As he did so he observed
that certain repairs were needed in an adjoining building which
belonged to his father, and determined that a mason should be sent
there on the next day. Then he turned in under the archway, not passing
through it into the court, and there he stood looking up at the window,
in which Nina's small solitary lamp was twinkling. He knew that she was
sitting by the light, and that she was working. He knew that she would
be raised almost to a seventh heaven of delight if he would only call
her to the door and speak to her a dozen words before he returned to
his home. But he had no thought of doing it. Was it possible that she
should have this document in her keeping?--that was the thought that
filled his mind. He had bribed Lotta Luxa, and Lotta had sworn by her
Christian gods that the deed was in Nina's hands. If the thing was
false, why should they all conspire to tell the same falsehood? And yet
he knew that they were false in their natures. Their manner, the words
of each of them, betrayed something of falsehood to his well-tuned
ear, to his acute eye, to his sharp senses.
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