She hated him for his own sake; she hated him because she was faithful to Nino; she hated him because he perhaps knew of her secret love for my boy.
Poor maiden, shut up for days and weeks to come with a man she dreaded and scorned at once! The sight of her recalled to me that I had in my pocket the letter Nino had sent me for her, weeks before, and which I had found no means of delivering since I had been in Fillettino.
Suddenly I was seized with a mad determination to deliver it at any cost.

The baron bowed me out of the gate, and I paused outside when the ponderous door had swung on its hinges and his footsteps were echoing back through the court.
I sat down on the parapet of the bridle-path, and with my knife cut some of the stitches that sewed my money between my two waistcoats.

I took out one of the bills of a hundred francs that were concealed within, I found the letter Nino had sent me for Hedwig, and I once more rang the bell.

The man who had admitted me came again, and looked at me in some astonishment.

But I gave him no time to question me.
"Here is a note for a hundred francs," I said.