So Bastianello said nothing more about it, and they got the kettle and the torches and stowed them away in the bows.

“You had better go home and cook supper,” said Ruggiero.  “I will come when it is dark, for then the others will have eaten and I will leave two to look out.”

Bastianello went ashore on the pier and his brother pulled the skiff out till he was alongside of the sailboat, to which he made her fast.  He busied himself with trifles until it grew dark and there was no one on the pier.  Then he got into the boat again, taking a bit of strong line with him, a couple of fathoms long, or a little less.  Stooping down he slipped the line under the bags of ballast and made a timber-hitch with the end, hauling it well taut.  With the other end he made a bowline round the thwart on which he was sitting, and on which he must sit to pull the bow oar in the evening.  He tied the knot wide enough to admit of its running freely from side to side of the boat, and he stowed the bight between the ballast and the thwart, so that it lay out of sight in the bottom.  The two sacks of pebbles together weighed, perhaps, from a half to three-quarters of a hundredweight.

When all was ready he went ashore and shouted for the Cripple and the Son of the Fool, who at once appeared out of the dusk, and were put on board the sailboat by him.  Then he pulled himself ashore and moored the tub to a ring in the pier.  It was time for supper.  Bastianello would be waiting for him, and Ruggiero went home.

As the evening shadows fell, Beatrice was seated at the piano in the sitting-room playing softly to herself such melancholy music as she could remember, which was not much.  It gave her relief, however, for she could at least try and express something of what would not and could not be put into words.  She was not a musician, but she played fairly well, and this evening there was something in the tones she drew from the instrument which many a musician might have envied.  She threw into her touch all that she was suffering and it was a faint satisfaction to her to listen to the lament of the sad notes as she struck them and they rose and fell and died away.

The door opened and San Miniato entered.  She heard his footstep and recognised it, and immediately she struck a succession of loud chords and broke into a racing waltz tune.

“You were playing something quite different, when I came to the door,” he said, sitting down beside her.

“I thought you might prefer something gay,” she answered without looking at him and still playing on.

San Miniato did not answer the remark, for he distrusted her and fancied she might have a retort ready.  Her tongue was often sharper than he liked, though he was not sensitive on the whole.

“Will you sing something to me?” he asked, as she struck the last chords of the waltz.

“Oh yes,” she replied with an alacrity that surprised him, “I feel rather inclined to sing.  Mamma,” she cried, as the Marchesa entered the room, “I am going to sing to my betrothed.  Is it not touching?”