the wife of Pignaver in a few months. She writhed
on her pillow at the mere thought.

Two hours later she was standing before the big open window, watching
three masons who were working on the top of the garden wall; they
spread thick layers of stiff grey mortar over the old coping, and then
stuck in sharp bits of broken glass, patting and pressing down the
cement against each piece, to make the hold quite firm. The murderous
splinters gleamed in the sunshine, and the men set them so near together
that one could hardly have laid a finger anywhere between them.

Ortensia watched the work, and now and then she looked at the top of the
cypress-tree, half-unconsciously wondering how many days would pass
before she saw it for the last time. But in the broad daylight she lived
over and over again every instant of that short night meeting that was
the greatest event in all her life. If she only drooped her lids a
little she saw Stradella there before her in his dripping clothes by the
rays of the little lamp, his face was close to hers again, her lips
touched his, and a delicate thrill ran through all her body and reminded
her faintly but very sweetly of what she had felt when he kissed her.

Meanwhile, Pina had found the musician's lodging, near Santa Maria dell'
Orto, which was a long way from the Senator's palace, for that quarter
lies on the extreme outer edge of Venice, looking across the lagoon
towards Murano. The door was opened for her by a hunchback, with a
large, intellectual face, beardless and strongly modelled, such a face
as Giotto would have taken as a model for a Doctor of the Church. The
sad blue eyes looked up to Pina's with cold gravity; but when she
explained that she came from the Palazzo Pignaver with a message, they
brightened a little, and the man at once stood aside for her to enter.

She touched his hump lightly for luck in passing, as every Italian woman
will to this day if she finds herself close to a hunchback in the
street, and this act is rarely resented. Pina thought it a piece of
unexampled good-fortune and of the best possible augury that the door
should have been opened by a 'bringer-of-fortune,' and the deformed
servant smiled gently at her touch, quite understanding. As he led the
way in, after shutting the outer door, Pina saw that nature had meant
him for a man of large proportions, and that his short stature was
chiefly due to the terrible deformity of his back and chest, for his
slig