Edward had sat where his visitor had left him, the prey to the most poignant sorrow and agony of mind. To his own rash and criminal act in personating another man all this tragedy was due. Although he had, at times, told himself that Miranda would not be seated upon a throne without some opposition, he had never imagined that danger threatened the girl herself. She was so beautiful and tender-hearted, so delightfully modern, that the idea of her being the centre of a plot of scheming scoundrels had barely occurred to him. That an accident should have been the cause of her death was a stunning blow to the little man who sat in the sunlit drawing-room, gazing blankly at the wall before him.
He rose at last with a sigh, and passed out through the French windows on to the balcony. Below him rolled the carriages and motors of the fashionable world of Corbo; from the smart café a little up the boulevard came the sound of strings of a gipsy orchestra and the laughter and chatter of the crowd of loungers who were taking their absinthe. Edward told himself that in the whole of San Pietro there was no house afflicted as was Venta Villa. The flowering shrubs on the balcony on which he stood, the gaudy red-striped awning over his head seemed to mock him, and he turned from the gay scene with a little sob. It was then that he saw Anna Paluda. She was sitting in a low wicker chair, and like him had been gazing out upon the boulevard and on to the blue of the bay beyond.
She beckoned Edward to come to her side, and standing there, one hand resting on the little iron railing, he listened while the lady told him of her disbelief in no undecided voice.
Edward's expression changed as he drank in her words, and the hand on the railing tightened its hold till the knuckles showed white patches of skin. The suggestion of doubt on what he had looked upon as an accepted tragedy was acting as balm upon his spirits, and all the hidden power of his brain was responding to the call and demanding action—deeds.
"And you say you watched him?"
"Yes, from this balcony. As he was getting into the cab, the driver who was helping him stumbled a little. I distinctly saw Señor Mozara put out his right hand and grasp the back of the hood. I had doubted before in my own mind, but this is certain. The lieutenant's right arm is as sound as his left, for all his surgical bandages. Again, why should so important a personage as the nephew of Señor Luazo call in the services of an unknown medical man, instead of the family practitioner?"
The lady paused for a moment, then went on fiercely—
"Oh! I can see it all now. Dasso, the cursed regicide, is at the bottom of this. I, who have suspected the man, have watched his friends. I have seen meaning looks, glances pass from evil eye to evil eye. Mr. Sydney—you will understand that I, too, have a quarrel with Dasso. The hand that struck down Queen Elene struck down my child—the baby at whose tomb I, her mother, have to sorrow in secret——"
Edward laid a hand lightly on the weeping woman's shoulder.
"And my sorrow, Anna, my anguish! Have you thought of that, of what it means to me, who have indirectly brought Miranda to this?"