stood in his way. A few days later my father spoke to me of my marriage with him." She did not falter, but rather gained in steadiness; nor did she pay heed to the mutterings and heavendirected gesticulations of Monna Teresa. "A week later my father again importuned me. We were exiles from Florence. Casella alone had the power to obtain a hearing for my father, that he might at least return-to die in the Beloved City. The second time I saw my husband-was at our betrothal."

Our one comfort was that you kept this Casella at arm's length. Anima mia! You are a great actress. You treat him as dust beneath your feet. Iron as he is, I have seen him wince when you addressed him. No other woman could have held that dog at bay-yet, you say, you love him! Shame! Shame! Nera Ubbriachi!"

She let the angry woman have her say. She would not humor her pride, but trampled on it. It was fierce joy,, fierce agony in one, to betray-all! She spoke.

"Sometimes, when the full horror of the position comes on me, such horror and disgust as you are feeling now-do not think that never comes; my faith,

There were again faint outward signs of the violence she was doing herself. Monna Teresa stared, and stared again. "You would have me believe that you, and you alone-"

"Have I not said so?"

"You must be mad! Your father was mad to bring you into contact with such a man! He disgraced He disgraced us all when he forced Casella on you. He made his own bed-he had chosen the Medici faction, and Florence would have none of him-'twas for him to reap his bitter harvest. With your wealth this swineherd's son could make himself a name. He risked even the good-will of the people for that, and now that he has you he has leagued himself with his own, even, it is whispered, against Malatesta himself. Yesterday there were acclamations in his honor outside the Palazzo della Signoria. Half that crowd will die in the Bargello tonight."

"Oh! God!" It was a faint whisper, lost on the older woman.

"I bring you your freedom with both hands," she went on, excitedly. "For heaven's sake, cast aside this evil spell that some witchcraft has laid over you.

part of me and my life on earth. I could not, even if I would, separate what God has brought together."

"You are mad. You know not what you say!"

"He has no thought of me, nor ever will. His heart is in that city. Were he the enemy of Florence, I would betray her to him if I thought it would bring him honor."

No passion, no feeling, but the woman's very soul spoke.

Monna Teresa shrank away. "Miserable one! The poison is deep. in you!"

"It is well you should understand me, Monna Teresa, that your comings here on behalf of Malatesta Baglioni are wasted hours which were better spent among the city's poor. This is no time to hint of marriages annulled, neither, I am convinced, would my uncle, His Holiness, even if I appealed to him, ever see fit to issue the decree." It was noticeable that Monna Teresa's hand hid the expression of her face. "I am the wife of Geronimo Casella until death parts us. God send Malatesta Baglioni a holier mind, that he covet not another man's wife."

Monna Teresa grew paler.

"Your happiness, your welfare, ingrate, is all my brother seeks."

"So be it. Go. Tell him what I have told you, and leave me in peace!"

"You come well armed," she answered.

"Malatesta Baglioni is here."

She lifted her brows. He spoke as

terrace, somewhat fearful of face.

"Il Capitano Geronimo Casella," he said. "He is on his way."

Monna Teresa gathered skirts and girdle from the ground. Of the three she was the palest.

"I cannot meet him." Her voice was muffled. She hurried to the marble steps that led into the cypress avenue below, hesitated there, turned, saw the still, tall figure of the other woman silhouetted against the sky, and ran back to her.

"I came to give you a warning," she stammered. "You gave me no time. He will bring you news-be prepared. Oh! Cielo !"

A man was coming away from the house, crossing the huge uneven stones on the sunlit terrace. Some sleeping lizards whisked Monna away, and Teresa fled with them down the steps. He was a striking figure-this Geronimo Casella, Malatesta's rival and one of the supreme Eight who ruled Florence, extraordinarily tall, dark and broad, with the face of the peasant, flat, carved, rugged; uninteresting it might have been in spite of its force but for the eyes, so black, so steady that there were few indeed who could meet their stare unmoved.

He accorded his wife a somewhat uncouth bow. He was a fighter, not a cavalier.

She seemed all of ice.

"I make you welcome, Geronimo. Casella."

His eyes grew blacker. He showed his worst side to her always.

"I congratulate you, Madonna," he said; he had a deep guttural voice. "I am a liar myself."

"It would seem I am to hold a reception to-day."

He went on speaking, with his eyes lowered and with an uncouth embarrassment on him, strange in such a man, but which assailed him always in her presence. He feared nothing on earth but the jibe of this woman's tongue. Sometimes he would strike out roughly, rudely, but with none of her force nor her bitter cruelty. She was of noble birth; she ever forced this knowledge. on him, hating herself in spite of herself.

"You know why he is here, I saw your kinswoman, la Baglioni, disappear at the sight of me. She has prepared you for this moment, when Malatesta brings the proof of his love for you."

Nera Ubbriachi seemed to grow taller—older.

"Is this one of many insults from you to me?"

He looked at her now, steadily enough.

"Is a man's love an insult?"
She became like snow.

"You must be mad to speak like this to me!"

"Why so? Perhaps I am the only one that etiquette demands should come to you on an occasion such as this. It is an occasion which calls for extraordinary measures." He studied the coldness of her uncomprehending face. A deeper shade spread over his own.

"Monna Teresa, perchance, was too busy with her gossip," he said, "to treat of other matters."

She still kept her eyes on him, uncomprehending, disdainful.

"At my prayer, and the representations of Malatesta Baglioni, our marriage is to be annulled."

So might one feel-dying! "I should have put on a wedding-garment, should I not?" He wore rough brown homespun, like herself. "But these are troublous times, when marrying and giving in marriage form but small part of a man's life."

"Representations have been made to His Holiness," she found herself speaking. "By whom?"

"By Malatesta." "Malatesta!"

"Does it cause you surprise? Politically, Malatesta is at enmity with the Papal States, but Malatesta is a son of the Church." Casella's manner gained ease, assurance, insolence perhaps. Who knows? Men ever rush to extremes. "Added to which he is your nearest relative, distant enough to becomenearer. I understood Monna Teresa Baglioni was to be the bearer of these glad tidings."

She fought a terrible, silent fight. "Why was I held in ignorance?" "Was it necessary to trouble you? There were plenty to testify that you were coerced into this marriage-plenty to swear to your utter abhorrence and contempt of the man, your husband, many to bear witness to the sordid reasons he had for marrying you, and some, even, to hint of benefits to your dead father. His Holiness, being satisfied of the injustice done to you, his niece, last of the Ubbriachi, has sent an emissary from Rome with the necessary documents for you to sign. With the Baglioni, the Reverend Emissary awaits you within. I had understood this task was to be Monna Teresa's. Pardon my rougher manner of blurting it to you." He had grown steadier still. He spoke of a matter that touched him not at allnay, a faint exultation was apparent in him.

It was all so sudden, so horrible death itself would not have seemed more

cruel. She knew that she had herself only to blame. What man-above all such a man as Geronimo Casella-would endure such treatment as she had ever meted out to him? A little softnessa gentle manner need not have betrayed her-might even have won him.

"Come, Madonna," he had half turned to go. "They await us. It is a matter of which I shall be glad to be rid."

She put her hand to her throat. "You can afford to speak-you, who have filled your coffers."

It was a wild, woman-like stab in the dark, since no coffers could be full in Florence then; a stab to wound as he was wounding her.

"True." He was unmoved. "May the Baglioni be as lucky."

It was a deadly insult. Even he would seem to have felt it.

"Why should I crave pardon? I am of the people-such things are not expected of me!" He breathed a little fast, like one who had been running hard; he seemed to struggle with himself a moment, to lose, perhaps. "Why, look you!" He flung out one hand. "A hundred times have you said words to me that neither tears nor blood could wash away! I harbored them up. They were at least a part of you-the only part I ever really, fairly won." Whatever emotion had conquered him a moment since was pressing its victory home now. All steadiness waned. The words rushed out.

"Look you, again! You shall see the truth now, bare, naked, hideous! I lied to you from the beginning because I was-afraid." He drew a long breath. "I let you think I forced this marriage on you for love of the money your father had squandered on the Medici long before I had ever seen you-because I had a fool's notion, worthy of my birth, that that other reason was too immensely presumptuous. I built wild dreams on

the future. You were a woman-you had the gift of pity in you. Oh, God! So low had I fallen, I would have snatched even at your pity. But you had a tongue, also, to scourge-to kill! It cured me. I should be grateful for that! When I knew Baglioni loved you, no miserable prisoner ever seized on his chance of freedom with greater joy than I. You had become a stumbling-block in my life, a thing that confronted me at every turn to shame me! You made a coward of me, in the streets, on the battlefield, and above all when I had to face the full blast of your accursed pride. With Baglioni's power, I would have surrendered my city and my people to her enemies. You were suffering from this devil's work, you were sacrificing your life in black hovels where no woman should go. You were robbing me of my manhood. God gave me liberty at last!"

formed the word "Better." But to him

she seemed as icy, as unattainable as in the beginning.

She followed him, blind, deaf, speechless. Nothing could save her now. Because her pride was herself, she felt this to be death. Yet she was conscious that, it being the feast of the Visitation of the most Blessed Virgin, she murmured an incoherent prayer to the Mother of God.

Malatesta Baglioni stood in the middle of the great marble-floored room, and met her with the deepest of obeisances. He had the face of a high-born Tuscan, long, pale, with a short, rounded chin. Behind him, a little to the left, was a Franciscan monk, old, thin, wasted, with a hawk-like nose and small, black eyes set wide apart. "Fra Masseo," she heard them say, His Holiness' confessor, himself.

He gave her his blessing, eyeing her with great keenness the while, then: "Daughter, the Sovereign Pontiff has heard your cry and answered you."

Time, time-she wanted time-for what? She could not say. She was hemmed in by an inevitable fate. Her

bellion, but time to dwell on this crushing blow before it fell must be given her.

"I would crave permission, holy father, before I receive my uncle's favor to pray in my oratory."

He signed assent. She turned to the other two men, including them in a glance which did not dwell on either.

"You, Messeri, will accompany us." They followed her, Baglioni smiling, to a dim oratory, where ancient windows admitted narrow beams of light. A faintly-burning lamp glowed in the darkness before the Santissimo. She sank on her knees.

The monk prayed, in Latin, a wellknown prayer which even the Baglioni knew by heart.

Amen. They arose.

She crossed the chapel to where the monk was turning to leave. She put out her hand to stay him. ""The Magnificat'"-she spoke like one suffocating. “It is our Lady's feast. 'The Magnificat.' She was too lost in herself to notice the look on Fra Masseo's face. "Daughter, we delay too long." ""The Magnificat,'" she said again. The Franciscan bit his lips, hesitated, seemed to glance at the dark figure behind him, then knelt again.

There was a long pause. Nera Ubbriachi had gone back to her agony and hidden her face. When the first words of the "Magnificat" fell on her ear in slow and halting accents their divine meaning calmed her.

She lifted her head and gazed into the darkness where the monk knelt. Upon the prie-dieu before him, he had spread an open Missal; the softly-glowing sanctuary lamp caught the glint, of the gold-illuminated "Magnificat." Her hands fell away to her sides; she watched him with parted lips, wide eyes, and a suffocation in her heart and throat.

The reading was over. He closed the book and put it back into its place. They filed out slowly, solemnly, into the bare room they had left.

Upon Nera Ubbriachi had settled a new air that robbed her face of all its youth and softness; such a look as a woman might wear who was about to fight the world for her life and sell it dearly.

The monk spread the yellow parchments upon a table, and seating himself thereat, read aloud the decree of annulment of marriage between Nera Giuseppa Maria Ubbriachi and Geronimo Naldo Maria Casella, as set forth by His Holiness, the Sovereign Pontiff, the Lord Pope Clement XIII.

The two men stood a little behind her, one, softly, silently exultant, the other with a deep disdain upon his hard, square face.

She broke the profound silence that followed the reading.

"This is a time to speak of marriage, is it not? While Florence lies dying, and her murderers rejoice unpunished without her walls. They may sleep without fear of a champion to do them battle. Ferucci is dead."

The monk looked up; he was about to speak, to rebuke her, perhaps, for the exceeding bitterness of her tone, but Baglioni interrupted him.

"Your words are wild, Monna Nera. If Florence lies unavenged it is because the avenging of her at this time would work the final ruin of our unhappy city.

"Unhappy, indeed!" She did not look at him, nay, even had her back to him. "She has no more bitter enemies outside her walls than those who hide within them."

"I told you," said Casella, with a slow, twisted smile, "she has a tongue to Scourge to kill."

His voice seemed to arouse some great passion in her; what little color she had, faded.

"As for that document there," she went on as if none had spoken, “I shall not sign it."

There was a faint sensation.

"My daughter!" came from the monk, in shocked rebuke. "You speak of a mandate from His Holiness, who has ruled that by the law of the Church you and Geronimo Casella are not man and wife."

"If it be already irrevocable, of what avail then my signature?"

Fra Masseo answered directly.

"This document is to be returned to His Holiness to satisfy him that it has not fallen into evil hands, but has been safely attested by those for whom it is intended."

"What if I say that that document— forgery-call it what you will—has fallen into evil hands? That you, Malatesta