nobles, princes themselves have been glad to visit me in person, and reap the fruit of my studies and my experience. But I tell you, Célandine," and here the little man smote his breast, and for the moment looked every inch a champion, "I am the same Stefano Bartoletti. I swear to you that if you will but join me heart and hand in this, the last and greatest of my schemes, I will never rest till I have found the boy, and brought him back into his mother's arms!"
She gave a wild, fierce cry of joy, and was hugging the brown hand to her bosom once more.
"Money," observed the Signor, walking thoughtfully up and down the room as soon as she had sufficiently composed herself to listen, "money, you perceive, is the one thing we require. Money alone can overcome this, like all other difficulties on earth. Money in sufficient quantity would make me independent, contented, perhaps happy." Here he stole a tender look in the Quadroon's face. "Money would enable me to quit these cold, dull regions; this constrained, confined, unnatural life. Money would restore me my liberty, and you your child. Célandine, will you help me to get it?"
He had touched the right chord. There was eager hope and wild unscrupulous energy in her face while she answered—
"I will! I swear it! Heart and hand I go in with you for this object, and neither fire nor water, nor steel nor poison shall turn me now. You know me, Stefano. I will shrink from nothing. But it is—it is not a question of blood?"
"No, no!" he replied, laughing. "You, too, are unchanged, Célandine. Always in extremes. Make yourself easy on that score. It is but a trick of your former trade. None but yourself can do it half so well. I will explain it all in five minutes when I have finished this cup of wine. But, Célandine," and here her old admirer drew closer and whispered in her ear.
"I cannot tell," she laughed. "It is impossible to give an answer yet."
"And the price?" continued he, earnestly. "Surely it must have fallen now, though the Marquise is hard to deal with on such matters."
