be like the fourth if it pleased his Eminence to keep him a prisoner.  Corona would certainly never suspect that he was shut up in the Holy Office, and if she did, she might not be able to come to him.  Even if she came, what could he say to her?  That he had committed a piece of outrageous folly because he was annoyed at her disbelief in him or at her coldness.  He had probably made himself ridiculous for the first time in his life.  The thought was the reverse of consoling.  Nor did it contribute to his peace of mind to know that if he had made himself a laughing-stock, the cardinal, who dreaded ridicule, would certainly refuse to play a part in his comedy, and would act with all the rigour suitable to so grave a situation.  He might even bring his prisoner to trial.  Giovanni would submit to that, rather than be laughed at, but the alternative now seemed an appalling one.  In his disgust of life on that memorable morning he had cared nothing what became of him, and had been in a state which precluded all just appreciation of the future.  His enforced solitude had restored his faculties.  He desired nothing less than to be tried for murder, because he had taken a short cut to satisfy his wife’s caprice.  But that caprice had for its object the liberty of poor Faustina Montevarchi.  At all events, if he had made himself ridiculous, the ultimate purpose of his folly had been good, and had been accomplished.

All through the afternoon he paced his room, alternately in a state of profound dissatisfaction with himself, and in a condition of anxious curiosity about coming events.  He scarcely touched his food or noticed the attendant who entered half a dozen times to perform his various offices.  Again the night closed in, and once more he lay down to sleep, dreading the morning, and hoping to lose himself in dreams.  The fourth day was like the third, indeed, as far as his surroundings were concerned, but he had not foreseen that he would be a prey to such gnawing anxiety as he suffered, still less, perhaps, that he should grow almost desperate for a sight of Corona.  He was not a man who made any exhibition of his feelings even when he was alone.  But the man who served him noticed that when he entered Giovanni was never reading, as he had always been doing at first.  He was either walking rapidly up and down or sitting idly in the big chair by the window.  His face was quiet and pale, even solemn at times.  The attendant was doubtless accustomed to sudden changes of mood in his prisoners, for he appeared to take no notice of the alteration in Giovanni’s manner.

It seemed as though the day would never end.  To a man of his active strength to walk about a room is not exercise; it hardly seems like motion at all, and yet Giovanni found it harder and harder to sit still as the hours wore on.  After an interval of comparative peace, his love for Corona had overwhelmed him again, and with tenfold force.  To be shut up in a cell without the possibility of seeing her,