fe-conduct for her that
very night.

Odo listened to this story with an agitation compounded of strangely
contradictory sensations. To learn that Fulvia, at the very moment when
he had pictured her as separated from him by the happiness and security
of her life, was in reality a proscribed wanderer with none but himself
to turn to, filled him with a confused sense of happiness; but the
discovery that, in his own dominions, the political refugee was not safe
from the threats of the Holy Office, excited a different emotion. All
these considerations, however, were subordinate to the thought that he
must see Fulvia at once. It was impossible to summon her to the palace
at that hour, or even to secure her safety till morning, without
compromising Andreoni by calling attention to the fact that a suspected
person was under his roof; and for a moment Odo was at a loss how to
detain her in Pianura without seeming to go counter to her wishes.

Suddenly he remembered that Gamba was fertile in expedients, and calling
in the hunchback, asked what plan he could devise. Gamba, after a
moment's reflection, drew a key from his pocket.

"May it please your Highness," he said, "this unlocks the door of the
hunting-lodge at Pontesordo. The place has been deserted these many
years, because of its bad name, and I have more than once found it a
convenient shelter when I had reasons for wishing to be private. At this
season there is no fear of poison from the marshes, and if your Highness
desires I will see that the lady finds her way there before sunrise."

The sun had hardly risen the next morning when the Duke himself set
forth. He rode alone, dressed like one of his own esquires, and gave the
word unremarked to the sleepy sentinel at the gate. As it closed behind
him and he set out down the long road that led to the chase, it seemed
to him that the morning solitude was thronged with spectral memories.
Melancholy and fanciful they flitted before him, now in the guise of
Cerveno and Momola, now of Maria Clementina and himself. Every detail of
the scene was interwoven with the fibres of early association, from the
far off years when, as a lonely child on the farm at Pontesordo, he had
gazed across the marsh at the mysterious woodlands of the chase, to the
later day when, in the deserted hunting-lodge, the Duchess had flung her
whip at the face in the Venice mirror.

He pressed forward impatiently, and presently the lodge rose before him