Castiglione moved and his face hardened at once. He thought he had been mistaken after all, and that his visitor was some scoundrel in disguise, whom he should presently throw downstairs or hand over to the police.
‘I do not know her name,’ continued Padre Bonaventura with perfect calm. ‘She only told me yours yesterday. She has been to confess to me three times since last May. She is in great danger and you must help her.’
A romantic foreigner might have scented some strange mystery of the imaginary Italian life described by English poets. Castiglione, who knew his own country well, only suspected that a fraud was being attempted, with a view to extracting money from him; or else that the monk was the ignoble emissary of some one of the fair and free who live between two worlds and feed the altar of Ashtaroth with human sacrifice.
‘Unless you can be more explicit,’ he said coldly, ‘I shall not listen to any more of this.’
An angry light came into the old Capuchin’s deep-set eyes, for he understood what Castiglione was thinking. But he checked the retort and told the facts quickly.
‘The lady has seven letters written to her by you during last April and May.’
The soldier’s manner changed instantly.
‘Have you come from her to bring them back to me, Father?’ he asked sadly.
‘No. They were stolen by a steward, photographed, and returned. The man has absconded, and he, or his accomplices, demand a hundred and fifty thousand francs; if the money is not paid in four days, the letters will be published here and in Naples.’
‘Not if I am alive,’ said Castiglione, whose face was not good to see just then, though he sat quite quietly in his chair.