she answered, undaunted.

"And thou wilt return; for there is always the bambino."

"If I come back," he said in a softer tone, responding to the appeal for
his child, "I must speak of what I will."

"Of all but one thing, Piero;" for it was not possible to misunderstand
him, and she was resolute. "If this is not the end I shall speak with my
father--and the bambino----"

They were both silent. He knew that no one could ever care for his
invalid child as she had done; and all that he owed her and must
continue to owe her restrained him under her chiding, for the baby could
not live away from her. Sometimes, too, there were moments of strange
tenderness within him for this helpless, suffering morsel of humanity
that called him "babbo!" He did not know what might happen if the wrath
of the redoubtable Magagnati were to be invoked against him, for this
quarrel could not be disposed of as those small matters with the
gondoliers had invariably been. So far from threatening this before,
Marina had hitherto shielded Piero, in her unanswerable way, from
everything that might hasten the rupture that seemed always impending
between these two dissimilar natures; and Messer Magagnati had two
thoughts only, his daughter and his _stabilimento_--the great glass
furnaces which were the pride of Venice.

Piero had no suspicion that Marina always touched the best that was in
him; he thought she made him weaker, and it was not easy to yield the
point that had become a habit. No one else had ever moved him from any
purpose, but now he perceived that there would be no reversal of that
sentence--that he should continue to come to see his child, and that he
must continue to submit to Marina's influence. It was she who had, in
some unaccountable way, persuaded him out of his unlawful trade of
_barcariol toso_, and had forced his reluctant acceptance of the
overtures that were made to him from the Guild of Santa Maria Zobenigo,
where he had risen to be one of the _bancali_ or governors, his
qualities of force and daring making him useful in this age when
lawlessness was on the increase. He was beginning to feel a sense of
satisfaction, not all barbaric, in the position he had won among men who
had some views of order, and to perceive that there might be a lawful
use, almost as pleasant, for those very attributes which had rendered
him so formidable a foe outside the pale of traghetto civilization.

"_Ecco_!" he announced, with a slow, su