Standing by the table, and watching his nervous hands that were busy with the papers again, she unconsciously read the clearly engrossed superscription on a heavy lawyer’s envelope:—
The Will of His Excellency Don Diego Silani,
Count of Montalto
Maria bit her lip as she turned away, realising what that meant. It was no wonder that her husband was preoccupied just then, for she could not help suspecting that he had been in the act of drafting a new will when she had interrupted him, and she guessed that its tenor would be very different from that of the old one which lay before him, and which must have been made a good many years ago, for the thick envelope had the unmistakable, faded look of a document long put away with others. He had just said, too, that she would never need her own money again; but he had also told her that the matter was very complicated.
As she moved away he rose quickly to open the door. That was one of those formal little acts of courtesy which he had rarely omitted since they had been married.
She went back to her own room much more disturbed than when she had left it ten minutes earlier. Her knowledge of her husband’s mind and character told her that he would find arguments for putting off anything like real action until it might be too late to act at all; and yet her own ultimate advantage was doubtless the very reason why he had resented being disturbed.
It was not her fault if another image rose before her mental vision just then; but she drove it away so fiercely that it disappeared at once.
That afternoon, when they were driving together, they came to no conclusion. Montalto was afraid of being overheard by the men on the box, and he talked in French. But he was less at home in that language than most Romans are, and found it much more easy to say what he knew how to say, than to express what he really meant. Maria did not know Spanish, which he now spoke better than Italian, from having lived in Spain and spoken it with his mother during so many years. Maria chafed as she felt that precious time was passing, and that such a wretched obstacle as a servant not quite certainly within hearing was making it impossible to talk freely.
In the evening he was tired, and at first almost refused to refer to the subject. He said at last, however, that Schmidt was evidently in collusion with the South Italian gangs of malefactors, with the Camorra of Naples and the Mala Vita of Palermo. The letter showed this plainly enough, he said, and those people were capable of anything, especially including murder. To try and catch Signor Carlo Pozzi or Signor Paolo Pizzuti would be folly; no such persons existed, and if any one representing himself as either at a post office were actually arrested, it would be impossible to extract a word from him. Those men would go silently to prison for years, rather than betray an accomplice and be knived or shot in the back for it within twenty-four hours. There were many instances of this, Montalto said, and Schmidt had given another proof of his intelligence in demanding that the money should be paid through the Camorra or the Mala Vita. He added petulantly that he wished Schmidt were with him still, because only Schmidt could be clever enough to catch himself.