rare favor that they have trusted this parchment with me, and have not
brought me into their presence to make copy of it in the palace. If thou
couldst lend me thy deft fingers----"

"Surely," she answered, smiling up at him.

He was standing over her with one hand on her shoulder; he rested the
other lightly on her hair, looking down into her eyes for a moment with
a caress still and tender, after his own grave fashion. "It will be
safer so," he said, folding the parchment and the letters carefully and
locking them away in his cabinet. "And to-morrow, Marina--for they have
granted me but one day."

The chamber in which they sat was wainscoted with heavy carved woodwork
stained black, and every panel was a drawer with a curiously wrought
lock, containing some design or some order for the house of Magagnati;
and these archives were precious not only for the stabilimento and
Girolamo the master, but they would be treasured by the Republic as
state papers, representing the highest attainment in this exquisite
Venetian industry, which the Government held in such esteem that for a
century past one of the chiefs of the Council of Ten had been appointed
as inspector and supervisor of the manufactories. For further security
the Senate had declared severest penalties against any betrayal of the
secrets of the trade--a form of protection not quite needless, since the
Ambassador of His Most Christian Majesty had formed a species of secret
police with no other object than to bribe the glass-makers and extract
from them the lucrative secret which formed no part of the courtesies
that were interchanged between France and the Republic.

The large, low table, black and polished like teak-wood, upon which they