"The picture, father!" exclaimed the terror-stricken Antonio. "For the
love of Heaven, stay me not! Let me destroy that fatal picture!"

Regardless of his son's agitation and terror, the Proveditore half
led, half forced him to a seat in a part of the room, when the red
blaze from the larch logs that were crackling on the hearth, lit up
the young man's features.

"What means this, Antonio?" he said; "what has befallen during my
absence at Gradiska? The familiars of the Inquisition have been
seeking you here--you, the last person whose name I should expect to
hear in such mouths. Alarm me it did not; for well I know that you are
too scant of energy and settled purpose to be mixed up in conspiracies
against the state."

Antonio was still too much preoccupied by his terror to understand, or
at any rate to heed, the severity of his father's remark. Collecting
his scattered thoughts, he proceeded to narrate all that had occurred
to him, not only on that day, but since his first meeting with the
incognita near the church of San Moyses, on the very same spot whither
he had conveyed her in his gondola but a short hour ago.

"Let me destroy the painting, father!" he concluded; "it may be found,
and used as testimony against me."

The Proveditore had listened with a smile, that was at once
contemptuous and sorrowful, to his son's narrative, and to the
confession of his weakness and disobedience to the injunctions of his
aged teacher. When he had finished speaking, there was a minute's