ht have scowled upon the publican.

"He is no knave," she answered, and I could have groaned to hear her
working my undoing, though not by so much as a sign might I inspire her
with caution, for that sign must have been seen by others. "Nor did he
abandon me. He left me only to go in quest of the necessaries for our
journey. If harm has come to me the blame of it must not rest on him."

"Of what harm do you speak, Madonna?" he cried, in a voice laden with
concern.

"Of what harm," she echoed, eyeing him with a scorn that would have
slain him had he any manhood left. "Of what harm? Mother of Mercy,
defend me! Do you ask the question? What greater harm could have come
to me than to have fallen into the hands of Ramiro del' Orca and his
brigands?"

He stood looking at her, and I doubt not that his face was a very
picture of simulated consternation.

"Surely, Madonna, you do not understand that we are your friends, that
you can so abuse us. But you will be faint, Madonna," he cried, with
a fresh and deep solicitude. "A cup of wine." And he waved his hand
towards the table.

"It would poison me, I think," she answered coldly.

"You are cruel, and--alas!--mistrustful," said he. "Can you guess
nothing of the anxiety that has been mine these two days, of the fears
that have haunted me as I thought of you and your wanderings?"

Her lip curled, and her face took on some slight vestige of colour. Her
spirit was a thing for which I might then have come to love her had it
not been that already I loved her to distraction.

"Yes," said she, "I can guess something of your dismay when you found
your schemes frustrated; when you found that you had come too late to
San Domenico."

"Will you not forgive me that shift to which my adoration drove me?" he
implored, in a honeyed voice--and a more fearful thing than Ramiro the
butcher was Ramiro the lover.

At that scarcely covert avowal of his passion she recoiled a step as she
might before a thing unclean. The little colour faded from her cheek,
the scorn departed from her lip, and a sickly, deadly fear overspread
her lovely face. God! that I should stand there and witness this insult
to the woman I adored and worshipped with a fervour that the Church
seeks to instil into us for those about the throne of Heaven. It might
not be. A blind access of fury took me. Of the consequences I thought
nothing. Reason left me utterly, and the slight hope that might lie in
temporising was dis