however, was more than half full of a solution of hydrocyanide of
potassium, a liquid little less suddenly and surely fatal than the
prussic acid which enters into its composition.

He took out this bottle and held it up to the light. The liquid was
clear and transparent as water. He watched it curiously as he made it
run up to the neck and back again. It might have been taken for pure
alcohol, being absolutely colourless.

"It would not take much of that," he said to himself, with a grim smile.

His meditations were interrupted by the voice of Sora Nanna, who had
opened his bedroom door without ceremony and stood calling to him. He
came forward hastily from the laboratory and went up to her.

"You do not know!" she cried, laughing and holding up a letter.
"Stefanone has written to me from Rome! To me! Who the devil knows what
he says? I do not understand anything of it. Who should teach me to
read? He takes me for a priest, that I should know how to read!"

Dalrymple laughed a little as he took the letter. He picked up his hat
from a chair, for he meant to go out and spend the afternoon alone upon
the hillside.

"We will read it downstairs," he said. "I am going for a walk."

He read it to her in the common room on the ground floor. It was a
letter dictated by Stefanone to a public scribe, instructing his wife to
tell Gigetto that she must send another load of wine to Rome as soon as
possible, as the price was good in the market. Stefanone would remain in
the city till it came, and sell it before returning.

"These husbands!" exclaimed Sora Nanna, with a grin. "What they will not
do! They go, riding, riding, and they come back when it seems good to
them. Who tells me what he does in Rome? Rome is great."

Dalrymple laughed, put on his hat and went off, leaving Sora Nanna to
find Gigetto and give the necessary directions.

CHAPTER XII.

GIGETTO had refused to accompany Annetta and her party to the fair at
Civitella San Sisto. He had been to Rome several times, and was far too
fine a young gentleman to divert himself in such a very primitive place.
He preferred to spend his leisure hours, which were very many, in
elegant idleness, according to his lights, between the tobacconist's,
the chemist's shop, which was the resort of all the superior men of the
place after four o'clock in the afternoon, and the abundant, though not
very refined table which was spread twice daily in his father's house.
Civite