marriage! I can fancy the jests and the sarcasms the Senator will have
to put up with!'

She laughed herself, rather savagely, and Stradella smiled. Provided he
could carry off Ortensia, he did not even object to becoming the
instrument of a serving-woman's vengeance.

They agreed upon the details of the flight. On the next day but one,
being the feast of one of the many Franciscan saints, Stradella was to
sing an air at Vespers in the Church of the Frari. It was therefore
arranged that Ortensia and Pina should go to the church at that hour on
pretence of confession. At the monument of Pietro Bernardini, near the
main entrance, Stradella's hunchback servant would be waiting for them
with two brown cloaks and hoods, which they were to put on immediately.
They were then to kneel down quietly in the shadow and to wait till
Stradella had finished singing, when they were to leave the church
without waiting for him; his man would lead them through by-ways to the
gondola, which was to wait on the farther side of the Tolentini.
Stradella himself would slip away from the loft as soon as the
Benediction began, after Vespers, just when all the other musicians
would be very busy. He would probably reach the gondola almost as soon
as Ortensia and the two servants, and in five minutes they would be well
out of the city.

'And pray, sir,' asked Pina, 'what is your man's name?'

'Cucurullo,' Stradella answered.

'What a strange name!' Pina exclaimed.

'It is common enough in Naples.'

CHAPTER V

The Benediction was over, and the music had died away; the deep colours
of the ancient windows already blended into luminous purple stains, like
red wine spilt on velvet just before dusk; on the altar of the Sacrament
and all about it hundreds of wax candles were burning steadily, arranged
in dazzling concentric rings and shining curves. A young Dominican monk
had prostrated himself before the shrine, a motionless figure, half
kneeling and half lying on the steps.

The service was ended and the priests were gone. Some five hundred feet
shuffled slowly away from the blaze of light into the gloom and out
through the western door, and the brighter part of the church was
already deserted; but the young monk remained motionless, prostrate upon
the steps.

Two men stood by the choir screen, the broad-brimmed black hats they
held in their hands hanging so low that the draggled feathers swept the
pavement, their eyes directed towa