Rocco, with a smile, and an
emphasis on the last word. "Superstitious still, Count Fabio! Do you
suspect the powers of the other world of interfering with mortals at
masquerades?"

Fabio started, and, turning from the table, fixed his eyes intently on
the priest's face.

"You suggested just now that we had better not prolong this interview,"
said Father Rocco, still smiling. "I think you were right; if we part at
once, we may still part friends. You have had my advice not to go to
the ball, and you decline following it. I have nothing more to say.
Good-night."

Before Fabio could utter the angry rejoinder that rose to his lips, the
door of the room had opened and closed again, and the priest was gone.

CHAPTER III.

The next night, at the time of assembling specified in the invitations
to the masked ball, Fabio was still lingering in his palace, and
still allowing the black domino to lie untouched and unheeded on
his dressing-table. This delay was not produced by any change in his
resolution to go to the Melani Palace. His determination to be present
at the ball remained unshaken; and yet, at the last moment, he lingered
and lingered on, without knowing why. Some strange influence seemed to
be keeping him within the walls of his lonely home. It was as if the
great, empty, silent palace had almost recovered on that night the charm
which it had lost when its mistress died.

He left his own apartment and went to the bedroom where his infant child
lay asleep in her little crib. He sat watching her, and thinking quietly
and tenderly of many past events in his life for a long time, then
returned to his room. A sudden sense of loneliness came upon him after
his visit to the child's bedside; but he did not attempt to raise his
spirits even then by going to the ball. He descended instead to his
study, lighted his reading-lamp, and then, opening a bureau, took from
one of the drawers in it the letter which Nanina had written to him.
This was not the first time that a sudden sense of his solitude had
connected itself inexplicably with the remembrance of the work-girl's
letter.

He read it through slowly, and when he had done, kept it open in his
hand. "I have youth, titles, wealth," he thought to himself, sadly;
"everything that is sought after in this world. And yet if I try to
think of any human being who really and truly loves me, I can remember
but one--the poor, faithful girl who wrote these lines!"

Old recoll