‘Rodolfo Blosse.
‘Witness: Baldassare del Castiglione,
‘Piedmont Lancers.’
Castiglione had not hesitated to force the blackmailer to declare the letters to be forgeries. Maria guessed why he had done that, as she sat reading the paper a second time. He had suspected Schmidt of having really forged such words as she would never have written, she thought; and he had in some way extracted the truth from the man who signed the paper. In that case her danger had been even greater than she had imagined. What abominations might not have been forged in her handwriting! Yes, Castiglione was a man of action, indeed, as the monk had said. Poor Montalto had hesitated and done nothing for days, and in a little while some vile newspaper would have scattered broadcast a scandal from which no recovery would have been possible. But within twenty-four hours after she had spoken to Padre Bonaventura the man who loved her had found the chief criminal and had made him sign a document, on the strength of which no judge would hesitate to send the whole gang to penal servitude. ‘Witness, Baldassare del Castiglione’; the well-loved name rang in her ears, the name of a man on whose honour there was no slur before the world, nor any in her inmost thoughts now; a name after which every officer and non-commissioned officer in the regiment would write his own blindfold, if need were, because they all knew him and trusted him.
She folded the paper slowly, letting her fingers linger where his had touched it last, and she put it back into the cut envelope and looked at the seal. It was the same he had used long ago, in the dark ages of her life—a plain, old-fashioned shield with his simple arms and the motto in Latin: Si omnes ego non.
Maria knew whence it was taken, with but a slight change. There was a mark in the margin of her old missal at the Gospel for Wednesday in Holy Week opposite the words, and the whole line read, ‘Though all forsake Thee, I will not forsake Thee.’ She had never had the courage to erase that mark, not even in the years when she had deceived herself. Year after year, when the day came round, she had read the noble words; and many times she had read them bitterly, thinking of what followed afterwards and of him who, having spoken them, denied not once but thrice, and with an oath. She read them now on the dark wax, under the bright light, and after a little while she pressed the seal gently to her lips, the seal that held the motto she loved, not the paper he had touched.
‘In all honour,’ she said gravely, under her breath.
CHAPTER XXII
Soon after five o’clock the Duca di Casalmaggiore sent in his card to Monsieur de Maurienne. The diplomatist was engaged in examining an etching by Robetta with a huge lens, under a strong light, and was too much interested to desist until the Colonel was actually in the room. He received his visitor, whom he knew very well, with that formal courtesy which is considered becoming when an affair of honour is to be discussed. He had expected a couple of officers of Castiglione’s rank, and had asked two of his own friends to hold themselves in readiness if he telephoned for them. He was surprised that only one representative should appear for his adversary, and that he should be no less a personage than the Colonel of the regiment.