hat Brigida must
be departing, for she heard the rustling of a dress on the lawn in
front of the summer-house. Unfortunately, Scarammuccia heard it too. He
twisted himself round in her arms and growled.

The noise disturbed Father Rocco. She heard him rise and leave the
summer-house. There would have been time enough, perhaps, for her
to conceal herself among some trees if she could have recovered her
self-possession at once; but she was incapable of making an effort to
regain it. She could neither think nor move--her breath seemed to die
away on her lips--as she saw the shadow of the priest stealing over the
grass slowly from the front to the back of the summer-house. In another
moment they were face to face.

He stopped a few paces from her, and eyed her steadily in dead silence.
She still crouched against the summer-house, and still with one hand
mechanically kept her hold of the dog. It was well for the priest that
she did so. Scarammuccia's formidable teeth were in full view, his
shaggy coat was bristling, his eyes were starting, his growl had changed
from the surly to the savage note; he was ready to tear down, not Father
Rocco only, but all the clergy in Pisa, at a moment's notice.

"You have been listening," said the priest, calmly. "I see it in your
face. You have heard all."

She could not answer a word; she could not take her eyes from him.
There was an unnatural stillness in his face, a steady, unrepentant,
unfathomable despair in his eyes that struck her with horror. She
would have given worlds to be able to rise to her feet and fly from his
presence.

"I once distrusted you and watched you in secret," he said, speaking
after a short silence, thoughtfully, and with a strange, tranquil
sadness in his voice. "And now, what I did by you, you do by me. You
put the hope of your life once in my hands. Is it because they were not
worthy of the trust that discovery and ruin overtake me, and that
you are the instrument of the retribution? Can this be the decree of
Heaven--or is it nothing but the blind justice of chance?"

He looked upward, doubtingly, to the lustrous sky above him, and sighed.
Nanina's eyes still followed his mechanically. He seemed to feel their
influence, for he suddenly looked down at her again.

"What keeps you silent? Why are you afraid?" he said. "I can do you no
harm, with your dog at your side, and the workmen yonder within call.
I can do you no harm, and I wish to do you none. Go b