"Less strange than the one your Eminence has believed since last night," returned Giovanni calmly.
"I do not know. It is more easy for me to believe that the girl was momentarily out of her mind than that you, whom I have known all my life, should have done such a thing. Besides, in telling me your story, you have never once positively asserted that you did it. You have only explained that it would have been possible for a man so disposed to accomplish the murder unsuspected."
"Is a man obliged to incriminate himself directly? It seems to me that in giving myself up I have done all that a man's conscience can possibly require—outside of the confessional. I shall be tried, and my lawyer will do what he can to obtain my acquittal."
"That is poor logic. Whether you confess or not, you have accused yourself in a way that must tell against you very strongly. You really leave me no choice."
"Your Eminence has only to do what I request, to liberate Donna
Faustina and to send me to prison."
"You are a very strange man," said the cardinal in a musing tone, as he leaned back in his chair and scrutinised Giovanni's pale, impenetrable face.
"I am a desperate man, that is all."
"Will you give me your word of honour that Faustina Montevarchi is innocent?"
"Yes," answered Giovanni without the slightest hesitation, and meeting the gaze of the cardinal's bright eyes unflinchingly.
The latter paused a moment, and then turned in his chair, and taking a piece of paper wrote a few words upon it. Then he rang a little hand-bell that stood beside him. His servant entered, as he was folding and sealing the note.