u kindly sign this receipt for your papers?" said the colonel
blandly; "and then I need not keep you any longer. I am sure you must be
in a hurry to get home; and my time is very much taken up just now with
the affairs of that foolish young man, Bolla, who tried your Christian
forbearance so hard. I am afraid he will get a rather heavy sentence.
Good-afternoon!"

Arthur signed the receipt, took his papers, and went out in dead
silence. He followed Enrico to the massive gate; and, without a word of
farewell, descended to the water's edge, where a ferryman was waiting to
take him across the moat. As he mounted the stone steps leading to
the street, a girl in a cotton dress and straw hat ran up to him with
outstretched hands.

"Arthur! Oh, I'm so glad--I'm so glad!"

He drew his hands away, shivering.

"Jim!" he said at last, in a voice that did not seem to belong to him.
"Jim!"

"I've been waiting here for half an hour. They said you would come
out at four. Arthur, why do you look at me like that? Something has
happened! Arthur, what has come to you? Stop!"

He had turned away, and was walking slowly down the street, as if he
had forgotten her presence. Thoroughly frightened at his manner, she ran
after him and caught him by the arm.

"Arthur!"

He stopped and looked up with bewildered eyes. She slipped her arm
through his, and they walked on again for a moment in silence.

"Listen, dear," she began softly; "you mustn't get so upset over this
wretched business. I know it's dreadfully hard on you, but everybody
understands."

"What business?" he asked in the same dull voice.

"I mean, about Bolla's letter."

Arthur's face contracted painfully at the name.

"I thought you wouldn't have heard of it," Gemma went on; "but I suppose
they've told you. Bolla must be perfectly mad to have imagined such a
thing."

"Such a thing----?"

"You don't know about it, then? He has written a horrible letter,
saying that you have told about the steamers, and got him arrested. It's
perfectly absurd, of course; everyone that knows you sees that; it's
only the people who don't know you that have been upset by it. Really,
that's what I came here for--to tell you that no one in our group
believes a word of it."

"Gemma! But it's--it's true!"

She shrank slowly away from him, and stood quite still, her eyes wide
and dark with horror, her face as white as the kerchief at her neck. A
great icy wave of silence seemed to have s