to go to the ball, and you decline following it.
I have nothing more to say. Good night!"

Before Fabio could utter the angry
rejoinder that rose to his lips, the door of the
room had opened and closed again, and the
priest was gone.

             CHAPTER IX.

THE next night, at the time of assembling
specified in the invitations to the masked
ball, Fabio was still lingering in his palace,
and still allowing the black domino to lie
untouched and unheeded on his dressing-table.
This delay was not produced by any change
in his resolution to go to the Melani Palace.
His determination to be present at the ball
remained unshaken; and yet, at the last
moment, he lingered and lingered on, without
knowing why. Some strange influence seemed
to be keeping him within the walls of his
lonely home. It was as if the great, empty,
silent palace had almost recovered on that
night the charm which it had lost when its
mistress died.

He left his own apartment and went to the
bedroom where his infant child lay asleep in
her little crib. He sat watching her, and
thinking quietly and tenderly of many past
events in his life for a long time: then
returned to his room. A sudden sense of
loneliness came upon him after his visit to
the child's bedside; but he did not attempt to
raise his spirits, even then, by going to the
ball. He descended instead to his study,
lit his reading lamp, and then, opening
a bureau, took from one of the drawers in it
the letter which Nanina had written to him.
This was not the first time that a sudden
sense of his solitude had connected itself
inexplicably with the remembrance of the
work-girl's letter.

He read it through slowly, and when he
had done, kept it open in his hand. " I have
youth, titles, wealth," he thought to himself
sadly; " everything that is envied and
sought after in this world. And yet, if I try
to think of any human being who really and
truly loves me, I can remember but one—
the poor, faithful girl who wrote these lines!"

Old recollections of the first day when he
met with Nanina, of the first sitting she had
given him in Luca Lomi's studio, of the first
visit to the neat little room in the bye-street,
began to rise more and more vividly in his
mind. Entirely absorbed by them, he sat
absently drawing with pen and ink, on some
sheets of letter-paper lying under his hand,
lines and circles, and fragments of decorations,
and vague remembrances of old ideas
for statues, until the sudden sinking of the
flame of his lamp awoke his attention
abruptly to present things. He looked at his
watch. It was close on midnight.

This discovery at last roused him to the
necessity of immediate departure. In a few
minutes he had put on his domino and mask,
and was on his way to the ball.

Before he reached the Melani Palace the
first part of the entertainment had come to
an end. The " Toy-Symphony " had been
played, the grotesque dance performed, amid
universal laughter; and now the guests were
for the most part fortifying themselves in the
Arcadian bowers for new dances, in which all
persons present were expected to take part.
The Marquis Melani had, with characteristic
oddity, divided his two classical refreshment-rooms
into what he termed the Light and
Heavy Departments. Fruit, pastry, sweetmeats,
salads, and harmless drinks were
included under the first head, and all the
stimulating liquors and solid eatables under the
last. The thirty shepherdesses had been,
according to the marquis's order, equally
divided, at the outset of the evening, between the
two rooms. But, as the company began to
crowd more and more resolutely in the direction
of the Heavy Department, ten of the
shepherdesses attached to the Light Department
were told off to assist in attending on the
hungry and thirsty majority of guests who
were not to be appeased by pastry and
lemonade. Among the five girls who were left
behind in the room for the light refreshments,
was Nanina. The steward soon discovered that
the novelty of her situation made her really
nervous, and he wisely concluded that if he
trusted her where the crowd was greatest
and the noise loudest, she would not only be
utterly useless, but also very much in the
way of her more confident and experienced
companions.

When Fabio arrived at the palace, the
jovial uproar in the Heavy Department was
at its height, and several gentlemen, fired by
the classical costumes of the shepherdesses,
were beginning to speak Latin to them with
a thick utterance and a valorous contempt
for all restrictions of gender, number, and
case. As soon as he could escape from the
congratulations on his return to his friends,
which poured on him from all sides, Fabio
withdrew to seek some quieter room. The heat,
noise, and confusion, had so bewildered him,
after the tranquil life he had been leading for
many months past, that it was quite a relief
to stroll through the half-deserted dancing-rooms,
to the; opposite extremity of the
great suite of apartments, and there to find
himself in a second Arcadian bower which
seemed peaceful enough to deserve its
name.

A few guests were in this room when he
first entered it; but the distant sound of
some first notes of dance-music drew them all
away. After a careless look at the quaint
decorations about him, he sat down alone on
a divan near the door, and beginning already
to feel the heat and discomfort of his mask,
took it off. He had not removed it more
than a moment,  before he heard a faint cry in
the direction of a long refreshment-table,
behind which the five waiting-girls were
standing. He started up directly, and could