friend reproachfully. "Seest
thou not that thy presence but distracts her?"

"Thou art right, Nicolo; let us go. I am myself choking--undo me this
collar!--There! Let us depart."

The organ rolled its anthem--a thousand voices joined in the hymn to
the Virgin, and as the sweet but painful sounds rushed to the senses
of the youth he darted through the crowd, closely followed by his
friend. The music seemed to pursue him with mockery. He rushed
headlong from the temple, as if seeking escape from some suffocating
atmosphere in the pure breezes of heaven, and hurried forward with
confused and purposeless footsteps. The moment of his disappearance
was marked by the partial recovery of Francesca. She unclosed her
eyes, raised her head and looked wildly around her. Her lips once more
murmured his name.

"Giovanni!"

"He is gone," was the sympathizing answer from more than one lip in
the assembly; and once more she relapsed into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER II.

Giovanni Gradenigo was scarcely more conscious than the maiden when he
left. He needed all the guidance of his friend.

"Whither?" asked Nicolo Malapiero.

"What matter! where thou wilt," was the reply.

"For the city then;" and his friend conducted him to the gondola which
was appointed to await them. In the profoundest silence they glided
toward the city. The gondola stopped before the dwelling of Nicolo,
and he, taking the arm of the sullen and absent Giovanni within his
own, ascended the marble steps, and was about to enter, when a shrill
voice challenged their attention by naming Giovanni.

"How now, signor," said the stranger. "Is it thou? Wherefore hast thou
left Olivolo? Why didst thou not wait the bridal."

The speaker was a strange, dark-looking woman, in coarse woollen
garments. She hobbled as she walked, assisted by a heavy staff, and
seeming to suffer equally from lameness and from age. Her thin
depressed lips, that ever sunk as she spoke into the cavity of the
mouth, which, in the process of time, had been denuded of nearly all
its teeth; her yellow wrinkled visage, and thin gray hairs, that
escaped from the close black cap which covered her head, declared the
presence of very great age. But her eye shone still with something
even more lively and impressive than a youthful fire. It had a sort of
spiritual intensity. Nothing, indeed, could have been more brilliant,
or, seemingly, more unnatural. But hers was a nature of which we may
not judge