Ugly assassins! I will never forgive
them, never! What am I to say at home? That you will come to supper one
of these days?"

"Eh, if God wills," answered the doctor. "I will be accompanied by
Serafina."

"I!" exclaimed the old woman. "I am afraid even of a cat! What could I
do for you?"

"Company is always company," said Sor Tommaso, wisely. "Where one would
not go, two go bravely. Good evening, my beautiful daughter," he added,
looking up at Annetta. "The Madonna go with you."

"Thank you, and good evening," answered the girl, dropping half a
courtsey, with a vicious twinkle in her little eyes.

She turned, and was out of the room in a moment. On the way home through
the narrow streets in the evening glow, she sang snatches of song to
herself, and thought of all she had said to Sor Tommaso, and of all he
had said to her, and of how much afraid he was of her father's knife.
For otherwise, as she knew, he would have had her arrested.

Suddenly, at the last turning she stopped and turned very pale, clasping
both hands upon her bodice.

"Assassin!" she groaned, grinding her short white teeth. "_He_ has
poisoned me, after all! An evil death to him and all his house!
Assassin!"

She forgot that she had experienced precisely the same sensations once
before, when she had been overheated and had swallowed too much cold
water.

CHAPTER XIII.

WITH slow steps, and pressing her clasped hands to her bodice, the girl
reached the door of her father's house at dusk. She knew that he was
away, and that as she had not come home earlier her mother would be in
the lower regions preparing Dalrymple's supper for him. The door which
gave access to the staircase from the street was still open, and she was
almost sure of being able to reach her own room unobserved, unless she
chanced to come upon Dalrymple himself on the stairs. Just then she
would rather have met him than her mother. She was in great pain, and it
would have been hard to explain to Sora Nanna that she believed herself
to have been deliberately poisoned.

She crept noiselessly up the stairs, which were almost dark, and she
came to Dalrymple's door which faced the first landing. She paused and
hesitated, leaning against the wall. He was a wise man in her opinion,
and would of course understand her symptoms at once. But then, as she
was poisoned, he could do nothing for her. If that were true, her next
thought told her that Sor Tommaso must have poisoned h