hitherto worn that morning.

"What have you done to my sister?" Federigo asked one day, laughing;
"you are not in her good graces. She is dangerous," he said, seriously;
and added then, as if speculating on possibilities, "as long as you are
in this house, at all events, you are safe. But mind, you are warned."

Federigo soon began to weary of their enforced confinement to the house,
and in spite of his sister's efforts to dissuade him, began to go out in
the evenings, coming home very late, and in a gloomy, irritable
humour--evidently, from the casual remarks he let fall, having lost all
his money at play.

The second morning of his stay in the house Salvé had perceived that
there was a want of money; and having heard the brother and sister
quarrelling one day when both were in a bad humour, he thought it best
to carry out, at the first convenient moment, the determination at which
he had arrived, and handed over to Federigo what money he had, with the
exception of a single silver piastre, saying, "That it was only right he
should pay for his lodging and board."

The money, though deprecatingly, was still accepted, and in the evening
Federigo was out once more, his sister remaining at home.

She and Salvé, on account of their ignorance of each other's language,
could not hold much conversation together, and Salvé was rather glad of
this wall of separation between them, as it left him more at his ease.
She had, however, recently looked more often at him with a sort of
interest, and on several occasions had put questions to him through her
brother. Her range of ideas was apparently not extensive, as her