There can be no rich heiress whom he might want to carry off living here, so that can't be what he has come for.

I think there must be some secret meeting, for as we came across the lagoon I saw one or two beats in the distance heading in this direction.

Anyhow, I mean to try and find out what it all means." "You had better not, sir," Giuseppi said earnestly.

"If there is any plot on foot we had best not get mixed up in it.

No one is too high or too low to escape the vengeance of the council, if found plotting against the state; and before now gondolas, staved in and empty, have been found drifting on the lagoons, and the men who rowed them have never been heard of again.