dance melody. Close at her side a young child was rolling on the beach
in high glee; in front of her a little girl was dancing to the music,
with a very extraordinary partner in the shape of a dog, who was
capering on his hind legs in the most grotesque manner. The merry
laughter of the girl, and the lively notes of the guitar were heard
distinctly across the still water.

"Edge a little nearer in shore," said D'Arbino to his friend, who was
steering; "and keep as I do in the shadow of the sail. I want to see the
faces of those persons on the beach without being seen by them."

Finello obeyed. After approaching just near enough to see the
countenances of the party on shore, and to be barked at lustily by the
dog, they turned the boat's head again toward the offing.

"A pleasant voyage, gentlemen," cried the clear voice of the little
girl. They waved their hats in return; and then saw her run to the dog
and take him by the forelegs. "Play, Nanina," they heard her say. "I
have not half done with my partner yet." The guitar sounded once more,
and the grotesque dog was on his hind legs in a moment.

"I had heard that he was well again, that he had married her lately,
and that he was away with her and her sister, and his child by the
first wife," said D'Arbino; "but I had no suspicion that their place
of retirement was so near us. It is too soon to break in upon their
happiness, or I should have felt inclined to run the boat on shore."

"I never heard the end of that strange adventure of the Yellow Mask,"
said Finello. "There was a priest mixed up in it, was there not?"

"Yes; but nobody seems to know exactly what has become of him. He was
sent for to Rome, and has never been heard of since. One report is,
that he has been condemned to some mysterious penal seclusion by his
ecclesiastical superiors--another, that he has volunteered, as a sort of
Forlorn Hope, to accept a colonial curacy among rough people, and in
a pestilential climate. I asked his brother, the sculptor, about him a
little while ago, but he only shook his head, and said nothing."

"And the woman who wore the yellow mask?"

"She, too, has ended mysteriously. At Pisa she was obliged to sell off
everything she possessed to pay her debts. Some friends of hers at a
milliner's shop, to whom she applied for help, would have nothing to do
with her. She left the city, alone and penniless."

The boat had approached the next headland on the coast while they w