already playing the accompaniment to
one of Pignaver's everlasting songs.

As pride had helped her before, sheer desperation strengthened her now,
and, without moving from her place, she began to sing, not very steadily
at first, for her heart was beating terribly fast, but carefully, as if
she were studying.

A moment later Pignaver noiselessly lifted the velvet curtain and looked
in, confident that he had surprised them, and perfectly satisfied with
the result. Beyond the fact that they were standing in the sunshine to
sing and play, on opposite sides of the great window, everything was
precisely as he had expected. When the song was ended, he revealed his
presence by a word of approbation, and he installed himself to hear the
rest of the lesson. When it was over, he himself accompanied Stradella
to the stairs.

CHAPTER III

Ortensia heard the bells strike midnight. She was lying on her back, her
eyes wide open, and staring at the rosette in the middle of the pink
canopy over her head. She could see it plainly by the dim light of the
tiny oil-lamp that hung above the kneeling-stool at which she said her
prayers. She had said them with great fervour to-night, and had gone to
bed with the firm intention of repeating the last one over and over to
herself till she fell asleep.

But in this she had not succeeded. She had heard the bells at eleven
o'clock and had been wide awake; at that moment Stradella was stepping
over the marble balustrade into the loggia. She tried to say her prayer
again, but it was of no use at all; she knew that he was standing there
just outside the great closed window, waiting, and that to see him she
had only to pass through her dressing-room, where Pina slept on a
trestle-bed, which was taken away every morning. There was only one door
to Ortensia's bedroom, which was the last on that floor of the house;
for it was proper that a noble Venetian girl should be safely guarded,
and every night the Senator locked both the outer doors of the
sitting-room where she had her lessons, and he kept the key under his
pillow. Pina and Ortensia were in prison together from ten o'clock at
night till seven every morning, and the girl could not leave her own
room without passing Pina.

To the Senator's insufficient imagination two things were out of the
question; he was convinced that no one could get up into the loggia from
below, and he was persuaded that Pina, unswerving in her devotion to his