“Mine?”—­“in sending me a letter—­”

“_ You_—­a letter?”—­“by a simpleton of a lad, who must needs hand it to me under your father’s very nose—­”

The girl broke in on him with a cry.  “What!  It was you who received my letter?” She swept round on the little maid-servant and submerged her under a flood of Venetian.  The latter volleyed back in the same jargon, and as she did so, Tony’s astonished eye detected in her the doubleted page who had handed him the letter in Saint Mark’s.

“What!” he cried, “the lad was this girl in disguise?”

Polixena broke off with an irrepressible smile; but her face clouded instantly and she returned to the charge.

“This wicked, careless girl—­she has ruined me, she will be my undoing!  Oh, sir, how can I make you understand?  The letter was not intended for you—­it was meant for the English Ambassador, an old friend of my mother’s, from whom I hoped to obtain assistance—­oh, how can I ever excuse myself to you?”

“No excuses are needed, madam,” said Tony, bowing; “though I am surprised, I own, that any one should mistake me for an ambassador.”

Here a wave of mirth again overran Polixena’s face.  “Oh, sir, you must pardon my poor girl’s mistake.  She heard you speaking English, and—­and—­I had told her to hand the letter to the handsomest foreigner in the church.”  Tony bowed again, more profoundly.  “The English Ambassador,” Polixena added simply, “is a very handsome man.”

“I wish, madam, I were a better proxy!”

She echoed his laugh, and then clapped her hands together with a look of anguish.  “Fool that I am!  How can I jest at such a moment?  I am in dreadful trouble, and now perhaps I have brought trouble on you also—­Oh, my father!  I hear my father coming!” She turned pale and leaned tremblingly upon the little servant.

Footsteps and loud voices were in fact heard outside, and a moment later the red-stockinged Senator stalked into the room attended by half-a-dozen of the magnificoes whom Tony had seen abroad in the square.  At sight of him, all clapped hands to their swords and burst into furious outcries; and though their jargon was unintelligible to the young man, their tones and gestures made their meaning unpleasantly plain.  The Senator, with a start of anger, first flung himself on the intruder; then, snatched back by his companions, turned wrathfully on his daughter, who, at his feet, with outstretched arms and streaming face, pleaded her cause with all the eloquence of young distress.  Meanwhile the other nobles gesticulated vehemently among themselves, and one, a truculent-looking personage in ruff and Spanish cape, stalked apart, keeping a jealous eye on Tony.  The latter was at his wit’s end how to comport himself, for the lovely Polixena’s tears had quite drowned her few words of English, and beyond guessing that the magnificoes meant him a mischief he had no notion what they would be at.