“You had better send your gondola home, Matteo.  It may be wanted.  We will paddle out to the lagoon and talk it over.  Surely there must be something to be done, if we could but think of it.

“This is terrible, indeed, Matteo,” he repeated, after they had sat without speaking for some minutes.  “One feels quite helpless and bewildered.  To think that only yesterday evening we were laughing and chatting with them, and that now they are lost, and in the power of that villain Mocenigo, who you may be sure is at the bottom of it.

“By the way,” he said suddenly, “do you know where he has taken up his abode?”

“I heard that he was at Botonda, near Chioggia, a week ago, but whether he is there still I have not the least idea.”

“It seems to me that the thing to do is to find him, and keep him in sight.  He will probably have them hidden away somewhere, and will not go near them for some time, for he will know that he will be suspected, and perhaps watched.”

“But why should he not force Maria to marry him at once?” Matteo said.  “You see, when he has once made her his wife he will be safe, for my cousin would be driven then to make terms with him for her sake.”

“He may try that,” Francis said; “but he must know that Maria has plenty of spirit, and may refuse to marry him, threaten her as he will.  He may think that, after she has been kept confined for some time, and finds that there is no hope of escape, except by consenting to be his wife, she may give way.  But in any case, it seems to me that the thing to be done is to find Ruggiero, and to watch his movements.”

“I have no doubt my cousin has already taken steps in that direction,” Matteo said, “and I feel sure that, in this case, he will receive the support of every influential man in Venice, outside the Mocenigo family and their connections.  The carrying off of ladies, in broad daylight, will be regarded as a personal injury in every family.  The last attempt was different.  I do not say it was not bad enough, but it is not like decoying girls from home by a false message.  No one could feel safe, if such a deed as this were not severely punished.”

“Let us go back again, Matteo.  It is no use our thinking of anything until we know what has really been done, and you are sure to be able to learn, at home, what steps have been taken.”

On reaching home Matteo learned that Polani, accompanied by two members of the council, had already started in one of the swiftest of the state galleys for the mainland.  A council had been hastily summoned, and, upon hearing Polani’s narrative, had dispatched two of their number, with an official of the republic, to Botonda.  If Ruggiero was found to be still there, he was to be kept a prisoner in the house in which he was staying, under the strictest watch.  If he had left, orders were to be sent, to every town in the Venetian dominions on the mainland, for his arrest when discovered, and in that case he was to be sent a prisoner, strongly guarded, to Venice.