said aloud:

"They lie--they lie! The Connetable lies! Their tongues shall be cut
out. . . . Ah, my little, little child! . . . The Connetable
dared--he dared--to tell me this evil gossip--of the little one--of my
Guida!"

He laughed contemptuously, but it was a crackling, dry laugh, painful in
its cheerlessness. He drew his snuff-box from his pocket, opened it, and
slowly taking a pinch, raised it towards his nose, but the hand paused
half-way, as though a new thought arrested it.

In the pause there came the sound of the front door opening, and then
footsteps in the hall.

The pinch of snuff fell from the fingers of the old man on to the white
stuff of his short-clothes, but as Guida entered the room and stood still
a moment, he did not stir in his seat. The thundercloud had come still
lower and the room was dark, the coals in the fireplace being now covered
with grey ashes.

"Grandpethe! Grandpethe!" Guida said.

He did not answer. His heart was fluttering, his tongue clove to the
roof of his mouth, dry and thick. Now he should know the truth, now
he should be sure that they had lied about his little Guida, those
slanderers of the Vier Marchi. Yet, too, he had a strange, depressing
fear, at variance with his loving faith and belief that in Guida there
was no wrong: such belief as has the strong swimmer that he can reach the
shore through wave and tide; yet also with strange foreboding, prelude to