d-like faith that such
happiness, once got, must be safe from outward harm, since it dwelt in
the heart, where no one could see it, to envy it as men envied worldly
glory. As for Ortensia, she neither thought of the future nor remembered
the near past, but lived only in each present dazzling day.

For a whole week they scarcely showed themselves, though Stradella's
return was known in Rome, and he received many invitations to rich men's
houses and requests for new compositions, and pressing offers of money
if he would but sing at mass or vespers in this basilica or that. If he
had needed gold, he could have had it for an hour's trouble, or for an
effort of a few minutes which was no effort at all. But for the moment
he had enough, and nothing should disturb the first days of his golden
honeymoon.

Trombin and Gambardella also lodged in the Orso, but in rooms far from
the happy pair, whom they chose to leave in peace for the present, never
asking to see them nor inviting them to their well-spread table. Indeed,
any such invitation might have come better from the other side now, for
never did a young runaway couple incur a heavier debt of gratitude than
Stradella and Ortensia owed to the two cut-throats who meant to murder
them, and were even then living under the same roof and on the best of
everything with money advanced to them for that very purpose.

But the time and the conditions were not now suited for the deed, which
might have been done easily enough a dozen times between Ferrara and
Rome. Moreover, the Bravi had not yet come to a definite agreement as to
the plan they should pursue, and Trombin's scheme, which seemed the
best, was far less easy to carry out than a common murder, and very much
more expensive; for it meant kidnapping both Stradella and his wife, and
taking them all the way back to Venice as close prisoners, without
exciting suspicion by the way, so that the inns at which they had all
stopped on their journey southwards would have to be scrupulously
avoided on their return.

There was no hurry, however, for they had not spent the two hundred
ducats advanced to them; or, to be accurate, they had played at the
French Ambassador's gambling-tables with a part of the money and had won
a good deal. For in those days every foreign ambassador in Rome claimed
the right to keep a public gambling-room in his embassy, for his own
profit, which was often large, and was always a regular source of
income. But