After Dark

easy in her grave, if you would avoid a terrible warning, go not to the masked ball!'

'I ask you, and I ask any man, if that is not infamous?' exclaimed Fabio, passionately, as the priest handed him back the letter. 'An attempt to work on my fears through the memory of my poor dead wife! An insolent assumption that I want to marry again, when I myself have not even so much as thought of the subject at all! What is the secret object of this letter, and of the rest here that resemble it? Whose interest is it to keep me away from the ball? What is the meaning of such a phrase as, 'If you would let your wife lie easy in her grave'? Have you no advice to give me—no plan to propose for discovering the vile hand that traced these lines? Speak to me! Why, in Heaven's name, don't you speak?'

The priest leaned his head on his hand, and, turning his face from the light as if it dazzled his eyes, replied in his lowest and quietest tones:

'I cannot speak till I have had time to think. The mystery of that letter is not to be solved in a moment. There are things in it that are enough to perplex and amaze any man!'

'What things?'

'It is impossible for me to go into details—at least at the present moment.'

'You speak with a strange air of secrecy. Have you nothing definite to say—no advice to give me?'

'I should advise you not to go to the ball.'

'You would! Why?'

'If I gave you my reasons, I am afraid I should only be irritating you to no purpose.'

'Father Rocco, neither your words nor your manner satisfy me. You speak in riddles; and you sit there in the dark with your face hidden from me—'

The priest instantly started up and turned his face to the light.

'I recommend you to control your temper, and to treat me with common courtesy,' he said, in his quietest, firmest tones, looking at Fabio steadily while he spoke.

'We will not prolong this interview,' said the young man, calming himself by an evident effort. 'I have one question to ask you, and then no more to say.'

The priest bowed his head, in token that he was ready to listen. He still stood up, calm, pale, and firm, in the full light of the lamp.

'It is just possible,' continued Fabio, 'that these letters may refer to some incautious words which my late wife might have spoken. I ask you as her spiritual director, and as a near relation who enjoyed her confidence, if you ever heard her express a wish, in the event of my surviving her, that I should abstain from marrying again?'

'Did she never express such a wish to you?'

'Never. But why do you evade my question by asking me another?'

'It is impossible for me to reply to your question.'

'For what reason?'

'Because it is impossible for me to give answers which must refer, whether they are affirmative or negative, to what I have heard in confession.'

'We have spoken enough,' said Fabio, turning angrily from the priest. 'I expected you to help me in clearing up these mysteries, and you do your best to thicken them. What your motives are, what your conduct means, it is impossible for me to know, but I say to you, what I would say in far other terms, if they were here, to the villains who have written these letters—no menaces, no mysteries, no conspiracies, will prevent me from being at the ball to-morrow. I can listen to persuasion, but I scorn threats. There lies my dress for the masquerade; no power on earth shall prevent me from wearing it to-morrow night!' He pointed, as he spoke, to the black domino and half- mask lying on the table.

'No power on earth!' repeated Father Rocco, with a smile, and an emphasis on the last word. 'Superstitious still, Count Fabio! Do you suspect the powers of the other world of interfering with mortals at masquerades?'

Fabio started, and, turning from the table, fixed his eyes intently on the priest's face.

'You suggested just now that we had better not prolong this interview,' said Father Rocco, still smiling. 'I think you were right; if we part at once, we may still part friends. You have had my advice not to go to the ball, and you decline following it. I have nothing more to say. Good-night.'

Before Fabio could utter the angry rejoinder that rose to his lips, the door of the room had opened and closed again, and the priest was gone.

CHAPTER III.

The next night, at the time of assembling specified in the invitations to the masked ball, Fabio was still lingering in his palace, and still allowing the black domino to lie untouched and unheeded on his dressing-table. This delay was not produced by any change in his resolution to go to the Melani Palace. His determination to be present at the ball remained unshaken; and yet, at the last moment, he lingered and lingered on, without knowing why. Some strange influence seemed to be keeping him within the walls of his lonely home. It was as if the great, empty, silent palace had almost recovered on that night the charm which it had lost when its mistress died.

He left his own apartment and went to the bedroom where his infant child lay asleep in her little crib. He sat watching her, and thinking quietly and tenderly of many past events in his life for a long time, then returned to his room. A sudden sense of loneliness came upon him after his visit to the child's bedside; but he did not attempt to raise his spirits even then by going to the ball. He descended instead to his study, lighted his reading-lamp, and then, opening a bureau, took from one of the drawers in it the letter which Nanina had written to him. This was not the first time that a sudden sense of his solitude had connected itself inexplicably with the remembrance of the work-girl's letter.

He read it through slowly, and when he had done, kept it open in his hand. 'I have youth, titles, wealth,' he