Reinhold did not let the man complete his sentence. He thrust him aside, hurried through the ante-room, and tore open the drawing-room door. The room was empty, equally so the adjoining boudoir; the doors of the remaining rooms stood wide open, nowhere was she whom he sought, not a sign of her; she had evidently left the house.
Reinhold saw that he came too late, and in the overwhelming consciousness of this discovery, he felt vaguely that Beatrice's flight had saved him from a crime. In his present state of mind he would have been capable of anything towards the abductor of his child. By calling all his strength together, he forced himself to be calm, and returned to the servant, who had not dared to follow him, but stood frightened and uncertain in the anteroom.
"Signora has gone then--since when?"
The servant hesitated in his reply. The questioner's face appeared to betoken no good.
"Marco, you must answer me! You see that I shall not be deterred by any excuse; you seek to deceive me, according to the Signora's commands. Once more, when did she go, and where?"
Marco was evidently not initiated into the secret, as he was not at all prepared for this question. However, he may have listened to part of the scene which took place the preceding evening between his mistress and Signor Rinaldo, and explained to-day's affair in his own way. It was quite in keeping with Beatrice's violent character, that she should now have left the town for a few days, if only to render it impossible to continue the performance of Rinaldo's opera, and that the latter should be beside himself with anger was easily comprehended. It was not, indeed, the first disagreement between the two, and all quarrels so far had always ended in a reconciliation. With the prospect of such a readjustment of affairs, the servant was clever enough not to injure himself with the ruling side, and therefore intimated that Signora had left the house early this morning, with the distinct order that all enquiries were to be replied to "that she was ill." She had driven away in her own carriage; where, he did not know.
"And where did she drive to?" asked Reinhold, breathlessly. "Have you not heard what address she gave the coachman?"
"I believe--to Maestro Gianelli's house."
"Gianelli! then he, too, is in the plot. Perhaps he may still be reached. Marco, so soon as Signora arrives, or any news of her, let me know at once! At once! I will pay you with gold for every word. Do not forget this!"
With these words, almost thrown at the servant in his flight, Reinhold hastened away. Marco looked astounded after him. To-day's scene was enacted much more tempestuously than any former ones under similar circumstances, and Signor Rinaldo's excitement surpassed anything he had seen before. What then had happened? The maestro could not possibly have eloped with Biancona? It really almost looked like it.