"I sent a letter to her from Count Nobili. Did you see the messenger
arrive?"

"No; I was cleaning in the upper story. He might have come and gone,
and I not seen him."

"I heard of no letter," put in the bewildered Trenta. "What letter? No
one mentioned a letter."

"Possibly," answered Fra Pacifico, in his quiet, impassible way, "but
there was a letter." He turned again to interrogate Pipa. "Then the
signorina must have taken the letter herself." Slightly raising his
eyebrows, a sudden light came into his eyes. "That letter has done
this. What can Nobili have said to her? Did you see any letter beside
her, Pipa, when she fell?"

Pipa rose up from the corner where she had been kneeling, raised the
sheet, and pointed to a paper clasped in Enrica's hand. As she did so,
Pipa pressed her warm lips upon the colorless little hand. She would
have covered the hand again to keep it warm, but Fra Pacifico stopped
her.

"We must see that letter; it is absolutely needful--I her confessor,
and you, cavaliere, Enrica's best friend; indeed, her only friend."

At a touch of his strong hand the letter fell from Enrica's fingers,
though they clung to it convulsively.

"Of course we must see the letter," the cavaliere responded with
emphasis, waking up from the apathy of grief into which he had been
plunged.

Fra Pacifico, casting a look of unutterable pity on Enrica, whose
secret it seemed sacrilege to violate while she lay helpless before
them, unfolded the letter. He and the cavaliere, standing on tiptoe
at his side, his head hardly reaching the priest's elbow, read it
together. When Trenta had finished, an expression of horror and rage
came into his face. He threw his arms wildly above his head.

"The villain!" he exclaimed, "'Gone forever!'--'You have betrayed
me!'--'Cannot marry you!'--'Marescotti!'"

Here Trenta stopped, remembering suddenly what had passed between
himself and Count Marescotti at their interview, which he justly
considered as confidential. Trenta's first feeling was one of
amazement how Nobili had come to know it. Then he remembered what he
had said to Baldassare in the street, to quiet him, that "it was all
right, and that Enrica would consent to her aunt's commands, and to
his wishes."

"Beast!" he muttered, "this is what I get by associating with one who
is no gentleman. I'll punish him!"

A blank terror took possession of the cavaliere. He glanced at Enrica,
so life-like with her fixed, open