er hand on his back. Her
curiosity was excited, and she stooped down close to him to look through
a crack in the boards before which he stood into the summer-house.

She was startled at seeing a lady and gentleman sitting inside. The
place she was looking through was not high enough up to enable her to
see their faces, but she recognized, or thought she recognized, the
pattern of the lady's dress as one which she had noticed in former days
in the Demoiselle Grifoni's show-room. Rising quickly, her eye detected
a hole in the boards about the level of her own height, caused by a knot
having been forced out of the wood. She looked through it to ascertain,
without being discovered, if the wearer of the familiar dress was the
person she had taken her to be; and saw, not Brigida only, as she had
expected, but Father Rocco as well. At the same moment the carpenters
left off hammering and began to saw. The new sound from the firework
stage was regular and not loud. The voices of the occupants of the
summer-house reached her through it, and she heard Brigida pronounce the
name of Count Fabio.

Instantly stooping down once more by the dog's side, she caught
his muzzle firmly in both her hands. It was the only way to keep
Scarammuccia from growling again, at a time when there was no din of
hammering to prevent him from being heard. Those two words, "Count
Fabio," in the mouth of another woman, excited a jealous anxiety in her.
What could Brigida have to say in connection with that name? She never
came near the Ascoli Palace--what right or reason could she have to talk
of Fabio?

"Did you hear what I said?" she heard Brigida ask, in her coolest,
hardest tone.

"No," the priest answered. "At least, not all of it."

"I will repeat it, then. I asked what had so suddenly determined you to
give up all idea of making any future experiments on the superstitious
fears of Count Fabio?"

"In the first place, the result of the experiment already tried has been
so much more serious than I had anticipated, that I believe the end I
had in view in making it has been answered already."

"Well; that is not your only reason?"

"Another shock to his mind might be fatal to him. I can use what I
believe to be a justifiable fraud to prevent his marrying again; but I
cannot burden myself with a crime."

"That is your second reason; but I believe you have another yet. The
suddenness with which you sent to me last night to appoint a meeting
in