mia, there is a good girl, and let us have the
things directly! There is no Tonino to be seen.
And I must get my master dressed and off to court
without his answer from la bella Caterina."

* The Florentine Bethlehem Hospital.

Franceses returned to her mistress, and on
entering her chamber found the linen and the lace
for the duke's toilet all ready, and daintily laid
out in the silver basin.

"So please your ladyship, my lord is waiting
for his things."

"And I am waiting to send them to him. See,
Francesca, my child, all is ready prepared. Take
the basin carefully, my girl. Bear it in both
hands; thou wilt find it heavy. There is beneath
the linen, a surprise for my lord, a New Year's
present from his loving wife. Bear the basin
deftly, girl. Nay, I will myself open the door
for thee, and see thee safe to the door of my
lord's chamber."

Francesco lifted the heavy basin—so heavy
as to set her marvelling greatly what the present
could be which her strange and incomprehensible
mistress had taken this odd method of
conveying to her husband. Not jewellery, certainly.
Simple cash? Solid dollars might, indeed, make
the weight which puzzled her. But it seemed
hardly likely that the Lady Veronica could make
a present of vulgar dollars to the duke.
Perfumes?—some huge flask of essence, or some
precious casket of unguent, the produce of the
lady's chemistry and still-room industry? Ay!
that seemed more likely.

"God send," thought Francesca to herself, as
this explanation of the mystery occurred to her,
"that my lady's chemistry be lawful, and her drugs
wholesome. Were I Duke Jacopo, knowing all I
know, I would none of any confection of hers."

So the basin, with the fair linen and the rich lace
lying innocently and lightly on its surface, was
borne in a sort of procession through the doors
and passages between the lady's chamber and
that occupied by the duke: the duchess holding
wide the doors for her maid to pass, and escorting
her on her way. Had she not adopted this
precaution, it might have been safely predicted that
Francesca's curiosity would have prompted her
to examine her mysterious burden on the road,
before bringing it to its destination.

Arrived at the door of the duke's chamber, the
duchess tapped, and on being bidden by the
voice of Luigi to enter, she so threw it open as
to allow Francesca to pass without being seen
herself. The door fell back into its place, leaving
the duchess, pale as death, breathlessly listening
on the outside of it.

"A prosperous and happy New Year, and
many of them, to your excellency" said
Francesca, as she entered; "I have brought your
lordship's linen, and my lady bids me say that
she has sent your excellency a New Year's gift
at the bottom of the basin. What it may be, my
lord, I know not, seeing that my lady herself
placed the things as your lordship sees them, but
'tis something heavy to carry."

"Thanks, my pretty Francesca, there's a fee for
thy good wishes not so heavy to carry back,"
said Salviati, taking the pretty Abigail by the
chin and giving her a kiss on the cheek. "But
stay—something a little heavier must go with it
this New Year's morning. There's for thy good
wishes," putting a gold piece into her hand;
"now run and give my thanks and compliments
to the duchess, and tell her we shall meet
presently at court."

And thus in lightsome mood the duke
proceeded to complete his toilette.

First, on the top of the basin, lay lightly the
large laced ruffles for his wristbands. These he
lifted carefully, and started with a surprised and
angry frown on seeing beneath them the
voluminous and exquisitely fine muslin intended for
his neck, stained with a large red spot on its
snowy folds just in the centre of the basin.

"Ha! what's this? some ill-timed jest!" he
cried. "Luigi, here, lift me this loathly cloth.
What have we of the Lady Veronica's sending
beneath it?"

He spoke, his cheeks and lips growing pale
with an unreasoned and undefined misgiving.
Luigi, too, hesitated and turned pale as he put
his hand to the blood-stained linen. After a
moment's pause, he lifted it from the basin with
a sudden twitch.

There, in the bottom of the basket, lay the head
of Caterina Canacci. That lovely face, every
smiling lineament of which had even at that
moment been present to her lover's picturing fancy,
so awfully the same, so awfully not the same!

It is on record that from that dreadful hour
Jacopo Salviati never smiled again—never more
had any part in the pleasure or the business of
the world around him—and died a broken-hearted
prematurely aged wreck of man, while by count
of years he should yet have been in the prime and
flower of his life.

CHAPTER VIII. THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW.

THE chronicle of the wrongs of Veronica,
Duchess of Salviati, and of her memorable
vengeance, has been completed, and there is little
more to be told to complete this specimen of
the Italian life of the seventeenth century. Yet,
inasmuch as not even in Florence, under Ferdinand
the Second, could such a series of facts pass
wholly without external consequences, it is worth
while to add another feature to the social picture,
by briefly telling what those consequences were.

The Via dei Pilastri, it will be remembered,
was quite quiet in its total darkness, when the
assassins escaped after the perpetration of the
deed. Some alarm, indeed, seems to have been
given, perhaps by the people of the house into
which Serselli and Carlini escaped. But the
police, as was then and there invariably the case,
arrived when the malefactors were clear off from
the scene of their crime. Shortly after their
escape, "la Corte,"as the chief police-officer and
his men were strangely called, came with lights
and bustling noise up the Via dei Pilastri—