“Scusi,” murmured the Prince as he leant across the man to pull at her sleeve. “I must see you,” he said urgently. “When? Where?”
“When you like,” she answered, but her eyes were startled as they met his. “No. 27 Borgo San Jacopo. The only door on the sixth landing.”
“Very well. To-night, then, and in an hour’s time.”
The press of incoming masqueraders screened them. The carabiniere knew the Prince by sight, and he listened with all his might, but they spoke English, and he dared not turn to stare at the girl until the tall figure in the red lucco had passed up the steps and gone in again, and by that time she had slipped away out of sight.
Filippo came to the Borgo a little before midnight and crossed the dingy threshold of No. 27 as the bells of the churches rang out the hour. The old street was quiet enough now but for the wailing of some strayed and starving cats that crept about the shadowed courts and under the crumbling archways, and the departing cab woke strange echoes as it rattled away over the cobble stones.
The only door on the sixth landing was open.
“What are you doing here?” Filippo said, wonderingly, as he groped his way in. The room was in utter darkness but for one ray of moonlight athwart it and the faint light of the stars, by which he saw Olive leaning against the sill of one of the unshuttered windows, and looking, as it seemed, towards him.
“Come in,” she said. “You need not be afraid of falling over the furniture. There is not much.”
“You seem partial to bare attics.”
“Ah! you are thinking of my room in the Vicolo dei Moribondi.”