ould tell me to do anything for your
safety, am I to obey? I must know that, for perhaps there will be no
time to be lost.'

'I will ask my husband,' Ortensia said. 'Let us go on with our packing.'

Pina knelt down before the open trunk again. She had told her mistress
exactly what Cucurullo had reported to her after his second interview
with Tommaso, when the two men had met in the wine-shop of the Via dei
Pastini. On that occasion the ex-highwayman had told the hunchback that
his masters would be only too glad to protect Stradella and his wife
against Don Alberto, to the last drop of their blood, and that Cucurullo
was free to inform the musician of their promise or not, as he pleased.
It would make no difference, they had said; henceforth Don Alberto
should be watched continually, as a mouse is watched by a cat, or in
fact by two cats; at the very first intimation that he meant mischief,
they would send him to the permanent future abode of all
mischief-makers; and as for the consequences of their action, if they
were ever detected, they would take such a trifle as that upon
themselves. Don Alberto might be the nephew of all the popes and
anti-popes that had reigned, excepting those who were canonised saints,
and who might therefore be offended by the statement that they did not
care a cabbage who he was, not a farthing, not a fig! If he attempted
anything against the Lady Ortensia or her husband, they would not only
make him wish he were dead, but would at once oblige him by satisfying
his wish. This, at least, was Tommaso's version of what they had said,
and Cucurullo saw no reason to doubt the statement, since he had seen
the two gentlemen demolish and put to flight a whole watch in a few
moments in the affair of the serenade.

What the Bravi thought of their own situation on the morning of the Eve
of Saint John is difficult to imagine; for they were in one of those
exciting but equivocal situations in which modern financiers not
infrequently find themselves. Their feelings might possibly be compared
to those of Lord Byron when he had written offers of marriage to two
young ladies on the same day, and both accepted him; or to those of an
'operator' who has advised one intimate friend to buy a certain stock at
any price, and another to sell all he has, while he himself has not made
up his mind as to what he had better do; or to those of a jockey who has
taken money to pull a horse when he was sober, and has backed