gs.
Uncertain if he were not once more the victim of some such mischance as
seemed to attend all his efforts to succour Fulvia, he sat in silent
apprehension as the gondola shot across the Grand Canal and entered the
labyrinth of water-ways behind San Moise. Sister Mary took his silence
philosophically.

"You dare not speak to me, for fear of betraying yourself," she said,
"and I scarce wonder at your distrust; for your plans were so well laid
that I had no notion of what was on foot, and must have remained in
ignorance if Veronica had not been put in Sister Martha's charge. But
you will both live to thank me, and I hope," she added, laughing, "to
own that you would have done better to take me into your confidence from
the first."

As she spoke the gondola touched at the head of a narrow passage which
lost itself in the blackness of the overhanging houses. Sister Mary
sprang out and drew Odo after her. A few yards down the alley she
entered a plain low-storied house somewhat withdrawn behind its
neighbours. Followed by Odo she groped her way up a dark flight of
stairs and knocked at a door on the upper landing. A vague flutter
within, indicative of whispers and uncertain movements, was followed by
the slipping of the bolt, and a middle-aged woman looked out. She drew
back with an exclamation of welcome, and Sister Mary, seizing Odo by the
shoulders, pushed him across the threshold of a small dimly-lit kitchen.

Fulvia, in her nun's habit, cowered in the darkest corner; but at sight
of Odo she sprang up, and ran toward him with a happy cry.

3.6.

An hour later the two were well on their way toward Mestre, where a
travelling-chaise awaited them. Odo, having learned that Andreoni was
settled in Padua, had asked him to receive Fulvia in his house till the
next night-fall; and the bookseller, whom he had taken into his
confidence, was eager to welcome the daughter of the revered Vivaldi.

The extremes of hope and apprehension had left Fulvia too exhausted for
many words, and Odo, after she had confirmed every particular of Sister
Mary's story, refrained from questioning her farther. Thanks to her
friend's resources she had been able to exchange her nun's dress for the
plain gown and travelling-cloak of a young woman of the middle class;
and this dress painfully recalled to Odo the day when he had found her
standing beside the broken-down chaise on the road to Vercelli.

The recollection was not calculated to put h