dow of pain. As I
have told you, she did not know me. Benoni bowed to the ground as she
went by, making some flattering speech about her appearance. She had
started slightly on first seeing us, and then she went on without
speaking; but there was on her face a look of such sovereign scorn and
loathing as I never saw on the features of any living being. And more
than scorn, for there was fear and hatred with it: so that if a glance
could tell a whole history, there would have been no detail of her
feeling for Benoni left to guess.

This meeting produced a profound impression on me, and I saw her face
in my dreams that night. Had anything been wanting to complete, in my
judgment, the plan of the situation in the castle, that something was
now supplied. The Jew had come there to get her for himself. She hated
him for his own sake; she hated him because she was faithful to Nino;
she hated him because he perhaps knew of her secret love for my boy.
Poor maiden, shut up for days and weeks to come with a man she dreaded
and scorned at once! The sight of her recalled to me that I had in my
pocket the letter Nino had sent me for her, weeks before, and which I
had found no means of delivering since I had been in Fillettino.
Suddenly I was seized with a mad determination to deliver it at any
cost. The baron bowed me out of the gate, and I paused outside when
the ponderous door had swung on its hinges and his footsteps were
echoing back through the court.

I sat down on the parapet of the bridle-path, and with my knife cut
some of the stitches that sewed my money between my two waistcoats. I
took out one of the bills of a hundred francs that were concealed
within, I found the letter Nino had sent me for Hedwig, and I once
more rang the bell. The man who had admitted me came again, and looked
at me in some astonishment. But I gave him no time to question me.

"Here is a note for a hundred francs," I said. "Take it, and give this
letter to the Signora Contessina. If you bring me a written answer
here to-morrow at this hour I will give you as much more." The man was
dumfounded for a moment, after which he clutched the money and the
letter greedily, and hid them in his coat.

"Your excellency shall be punctually obeyed," he said, with a deep
bow, and I went away.

It was recklessly extravagant of me to do this, but there was no other
course. A small bribe would have been worse than none at all. If you
can afford to pay largely it