“Nay, I come on an errand of pity.”

“Santa Maria! we are both here with the same end!”

“Annina!  I know not what thou would’st say!  This is surely the palace of Don Camillo Monforte! a noble Neapolitan, who urges claims to the honors of the Senate?”

“The gayest, the handsomest, the richest, and the most inconstant cavalier in Venice!  Hadst thou been here a thousand times thou could’st not be better informed!”

Gelsomina listened in horror.  Her artful cousin, who knew her character to the full extent that vice can comprehend innocence, watched her colorless cheek and contracting eye with secret triumph.  At the first moment she had believed all that she insinuated, but second thoughts and a view of the visible distress of the frightened girl gave a new direction to her suspicions.

“But I tell thee nothing new,” she quickly added.  “I only regret thou should’st find me, where, no doubt, you expected to meet the Duca di Sant’ Agata himself.”

“Annina!—­This from thee!”

“Thou surely didst not come to his palace to seek thy cousin!”

Gelsomina had long been familiar with grief, but until this moment she had never felt the deep humiliation of shame.  Tears started from her eyes, and she sank back into a seat, in utter inability to stand.

“I would not distress thee out of bearing,” added the artful daughter of the wine-seller.  “But that we are both in the closet of the gayest cavalier of Venice, is beyond dispute.”

“I have told thee that pity for another brought me hither.”

“Pity for Don Camillo.”

“For a noble lady—­a young, a virtuous, and a beautiful wife—­a daughter of the Tiepolo—­of the Tiepolo, Annina!”

“Why should a lady of the Tiepolo employ a girl of the public prisons!”

“Why!—­because there has been injustice by those up above.  There has been a tumult among the fishermen—­and the lady and her governess were liberated by the rioters—­and his Highness spoke to them in the great court—­and the Dalmatians were on the quay—­and the prison was a refuge for ladies of their quality, in a moment of so great terror—­and the Holy Church itself has blessed their love—­”

Gelsomina could utter no more, but breathless with the wish to vindicate herself, and wounded to the soul by the strange embarrassment of her situation, she sobbed aloud.  Incoherent as had been her language, she had said enough to remove every doubt from the mind of Annina.  Privy to the secret marriage, to the rising of the fishermen, and to the departure of the ladies from the convent on a distant island, where they had been carried on quitting their own palace, the preceding night, and whither she had been compelled to conduct Don Camillo, who had ascertained the departure of those he sought without discovering their destination, the daughter of the wine-seller readily comprehended, not only the errand of her cousin, but the precise situation of the fugitives.