The speaker was a strange, dark-looking woman, in coarse woollen garments. She hobbled as she walked, assisted by a heavy staff, and seeming to suffer equally from lameness and from age. Her thin depressed lips, that ever sunk as she spoke into the cavity of the mouth, which, in the process of time, had been denuded of nearly all its teeth; her yellow wrinkled visage, and thin gray hairs, that escaped from the close black cap which covered her head, declared the presence of very great age. But her eye shone still with something even more lively and impressive than a youthful fire. It had a sort of spiritual intensity. Nothing, indeed, could have been more brilliant, or, seemingly, more unnatural. But hers was a nature of which we may not judge by common laws. She was no common woman, and her whole life was characterized by mystery. She was known in Venice as the "Spanish Gipsy;" was supposed to be secretly a Jewess, and had only escaped from being punished as a sorceress by her profound and most exemplary public devotions. But she was known, nevertheless, as an enchantress, a magician, a prophetess; and her palmistry, her magic, her symbols, signs and talismans, were all held in great repute by the superstitious and the youthful of the ocean city. Giovanni Gradenigo himself, obeying the popular custom, had consulted her; and now, as he heard her voice, he raised his eyes, and started forward with the impulse of one who suddenly darts from under the gliding knife of the assassin. Before Nicolo could interfere, he had leapt down the steps, and darted to the quay from which the old woman was about to step into a gondola. She awaited his coming with a smile of peculiar meaning, as she repeated her inquiry: "Why are not you at Olivolo?" He answered the question by another, grasping her wrist violently as he spoke. "Did you not promise that she should wed with me--that she should be mine--mine only?" "Well!" she answered calmly, without struggling or seeking to extricate her arm from the strong hold which he had taken upon it. "Well! and even now the rites are in progress which bind her to Ulric Barberigo!" "She will never wed Ulric Barberigo," was the quiet answer. "Why left you Olivolo?" she continued. "Could I remain and look upon these hated nuptials--could I be patient and see her driven like a sheep to the sacrifice? I fled from the spectacle, as if the knife of the butcher were already in my own heart."