yawned instead.
The woman's carelessly-dropped upper eyelids seemed to him to be reading
him through a dozen of his contortions and disguises, and checked the
idea of liberty which he associated with getting to the daylight.

"But it is worth the money!" shouted Barto Rizzo, with a splendid
divination of his thought. "You skulker! are you not paid and fattened
to do business which you've only to remember, and it'll honey your legs
in purgatory? You're the shooting-dog of that Greek, and you nose
about the bushes for his birds, and who cares if any fellow, just for
exercise, shoots a dagger a yard from his wrist and sticks you in the
back? You serve me, and there's pay for you; brothers, doctors, nurses,
friends,--a tight blanket if you fall from a housetop! and masses for
your soul when your hour strikes. The treacherous cur lies rotting in a
ditch! Do you conceive that when I employ you I am in your power? Your
intelligence will open gradually. Do you know that here in this house
I can conceal fifty men, and leave the door open to the Croats to find
them? I tell you now--you are free; go forth. You go alone; no one
touches you; ten years hence a skeleton is found with an English letter
on its ribs--"

"Oh, stop! signor Barto, and be a blessed man," interposed Luigi,
doubling and wriggling in a posture that appeared as if he were shaking
negatives from the elbows of his crossed arms. "Stop. How did you know
of a letter? I forgot--I have seen the English lady at her hotel. I was
carrying the signorina's answer, when I thought 'Barto Rizzo calls me,'
and I came like a lamb. And what does it matter? She is a good patriot;
you are a good patriot; here it is. Consider my reputation, do; and be
careful with the wax."

Barto drew a long breath. The mention of the English letter had been a
shot in the dark. The result corroborated his devotional belief in the
unerringness of his own powerful intuition. He had guessed the case, or
hardly even guessed it--merely stated it, to horrify Luigi. The letter
was placed in his hands, and he sat as strongly thrilled by emotion,
under the mask of his hard face, as a lover hearing music. "I read
English," he remarked.

After he had drawn the seal three or four times slowly over the lamp,
the green wax bubbled and unsnapped. Vittoria had written the following
lines in reply to her old English friend:--

"Forgive me, and do not ask to see me until we have passed the
fifteenth of