round the room, and slipped along our table, with half-defiant
unconcern; and then she uttered a short hysterical laugh.

"Ah! ze lady--madame--ze signora--eh--she wantah me?" continued
Tournelli, leaning on the table with compressed fingers, and glaring at
her. "Perhaps SHE wantah Tournelli--eh?"

"Well, you might bring some with the soup," blandly replied her escort,
who seemed to enjoy the Italian's excitement as a national eccentricity;
"but hurry up and set the table, will you?"

Then followed, on the authority of the Editor, who understood Italian, a
singular scene. Secure, apparently, in his belief that his language was
generally uncomprehended, Tournelli brought a decanter, and, setting
it on the table, said, "Traitress!" in an intense whisper. This
was followed by the cruets, which he put down with the exclamation,
"Perjured fiend!" Two glasses, placed on either side of her, carried the
word "Apostate!" to her ear; and three knives and forks, rattling
more than was necessary, and laid crosswise before her plate, were
accompanied with "Tremble, wanton!" Then, as he pulled the tablecloth
straight, and ostentatiously concealed a wine-stain with a clean napkin,
scarcely whiter than his lips, he articulated under his breath: "Let
him beware! he goes not hence alive! I will slice his craven
heart--thus--and thou shalt see it." He turned quickly to a side table
and brought back a spoon. "And THIS is why I have not found you;"
another spoon, "For THIS you have disappeared;" a purely perfunctory
polishing of her fork, "For HIM, bah!" an equally unnecessary wiping
of her glass, "Blood of God!"--more wiping--"It will end! Yes"--general
wiping and a final flourish over the whole table with a napkin--"I go,
but at the door I shall await you both."

She had not spoken yet, nor even lifted her eyes. When she did
so, however, she raised them level with his, showed all her white
teeth--they were small and cruel-looking--and said smilingly in his own
dialect:--

"Thief!"

Tournelli halted, rigid.

"You're talking his lingo, eh?" said her escort good-humoredly.

"Yes."

"Well--tell him to bustle around and be a little livelier with the
dinner, won't you? This is only skirmishing."

"You hear," she continued to Tournelli in a perfectly even voice; "or
shall it be a policeman, and a charge of stealing?"

"Stealing!" gasped Tournelli. "YOU say stealing!"

"Yes--ten thousand dollars. You are well disguised here, my li