“You are so strong!” she gasped in a broken whisper.  “Yes—­a little looser—­so!  I can speak now.  You must go to Murano to-morrow and find out all about this Angelo Beroviero and his daughter.  Try to see her, and tell me whether she is pretty, but most of all learn whether she is really rich.”

“That is easy enough.  I will go to the furnace and offer to buy a cargo of glass for Sicily.”

“But you will not take it?” asked Arisa in sudden anxiety lest he should leave her to make the voyage.

“No, no!  I will make inquiries.  I will ask for a sort of glass that does not exist.”

“Yes,” she said, reassured.  “Do that.  I must know if the girl is rich before I marry him to her.”

“But can you make him marry her at all?” asked Aristarchi.

“I can make him do anything I please.  We drank to the health of the bride to-night, in a goblet made by her father!  The wine was strong, and I put a little syrup of poppies into it.  He will not wake for hours.  What is the matter?”

She felt the rough man shaking beside her, as if he were in an ague.

“I was laughing,” he said, when he could speak.  “It is a good jest.  But is there no danger in all this?  Is it quite impossible that he should take a liking for his wife?”

“And leave me?” Arisa’s whisper was hot with indignation at the mere thought.  “Then I suppose you would leave me for the first pretty girl with a fortune who wanted to marry you!”

“This Contarini is such a fool!” answered Aristarchi contemptuously, by way of explanation and apology.

Arisa was instantly pacified.

“If he should be foolish enough for that, I have means that will keep him,” she answered.

“I do not see how you can force him to do anything except by his passion for you.”

“I can.  I was not going to tell you yet—­you always make me tell you everything, like a child.”

“What is it?” asked the Greek.  “Have you found out anything new about him?  Of course you must tell me.”

“We hold his life in our hands,” she said quietly, and Aristarchi knew that she was not exaggerating the truth.

She began to tell him how this was the third time that a number of masked men had come to the house an hour after dark, and had stayed till midnight or later, and how Contarini had told her that they came to play at dice where they were safe from interruption, and that on these nights the servants were sent to their quarters at sunset on pain of dismissal if Jacopo found them about the house, but that they also received generous presents of money to keep them silent.

“The man is a fool!” said Aristarchi again.  “He puts himself in their power.”

“He is much more completely in ours,” answered Arisa.  “The servants believe that his friends come to play dice.  And so they do.  But they come for something more serious.”

Aristarchi moved his massive head suddenly to an attitude of profound attention.