off so long?"

"To allow our young gentleman time to cool down and return to the
studio, to be sure. What was the use of my being there while he was
away?"

"Yes, yes--I forgot. And how long was it before he came back?"

"I had allowed him more time than enough. When I had given my first
sitting I saw him in the studio, and heard it was his second visit there
since the day of the girl's disappearance. Those very violent men are
always changeable and irresolute."

"Had he made no attempt, then, to discover Nanina?"

"Oh, yes! He had searched for her himself, and had set others searching
for her, but to no purpose. Four days of perpetual disappointment had
been enough to bring him to his senses. Luca Lomi had written him a
peace-making letter, asking what harm he or his daughter had done, even
supposing Father Rocco was to blame. Maddalena Lomi had met him in the
street, and had looked resignedly away from him, as if she expected him
to pass her. In short, they had awakened his sense of justice and his
good nature (you see, I can impartially give him his due), and they
had got him back. He was silent and sentimental enough at first, and
shockingly sulky and savage with the priest--"

"I wonder Father Rocco ventured within his reach."

"Father Rocco is not a man to be daunted or defeated by anybody, I
can tell you. The same day on which Fabio came back to the studio, he
returned to it. Beyond boldly declaring that he thought Nanina had done
quite right, and had acted like a good and virtuous girl, he would say
nothing about her or her disappearance. It was quite useless to ask him
questions--he denied that any one had a right to put them. Threatening,
entreating, flattering--all modes of appeal were thrown away on him.
Ah, my dear! depend upon it, the cleverest and politest man in Pisa,
the most dangerous to an enemy and the most delightful to a friend, is
Father Rocco. The rest of them, when I began to play my cards a little
too openly, behaved with brutal rudeness to me. Father Rocco, from
first to last, treated me like a lady. Sincere or not, I don't care--he
treated me like a lady when the others treated me like--"

"There! there! don't get hot about it now. Tell me instead how you
made your first approaches to the young gentleman whom you talk of so
contemptuously as Fabio."

"As it turned out, in the worst possible way. First, of course, I made
sure of interesting him in me by telling him that I had known