"Indeed," said Ercole, "I cannot imagine why they should say that it did! Some one must have put the story about. A servant, perhaps, whom you sent away."
"We did not send Regina away," answered Paoluccio, still furious. "She ran away in the night, about that time. But, as you say, she may have invented the story and sent the newspaper men here to worry our lives with their questions, out of mere spite."
"Who was this Regina?" Ercole asked. "What has she to do with it?"
"Regina? She was the servant girl we had before this one. We took her out of charity."
"The daughter of some relation, no doubt," Ercole suggested.
"May that never be, if it please the Madonna!" cried Paoluccio. "A relation? Thank God we have always been honest people in my father's house! No, it was not a relation. She came of a crooked race. Her mother took a lover, and her father killed him, here on the Frascati road, and almost killed her too; but the law gave him the right and he went free."
"And then, what did he do?" asked Ercole, slowly putting the remains of his bread into his canvas bag.
"What did he do? He went away and never came back. What should he do?"
"Quite right. And the woman, what became of her?"
"She took other men, for she had no shame. And at last one of them was jealous, and struck her on the head with a paving stone, not meaning to kill her; but she died."