the drapery, so that the curtains made a funeral tabernacle for it. It was beyond my reach, but I could see that it was a frame shrouded in a black bag. It was evidently a picture: it must be a portrait. Why shrouded in black? Why there?
As I stood upon the steps, still holding back the curtains, still staring upward and wondering, I felt my foot forcibly seized, and looking down, saw a shrivelled, bony hand grasping it. It was the hand of the old custode, whose withered face, white and terrified, was turned beseechingly toward me. The forefinger of one hand was pressed over the mouth in sign of silence, while the other grasped my foot. I descended the steps, and the old woman seized both my hands with frenzied earnestness, and glared into my eyes, while her frame trembled, and upon her wan lips quivered the words:
"For the love of God, signor! For the love of God, signor!"
I waited patiently for her to speak, which she did at length, in a low, hurried, and appalled tone, begging me to leave the palace upon the moment, and if I had the slightest regard for the life of a miserable sinner, never to betray that I had penetrated so far as to see the bed and the shrouded portrait.
"I fell asleep, signor, and did not hear you when you came in from the garden. O Dio! O Dio!"
I left the yellow palace, and left Rieti, but not until I had learned the secret of that picture.
Ten years before, the Marquis di Sangrido concluded to marry. He was then sixty years old, a man of high family, of large fortune, of good person. He ordered the state carriage and drove to Rome, He was known everywhere, and was especially intimate with the Countess Ondella, who was the guardian of her orphan niece, Maddalena. The girl had grown up in a Venetian convent. She had seen no man but Padre Giuseppe, who wore long clothes like the women, and droned all the morning, and dozed all the afternoon, and did not seem to be a man. To him she confessed regularly every week. The old man usually went to sleep before the tale was over, for there were no very startling sins to confess, but occasionally strange thoughts and emotions, which Maddalena did not understand, nor the good Giuseppe either. On the whole, it was pleasant childish
