"
Finello obeyed. After approaching just near enough to see the
countenances of the party on shore, and to be barked at lustily
by the dog, they turned the boat's head again toward the offing.
"A pleasant voyage, gentlemen," cried the clear voice of the
little girl. They waved their hats in return; and then saw her
run to the dog and take him by the forelegs. "Play, Nanina," they
heard her say. "I have not half done with my partner yet." The
guitar sounded once more, and the grotesque dog was on his hind
legs in a moment.
"I had heard that he was well again, that he had married her
lately, and that he was away with her and her sister, and his
child by the first wife," said D'Arbino; "but I had no suspicion
that their place of retirement was so near us. It is too soon to
break in upon their happiness, or I should have felt inclined to
run the boat on shore."
"I never heard the end of that strange adventure of the Yellow
Mask," said Finello. "There was a priest mixed up in it, was
there not?"
"Yes; but nobody seems to know exactly what has become of him. He
was sent for to Rome, and has never been heard of since. One
report is, that he has been condemned to some mysterious penal
seclusion by his ecclesiastical superiors--another, that he has
volunteered, as a sort of Forlorn Hope, to accept a colonial
curacy among rough people, and in a pestilential climate.
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