lielmi, nervously passing
his hand up and down the panel in search of the door-handle--"not for
worlds would I offend you! Believe me--(maledictions on the door--it
is bewitched!)"

Now Guglielmi has it! Safely clutching the handle with both his hands,
Guglielmi's courage returns. His mocking eyes look up without blinking
into Nobili's, fierce and flashing as they are.

"Before I go"--he bows with affected humility--"will you favor me,
count, and you, madame" (Guglielmi is clutching the door-handle
tightly, so as to be able to escape at any moment), "by informing me
whether you still desire the deed of separation to be prepared for
your signature in the morning?"

"Leave the room!" roars Count Nobili, stamping furiously on the
floor--"leave the room, or, Domine Dio!--"

Maestro Guglielmi had jumped out backward, before Count Nobili could
finish the sentence.

"Enrica!" cries Nobili, turning toward her--he had banged-to the door
and locked it--"Enrica, if you love me, let us leave this accursed
villa to-night! This is more than I can bear!"

What Enrica replied, or if Enrica ever replied at all, is, and ever
will remain, a mystery!

CHAPTER XII.

OH BELLO!

An hour or two has passed. A slow and cautious step, accompanied with
the tapping of a stick upon the stone flags of the floor, is audible
along the narrow passage leading from the sala to Pipa's room. It
is as dark as pitch. Whoever it is, is afraid of falling, and creeps
along cautiously, feeling by the wall.

Pipa, expecting to be summoned to her mistress--Pipa, wondering
greatly indeed what Enrica can be about, and why she does not go
to bed, when she, the blessed dear, was so faint and tired, and
crying--oh, so pitifully!--when she left her--Pipa, leaning against
the door-post near the half-open door, dozing like a dog with one eye
open in case she should be called--listened and looked out into the
passage. A figure is standing within the light that streams out from
the door, a very well-remembered figure, stout and short--a little
bent forward on a stick--with a round, rosy face framed in snowy
curls, a world of pleasant wickedness in two twinkling eyes, on which
the light strikes, and a mouth puckered up for any mischief.

"Madonna!" cries Pipa, rubbing her eyes--"the cavaliere! How you did
frighten me! I cannot bear to hear footsteps about when Adamo is
out;" and Pipa gazes up and down into the darkness with an unpleasant
consciousness