, by way of
consoling his victim.

He rose now, for he feared lest Contarini's friends might break open the
door downstairs. He shouldered the heavy bundle with ease, set his blue
cap on the back of his head and bade Arisa go with him. She had her
mantle ready, but she could not resist casting delighted glances at her
late owner's face. Before going, she knelt down one moment by his side,
and inclined her face to his, with a very loving gaze. Lower and lower
she bent, as if she would give him a parting kiss, till Aristarchi
uttered an exclamation. Then she laughed cruelly, and with the back of
her hand struck the lips that had so often touched her own.

A few moments later Aristarchi had placed her in his boat, the heavy
bundle of spoils lay at her feet, and the craft shot swiftly from the
door of the house of the Agnus Dei. For Michael Pandos, the mate, had
been waiting under the window, and a stroke of the oars brought him to
the steps.

In the closed room where the friends were playing dice, there began to
be some astonishment at the time needed by Jacopo to replenish his
purse. When more than half an hour had passed one pair stopped playing,
and then another, until they were all listening for some sound in the
silent house. The perfect stillness had something alarming in it, and
none of them fully trusted Contarini.

"I think," said Venier with all his habitual indolence, "that it is time
to ascertain the colour of the lady's hair. Can you break the lock?"

He spoke to Foscari, who nodded and went to the door with two or three
others. In a few seconds it flew open before their combined attack, and
they almost lost their balance as they staggered out into the dark hall.
The rest brought lights and they all began to go up the stairs together.
The first to enter the room was Foscari. Venier, always indifferent, was
among the last.

Foscari started at the extraordinary sight of a man in magnificent
clothes, lying on one shoulder, with his heels tied up to his hands and
his shorn head and face moving slowly from side to side in the bright
light of the wax candle that stood on the floor. The other men crowded
into the room, but at first no one recognised the master of the house.
Then all at once Foscari saw the rings on his fingers.

"It is Contarini," he cried, "and somebody has shaved his head!"

He burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter, in which the others
joined, till the house rang again, and the banis