Luca shrugged his shoulders, and went back to his statue.  Father Rocco, who had been engaged during the last ten minutes in mixing wet plaster to the right consistency for taking a cast, suspended his occupation; and crossing the room to a corner next the partition, removed from it a cheval-glass which stood there.  He lifted it away gently, while his brother’s back was turned, carried it close to the table at which he had been at work, and then resumed his employment of mixing the plaster.  Having at last prepared the composition for use, he laid it over the exposed half of the statuette with a neatness and dexterity which showed him to be a practiced hand at cast-taking.  Just as he had covered the necessary extent of surface, Luca turned round from his statue.

“How are you getting on with the cast?” he asked.  “Do you want any help?”

“None, brother, I thank you,” answered the priest.  “Pray do not disturb either yourself or your workmen on my account.”

Luca turned again to the statue; and, at the same moment, Father Rocco softly moved the cheval-glass toward the open doorway between the two rooms, placing it at such an angle as to make it reflect the figures of the persons in the smaller studio.  He did this with significant quickness and precision.  It was evidently not the first time he had used the glass for purposes of secret observation.

Mechanically stirring the wet plaster round and round for the second casting, the priest looked into the glass, and saw, as in a picture, all that was going forward in the inner room.  Maddalena Lomi was standing behind the young nobleman, watching the progress he made with his bust.  Occasionally she took the modeling tool out of his hand, and showed him, with her sweetest smile, that she, too, as a sculptor’s daughter, understood something of the sculptor’s art; and now and then, in the pauses of the conversation, when her interest was especially intense in Fabio’s work, she suffered her hand to drop absently on his shoulder, or stooped forward so close to him that her hair mingled for a moment with his.  Moving the glass an inch or two, so as to bring Nanina well under his eye, Father Rocco found that he could trace each repetition of these little acts of familiarity by the immediate effect which they produced on the girl’s face and manner.  Whenever Maddalena so much as touched the young nobleman—­no matter whether she did so by premeditation, or really by accident—­Nanina’s features contracted, her pale cheeks grew paler, she fidgeted on her chair, and her fingers nervously twisted and untwisted the loose ends of the ribbon fastened round her waist.

“Jealous,” thought Father Rocco; “I suspected it weeks ago.”

He turned away, and gave his whole attention for a few minutes to the mixing of the plaster.  When he looked back again at the glass, he was just in time to witness a little accident which suddenly changed the relative positions of the three persons in the inner room.