the two disappeared through the gate of the garden.

"She is too pretty to go alone," he explained on
his return. "Every day she must pay a boy two
soldi, Signore, to escort her to the lace factory--the
boy is sick today and so I went with her. But their
foolishness will stop after this;--these rats know
Luigi."

From this day on Loretta had the Riva to herself.




II



So far there has been introduced into this story
the bad man, Francesco, with crab-like tendencies,
who has just lost his wife; the ravishingly beautiful
Loretta; the girl's mother, of whom all sorts of stories
were told--none to her credit; big tender-hearted
Luigi Zanaletto, prince of gondoliers, and last, and
this time least, a staid old painter who works in a
gondola up a crooked canal which is smothered in
trees, choked by patched-up boats and flanked by
tattered rookeries so shaky that the slightest earth
quiver would tumble them into kindling wood.