"Who could it have been?"
The old lawyer only shrugged his shoulders in reply
"There is a young lady," resumed Ludovico, after some minutes of
thought, "a friend of mine--a young artist engaged in making copies
from the mosaics in our churches. I know that it was her purpose
shortly to begin some work of this kind at St. Apollinare in Classe.
It may be that she had selected this morning for the purpose of
going out to look at her task,--though I almost think that I should
have been informed of her intention."
"The plot seems to thicken with a vengeance," said the lawyer, with
an impatient shrug, and a slight sneer of ill-humour, provoked by
the multiplicity of his young client's lady friends. "I daresay," he
added, "the young ladies are not playing hide-and-seek in the Pineta
all by themselves."
"But what had I better do?" said the young Marchese, looking with
increased anxiety into the lawyer's face; "the fact is--you see,
Signor Giovacchino, this new idea, this possibility that Paolina--
that is the young artist's name--may be--may have been in the
forest--in short, I feel more uneasy than before till I can learn
what has become of both of them."
"Do you mean," said the lawyer, with a sneer in his voice, but at
the same time looking into his companion's face with a shrewd
expression of investigation in his eye,--"do you mean that the two
ladies may possibly have fallen in with each other, and may in such
case not improbably have fallen out with each other? You know best,
Signor Marchese, the likelihood of any trouble arising out of such a
meeting.
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