The oar of Gino gave a backward sweep, and the gondola was at rest by the side of a felucca.

“A happy night to the Bella Sorrentina and her worthy padrone!” was the greeting of the gondolier, as he put his foot on the deck of the vessel.  “Is the honest Stefano Milano on board the swift felucca?”

The Calabrian was not slow to answer; and in a few moments the padrone and his two visitors were in close and secret conference.

“I have brought one here who will be likely to put good Venetian sequins into thy pocket, caro,” observed the gondolier, when the preliminaries of discourse had been properly observed.  “She is the daughter of a most conscientious wine-dealer, who is quite as ready at transplanting your Sicilian grapes into the islands as he is willing and able to pay for them.”

“And one, no doubt, as handsome as she is ready,” said the mariner, with blunt gallantry, “were the black cloud but fairly driven from before her face.”

“A mask is of little consequence in a bargain provided the money be forthcoming.  We are always in the Carnival at Venice; and he who would buy, or he who would sell, has the same right to hide his face as to hide his thoughts.  What hast thou in the way of forbidden liquors, Stefano, that my companion may not lose the night in idle words?”

“Per Diana!  Master Gino, thou puttest thy questions with little ceremony.  The hold of the felucca is empty, as thou mayest see by stepping to the hatches; and as for any liquor, we are perishing for a drop to warm the blood.”

“And so far from coming to seek it here,” said Annina, “we should have done better to have gone into the cathedral, and said an Ave for thy safe voyage home.  And now that our wit is spent, we will quit thee, friend Stefano, for some other less skilful in answers.”

“Cospetto! thou knowest not what thou sayest,” whispered Gino, when he found that the wary Annina was not disposed to remain.  “The man never enters the meanest creek in Italy, without having something useful secreted in the felucca on his own account.  One purchase of him would settle the question between the quality of thy father’s wines and those of Battista.  There is not a gondolier in Venice but will resort to thy shop if the intercourse with this fellow can be fairly settled.”

Annina hesitated; long practised in the small, but secret exceedingly hazardous commerce which her father, notwithstanding the vigilance and severity of the Venetian police, had thus far successfully driven, she neither liked to risk an exposure of her views to an utter stranger, nor to abandon a bargain that promised to be lucrative.  That Gino trifled with her as to his true errand needed no confirmation, since a servant of the Duke of Sant’ Agata was not likely to need a disguise to search a priest; but she knew his zeal for her personal welfare too well to distrust his faith in a matter that concerned her own safety.