"And leave me?" Arisa's whisper was hot with indignation at the mere thought. "Then I suppose you would leave me for the first pretty girl with a fortune who wanted to marry you!"
"This Contarini is such a fool!" answered Aristarchi contemptuously, by way of explanation and apology.
Arisa was instantly pacified.
"If he should be foolish enough for that, I have means that will keep him," she answered.
"I do not see how you can force him to do anything except by his passion for you."
"I can. I was not going to tell you yet—you always make me tell you everything, like a child."
"What is it?" asked the Greek. "Have you found out anything new about him? Of course you must tell me."
"We hold his life in our hands," she said quietly, and Aristarchi knew that she was not exaggerating the truth.
She began to tell him how this was the third time that a number of masked men had come to the house an hour after dark, and had stayed till midnight or later, and how Contarini had told her that they came to play at dice where they were safe from interruption, and that on these nights the servants were sent to their quarters at sunset on pain of dismissal if Jacopo found them about the house, but that they also received generous presents of money to keep them silent.
"The man is a fool!" said Aristarchi again. "He puts himself in their power."