the sound of the front door opening, and then
footsteps in the hall.

The pinch of snuff fell from the fingers of the old man on to the white
stuff of his short-clothes, but as Guida entered the room and stood
still a moment, he did not stir in his seat. The thundercloud had come
still lower and the room was dark, the coals in the fireplace being now
covered with grey ashes.

"Grandpethe! Grandpethe!" Guida said.

He did not answer. His heart was fluttering, his tongue clove to the
roof of his mouth, dry and thick. Now he should know the truth, now
he should be sure that they had lied about his little Guida, those
slanderers of the Vier Marchi. Yet, too, he had a strange, depressing
fear, at variance with his loving faith and belief that in Guida there
was no wrong: such belief as has the strong swimmer that he can reach
the shore through wave and tide; yet also with strange foreboding,
prelude to the cramp that makes powerless, defying youth, strength, and
skill. He could not have spoken if it had been to save his own life--or
hers.

Getting no answer to her words, Guida went first to t