Her cheeks had turned perfectly colorless. Her astonishment at seeing the young nobleman appeared to have some sensation of terror mingled with it. The waiting-woman who happened to stand by her side instinctively stretched out an arm to support her, observing that she caught at the edge of the table as Fabio hurried round to get behind it and speak to her. When he drew near, her head drooped on her breast, and she said, faintly: “I never knew you were at Pisa; I never thought you would be here. Oh, I am true to what I said in my letter, though I seem so false to it!” “I want to speak to you about the letter--to tell you how carefully I have kept it, how often I have read it,” said Fabio. She turned away her head, and tried hard to repress the tears that would force their way into her eyes “We should never have met,” she said; “never, never have met again!” Before Fabio could reply, the waiting-woman by Nanina’s side interposed. “For Heaven’s sake, don’t stop speaking to her here!” she exclaimed, impatiently. “If the steward or one of the upper servants was to come in, you would get her into dreadful trouble. Wait till to-morrow, and find some fitter place than this.” Fabio felt the justice of the reproof immediately. He tore a leaf out of his pocketbook, and wrote on it, “I must tell you how I honor and thank you for that letter. To-morrow--ten o’clock--the wicket-gate at the back of the Ascoli gardens. Believe in my truth and honor, Nanina, for I believe implicitly in yours.” Having written these lines, he took from among his bunch of watch-seals a little key, wrapped it up in the note, and pressed it into her hand. In spite of himself his fingers lingered round hers, and he was on the point of speaking to her again, when he saw the waiting-woman’s hand, which was just raised to motion him away, suddenly drop. Her color changed at the same moment, and she looked fixedly across the table. He turned round immediately, and saw a masked woman standing alone in the room, dressed entirely in yellow from head to foot. She had a yellow hood, a yellow half-mask with deep fringe hanging down over her mouth, and a yellow domino, cut at the sleeves and edges into long flame-shaped points, which waved backward and forward tremulously in the light air wafted through the doorway. The woman’s black eyes seemed to gleam with an evil brightness through the sight-holes of the mask, and the tawny fringe hanging before her mouth fluttered slowly with every breath she drew. Without a word or a gesture she stood before the table, and her gleaming black eyes fixed steadily on Fabio the instant he confronted her. A sudden chill struck through him, as he observed that the yellow of the stranger’s domino and mask was of precisely the same shade as the yellow of the hangings and furniture which his wife had chosen after their marriage for the decoration of her favorite sitting-room.