fauns, and winsome, languishing eyes with a light in their depths
which have set the heart of every girl along his native Giudecca
pitapatting morning, noon, and night. He enjoys the distinguished name
of Vittorio Borodini, and is the descendant of a family of
gondoliers--of the guild of the Castellani--who can trace their
ancestral calling back some two hundred years (so can Luigi; but then
Luigi never speaks of it, and the Borodinis always do). Being
aristocrats, the Zanalettos and Borodinis naturally fraternize, and as
they live in the same quarter--away up on the Giudecca--two miles from
my canal--the fathers of Vittorio and Luigi have become intimate
friends. Anything, therefore, touching the welfare of any one of the
descendants of so honorable a guild is more or less vital to the
members of both families.

At the moment something HAD touched a Borodino--and in the most vital
of spots. This was nothing less than the heart of young Vittorio, the
pride and hope of his father. He had seen the "Rose of the Shipyards,"
as she was now called, pass the traghetto of the Molo, off which lay
his gondola awaiting custom,--it was on one of the days when the
two-soldi boy acted as chaperon,--and his end had come.

It had only been a flash from out the lower corner of the left eye of
Loretta as she floated along past the big columns of the Palazzo of the
Doges, but it had gone through the young gondolier and out on the other
side, leaving a wound that nothing would heal. She had not intended to
hurt him, or even to attract him;--he only happened to be in the way
when her search-light illumined his path.

Vittorio knew at a glance that she came from the rookeries and that he,
the scion of a noble family, should look higher for his mate, but that
made no difference. She was built for him and he was built for her, and
that was the end of it: not for an intrigue--he was not constructed
along those lines--but with a ring and a priest and all the rest of it.
The main difficulty was to find some one who knew her. He would
not,--could not, confront her; nor would he follow her home; but
something must be done, and at once: a conclusion, it will be admitted,
than an incalculable number of young Vittorios have reached, sooner or
later, the world over.

When, therefore, a rumor came to his ears that Luigi the Primo was
protecting her--the kind of protection that could never be
misunderstood in Luigi's case--a piece of news which his i