Next moment Mr. Page was wringing Alec’s hand.
“Goodbye, my dear boy, and may Heaven bless and prosper you,” exclaimed the lawyer, with an unwonted tremor in his voice. “Never forget that in Cornelius Page you have a firm friend; and don’t fail to advise me from time to time of your whereabouts.”
Three minutes later, as one in a dream, Alec heard the crack of the driver’s whip and the rattle of the carriage as it jolted over the narrow paved street. Then when the last sound had died away, his manhood suddenly broke down. Sinking into a chair, with his elbows resting on the table and his face covered with his hands, he let the tears drop silently between his fingers.
Now it so happened that there was one feature about the osteria of the Golden Fig, which, for various reasons, it is to be hoped is by no means common to similar houses of entertainment either in Italy or elsewhere.
The peculiarity in question was neither more nor less than a peephole, or place of espial, behind one corner of the elaborate plaster scroll-work of fruit and foliage which ran round the ceiling of the room in which the scene related above had taken place. This spy-hole was reached by means of a flight of steps shut up from ordinary view in what looked like a tall clothes closet in the adjoining chamber.
The house was an old one, and what purpose this secret place of observation had originally served it was now impossible to tell. Rispani had found it there when he took the house, and on more than one occasion had taken advantage of it to pry into the doings of his guests; but never to such good purpose as to-day, for from that coign of vantage he had been an unseen witness of the transfer of the roll of notes to Signor Alessandro.
Immediately after the departure of the Englishman Rispani sought his daughter.
“The Signor Alessandro loves thee—is it not so?” he said to her in Italian. There was something in his tone which convinced Vanna that he had a special motive in putting the question.
“His eyes have told me that he loves me, but his words never.”
“Thou lovest him in return?”