"What is there to explain?" cried Bertalda; "it is just tiresome. If one is foolishly in love with a man, and he comes and weeps in one's arms, and one hears from others why he weeps, why should one not do him a kindness and help him to gain the woman he loves? Why, goodness me, there is nothing very hard in that; I am a good-natured creature, and if there is a little acting to be done--why one learns to cut a few capers in the ballet, and it is all the more amusing. And the acting you suggested was very pretty so far, and there is no great harm in standing as a model for a couple of days, when there is nothing to be done but to hold up your bare arms, and half the time is spent in talking too; but on the third day one ought to be able to say, So-and-so is waiting for you at such a place, and make an end of it!"

"I gave you permission yesterday to hint at the real state of affairs."

"Oh yes, hint!" cried Bertalda. "I told her the whole story to-day.

There!"

Giraldi half started from his chair, but immediately recovered himself, and asked in his quiet way:

"What do you mean by the whole story, my dear child?"

"Why, that I am not a model, and that I have come on Herr von Werben's account--"

"Sent by Signor Giraldi----"

"What! as if I would have allowed myself to be sent if I had not chosen."

"Of your own accord then--so much the better! And how did she take it?"

Bertalda burst into a ringing laugh.

"My goodness!" cried she, "it was a farce! She did not know whether to thank me on her knees, or to trample me under her feet. I think she mentally did first one and then the other, whilst with clasped hands, and crying as I never saw a girl cry before, she stood in front of me, and then raged about the room with uplifted arms, as I never saw any one rage before either. First she called me a saint, a penitent Magdalen, I don't know what all, and a moment after a hussy, a--well, I don't know what either. It went on so for at least an hour without pause, and the end of the story was----"

"That you were not to presume to return?"

"Heaven forbid! To-morrow I was to return, and then it would all begin over again, and it really is too wearisome, I say, and I shall not go there again to-morrow." Bertalda got up with one last energetic tap of her boots. Giraldi remained sitting, stroking his beard.

"You are right," he said; "do not go there again to-morrow, nor the next day; on the third day she will come to you."

Bertalda bent forward to look more closely at the man, who said this with such certainty, as if he were reading it from a paper which lay on the table before him.

"Supposing, of course," continued Giraldi, "that you do not answer the letter which she will write to you on the second day, and that altogether you play at drawing back a little as a person whose kindness has been misunderstood, and so on. If you can and will do this we remain friends; if you will not--it is not well to make an enemy of me, believe me."

Bertalda rose and went behind her chair, and leant both her elbows on the back.

"If I only knew," she said, "what you have to do with it all?"

"And if you knew?"

"Then I should know what to do myself. I am not afraid of you--what can you do to me? but I fear for poor Ottomar. I do not wish that any harm should happen to him."

Giraldi got up also, seated himself sideways in the chair on which Bertalda leant, and took her hands in his.

"Good girl!" he said; "and if I swear to you that I am Ottomar's best friend, that he has no secrets from me, not even that of his debts; that it is I who have just now helped him up again, that it is from me that he has the hundred-thaler notes, of which, perhaps, one or two have found their way into your pocket; and if in case you will not believe me, I show it to you in black and white, in Ottomar's own hand, what would you say then?"

"Nothing at all," answered Bertalda. She had, while he still held her hands, come round the chair, and suddenly sat down on his lap, with her hands, which she now freed, stroking his soft black beard. "At most, that you are a charming uncle, such as are scarce, and that you deserve a kiss, and--there, you have one."

She had wound her arms round his neck, and kissed him, first teasingly, then with a pa.s.sion which seemed to surprise even herself, and which also deprived him for the moment of the full use of his faculties, so that he did not hear the knock at the door, and only let Bertalda slip off his knee when Francois was already in the room. Bertalda gave a shriek of surprise, and hastily drew her veil over her face.

"What do you want?" cried Giraldi hotly.

"Monsieur Antonio, monsieur!" said Francois in a whisper; "he begs so urgently."

"All right," said Giraldi. "Show mademoiselle out. I will let in the young man myself. I shall hear from you, mademoiselle. For the present, adieu."

He walked hastily to the door of the anteroom, whilst Bertalda, conducted by Francois, rushed to another door leading into his bedroom, and from thence into the second corridor, and only opened it as Bertalda was on the point of disappearing behind the portiere, one side of which Francois had drawn back for her. Antonio, who, standing close to the door and listening, had heard Bertalda's shriek, and whose mind was filled with the image of Ferdinanda, had immediately concluded that he recognised her voice, and at once stepped in; Bertalda could not so quickly get out. In her embarra.s.sment she had run against the side of the portiere which was down, and entangled herself in it, and it was a moment or two before, with Francois' help, she was free, long enough for the sharp-eyed Antonio to discover that the lady whom he was putting to flight was not Ferdinanda herself, but the mysterious unknown who had lately come so regularly to Ferdinanda's studio, and whom he had taken for an amba.s.sador from his deadly enemy. So she did not come from him, but from here! And why should she run off so hastily the moment he was admitted? If the signor mentioned the lady--well, perhaps it was all right--he would try and trust him still, as heretofore; if he did not mention her, he would never believe another word that pa.s.sed his lips--never!

These thoughts flew through Antonio's mind as he made his bow; meanwhile Giraldi had recovered from his surprise, and taken his resolution. He had taken it for granted that Antonio, from the studio in which he worked, would remark the coming and going of the black-veiled lady to the other studio, and had consequently enjoined the utmost circ.u.mspection upon Bertalda. Antonio was not to learn who she was, least of all that she had any connection with him. Now, in consequence of the youth's hasty entry, the secret was within a hair's-breadth of escaping; but that he should have seen, or in any way recognised Bertalda, was quite impossible. The end of the great room was buried in almost total darkness, and as his own attention had been entirely centred on the door by which Antonio would enter, the delay in Bertalda's departure by the other had escaped his notice. "A second later would have been too late," he thought to himself, as he took the youth's hand and--now completely master of himself--said in his usual quiet, friendly tone:

"Welcome, my dear Antonio--no, no, my son--I am not consecrated yet."

Antonio, bending low, had raised the hand which Giraldi had offered him to his lips. "The less you trust him the more submissive must you be,"

said Antonio to himself.

"You are sacred to me, signor," he said aloud. "The good Brother Ambrose, the benevolent guardian of my wretched youth, is not in my eyes more revered and sacred than you are."

"I am glad to hear it," answered Giraldi. "The best ornament of youth is a grateful disposition. As a reward for it I can impart to you the good brother's blessing. I have just received a letter from him. But of that later. First, as to your business here. Have you at last again seen and spoken with her?"

"Only seen, signor--as she left her studio just now to go home. I do not venture to speak to her. She talks, they say, to no one, and no one dares go into her studio except----"

"Her father, probably."

"A lady, signor, in black, and thickly veiled, who goes to her studio regularly every afternoon. The students take her to be a model."

It must be decided now; Antonio's heart beat till Giraldi's answer came.

"A lady in black and thickly veiled," repeated Giraldi slowly, as if he was deeply considering the matter; "and only a model? That is surely very unlikely, and very suspicious. We must try to get to the bottom of this."

He lied. It flashed like lightning through Antonio's mind that to this man he had confided his secret, the treason which he contemplated, his criminal desires, the very plan of his revenge; he had given all--all into his hands, as to the priest in the confessional, and he lied!

"I have tried to get to the bottom of it, signor," he said, "but in vain. As she comes and goes while our studio is full of men, I cannot watch her through the door, nor absent myself without causing a sensation. Yesterday I tried under some pretext, but I was too late. A carriage--not an ordinary cab, signor, but a fly--was standing a few yards from the house under the trees near the ca.n.a.l; the unknown got in, and vanished from me in a moment."

"He will be more cunning next time," thought Giraldi; "she must on no account go again."

"At what time does she come?" he asked.

"Between five and six at first; now, I suppose on account of greater security, between four and five."

"Good! To-morrow I will myself keep watch in my carriage; she shall not escape us, you may depend upon it. And now to continue, has nothing of importance transpired in the conversations between your maestro and the Captain? The name in question not been mentioned?"

"No, signor; on the contrary, since the young lady went away----"

"I know, three days ago."

"They have been very prudent, and speak so low, that it is impossible to catch more than a word here and there. But instead I have just found this letter, which the maestro received to-day and has read through at least a dozen times, and also showed it to the Captain, who came in the middle of the day."

"It was dangerous to steal a letter which awakens such interest."

"The maestro threw it into his desk, as he does all his letters, and when he went out, locked it up, and took the key with him; but I have long known how to open that frail lock without a key. To-morrow he will find the letter again in his desk."