y
slept at all, but her determination was strong and she would act upon
it.

Occasionally she rose and moved wearily about the room, looked out
between the shutters and then sat down again. She was in one of those
moments of life in which all existence seems drawn out to an endless
quivering thread, a single throbbing nerve stretched to its utmost point
of strain.

The silence was broken by a man's footstep in the passage, coming
towards her door. A moment later she heard her father's voice, asking if
he might come in. Almost at the same time she opened and Beroviero stood
on the threshold. Nella had heard him speaking, too, and she started up,
wide awake in an instant, and came in, to see if she were needed.

"Will you go with me to the laboratory, my dear?" asked the old man
quietly.

She answered gravely that she would. There was no gladness in her tone,
but no reluctance. She was facing the most difficult situation she had
ever known, and perhaps the most dangerous.

"Very well," said her father. "Let Nella give you your silk mantle and
we will go at once."

Before Marietta could have answered, even if she had known what to say,
Nella had begun her tale of woe. The mantle was stolen, the sour-faced
shrew of a maid who belonged to the Signor Giovanni's wife had stolen
it, the house ought to be searched at once, and so much more to the same
effect that Nella was obliged to pause for breath.

"When did you miss it?" asked Beroviero, looking hard at the
serving-woman.

"This morning, sir. It was here last night, I am quite sure."

The truthful little brown eyes did not waver.

"And it cannot have been any one else," continued Nella. "This is a very
evil person, sir, and she sometimes comes here with a message, or making
believe that she is helping me. As if I needed help, indeed!"

"Do not accuse people of stealing when you have no evidence against
them," answered Beroviero somewhat sternly. "Give your mistress
something else to throw over her."

"Give me the green silk cloak," said Marietta, who was anxious not to be
questioned about the mantle.

"It has a spot in one corner," Nella answered discontentedly, as she
went to the wardrobe.

The spot turned out to be no bigger than the head of a pin. A moment
later Marietta and her father were going downstairs. At the door of the
glass-house Pasquale eyed them with approbation, and Marietta smiled and
said a word to him as she passed. It seemed strange th