"Then whose is it? If it is not your fault, whose fault is it?" she

said, and the Baron thought her red eyes flashed up at him with an

expression of hate. He took the blow full in the face, but made no

reply, and his silence broke her answer.

"No, no, that was too bad," she said, and she reached over to him, and

he kissed her and then sat down beside her and took her hand and held

it. At the next moment her brilliant eyes had filled with tears and her

head was down and the hot drops were falling on to the back of his hand.

"I suppose it is all over," she said.

"Don't say that," he answered. "We don't know what a day may bring

forth. Before long I may have it in my power to silence every slander

and justify you in the eyes of all."

At that she raised her head with a smile and seemed to look beyond the

Baron at something in the vague distance, while the glass top of the

table, which had been clouded by her breath, cleared gradually, and

revealed a large house almost hidden among trees. It was a photograph of

the Baron's castle in the Alban hills.

"Only," continued the Baron, "you must get rid of that man Bruno."

"I will discharge him this very day--I will! I will! I will!"

There was an intense bitterness in the thought that what David Rossi had

said must have come of what her own servant told him--that Bruno had

watched her in her own house day by day, and that time after time the

two men had discussed her between them.

"I could kill him," she said.

"Bruno Rocco?"

"No, David Rossi."

"Have patience; he shall be punished," said the Baron.

"How?"

"He shall be put on his trial."

"What for?"

"Sedition. The law allows a man to say what he will about a Prime

Minister, but he must not foretell the overthrow of the King. The fellow

has gone too far at last. He shall go to Santo Stefano."

"What good will that do?"

"He will be silenced--and crushed."

She looked at the Baron with a sidelong smile, and something in her

heart, which she did not understand, made her laugh at him.

"Do you imagine you can crush a man like that by trying and condemning

him?" she said. "He has insulted and humiliated me, but I'm not silly

enough to deceive myself. Try him, condemn him, and he will be greater

in his prison than the King on his throne."




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