orrow I will face him with it."

"I consent," said Teresa.

They walked home together.

Not far from his own lodging was a shop that sold vellum. There was a
beautiful white skin in the window. Gerard looked at it wistfully; but
he knew he could not pay for it; so he went on rather hastily. However,
he soon made up his mind where to get vellum, and parting with Teresa at
his own door, ran hastily upstairs, and took the bond he had brought all
the way from Sevenbergen, and laid it with a sigh on the table. He then
prepared with his chemicals to erase the old writing; but as this was
his last chance of reading it, he now overcame his deadly repugnance
to bad writing, and proceeded to decipher the deed in spite of its
detestable contractions. It appeared by this deed that Ghysbrecht Van
Swieten was to advance some money to Floris Brandt on a piece of land,
and was to repay himself out of the rent.

On this Gerard felt it would be imprudent and improper to destroy the
deed. On the contrary, he vowed to decipher every word, at his leisure.
He went downstairs, determined to buy a small piece of vellum with his
half of the card-money.

At the bottom of the stairs he found the landlady and Teresa talking. At
sight of him the former cried, "Here he is. You are caught, donna mia.
See what she has bought you?" And whipped out from under her apron the
very skin of vellum Gerard had longed for.

"Why, dame! why, donna Teresa!" And he was speechless with pleasure and
astonishment.

"Dear donna Teresa, there is not a skin in all Rome like it. However
came you to hit on this one? 'Tis glamour."

"Alas, dear boy, did not thine eye rest on it with desire? and didst thou
not sigh in turning away from it? And was it for Teresa to let thee want
the thing after that?"

"What sagacity! what goodness, madama! Oh, dame, I never thought I
should possess this. What did you pay for it?"

"I forget. Addio, Fiammina. Addio, Ser Gerard. Be happy, be prosperous,
as you are good." And the Roman matron glided away while Gerard was
hesitating, and thinking how to offer to pay so stately a creature for
her purchase.

The next day in the afternoon he went to Lucretia, and her boy took him
to Fra Colonna's lodgings. He announced his business, and feed Onesta,
and she took him up to the friar. Gerard entered with a beating heart.
The room, a large one, was strewed and heaped with objects of art,
antiquity, and learning, lying about in rich prof