"'He is quite a young man,' he told me, 'but he has a wonderful knowledge of the fine arts. I believe he knows every masterpiece of Cellini's; for while we were discussing the form of the cup which I am to make for him he drew at least twenty different forms of cups and covers, all after Cellini, with the most careless pencil. He is an excellent draughtsman, but music, he tells me, is his chief passion.'
"A week later I was told that Mr. Topsparkle, having called to see the progress of his cup, had heard Margharita singing, and had asked to be introduced to the songstress. He had stayed for an hour listening to her, ravished by her talent.
"Had I been a man of the world I should at once have taken alarm, remembering what I had heard in the coffee-house as to the Englishman's character. But I was too completely absorbed in my own studies to be on the alert for any danger that did not menace the secrets of my laboratory. I heard what had happened without being impressed by it.
"After this Mr. Topsparkle was a frequent visitor to my son's sitting-room, but as he never saw my granddaughter alone the most careful father would scarcely conceive the possibility of danger.
"So insidious were the approaches of the seducer, so completely was the father hoodwinked, that the first indication of danger was the fall of a thunderbolt. One evening in late autumn, between sunset and darkness, Margharita disappeared. No one saw her leave the house, but she was gone; and as she never went out alone, but was always escorted by an old servant who had been her mother's nurse as well as her own, her absence created immediate alarm.
"My son was like a man distracted. He searched every public resort, went over the whole city on foot or in a gondola, visited his few friends, hunted every likely and unlikely place for some trace of his lost daughter, but found none. He came to me at ten o'clock in my laboratory, to ask my advice. He was half dead with fatigue, broken down with the agony of apprehension.
"The greatness of this calamity startled me into an awakened interest in the outer life around me. My sympathy with my son in his distress roused my reason to new action.
"'It must mean one of three things,' I told him: 'accident, suicide, or flight with a lover.'
"'What accident is possible? She could not have fallen out of a window or into the canal without our knowing all about it. Suicide is impossible. Lover she had none.'
"'Are you sure of that?'