“Enough,” he said, when Gelsomina, blushing with her own earnestness to stand exculpated in his eyes, had done; “I understand it all.  Distrust thy cousin, for the Senate itself is not more false.”

The pretended Carlo spoke cautiously, but in a firm voice.  Gelsomina took his meaning, though wondering at what she heard, and returned to Annina within.  The gondola proceeded, as if nothing had occurred.

CHAPTER XXV.

“Enough. 
I could be merry now:  Hubert, I love thee;
Well, I’ll not say what I intend for thee: 
Remember.” 

          
                                                    King John.

Jacopo was deeply practised in the windings of Venetian deceit.  He knew how unceasingly the eyes of the Councils, through their agents, were on the movements of those in whom they took an interest, and he was far from feeling all the advantage circumstances had seemingly thrown in his way.  Annina was certainly in his power, and it was not possible that she had yet communicated the intelligence, derived from Gelsomina, to any of her employers.  But a gesture, a look in passing the prison-gates, the appearance of duresse, or an exclamation, might give the alarm to some one of the thousand spies of the police.  The disposal of Annina’s person in some place of safety, therefore, became the first and the most material act.  To return to the palace of Don Camillo, would be to go into the midst of the hirelings of the Senate; and although the Neapolitan, relying on his rank and influence, had preferred this step, when little importance was attached to the detention of the girl, and when all she knew had been revealed, the case was altered, now that she might become the connecting link in the information necessary to enable the officers to find the fugitives.

The gondola moved on.  Palace after palace was passed, and the impatient Annina thrust her head from a window to note its progress.  They came among the shipping of the port, and her uneasiness sensibly increased.  Making? pretext similar to that of Gelsomina, the wine-seller’s daughter quitted the pavilion, to steal to the side of the gondolier.

“I would be landed quickly at the water-gate of the Doge’s palace,” she said, slipping a piece of silver into the hand of the boatman.

“You shall be served, Bella Donna.  But—­Diamine!  I marvel that a girl of thy wit should not scent the treasures in yonder felucca!”

“Dost thou mean the Sorrentine?”

“What other padrone brings as well flavored liquors within the Lido!  Quiet thy impatience to land, daughter of honest old Maso, and traffic with the padrone, for the comfort of us of the canals.”

“How!  Thou knowest me, then?”

“To be the pretty wine-seller of the Lido.  Corpo di Bacco!  Thou art as well known as the sea-wall itself to us gondoliers.”