"The Professor never liked him. But he was right. Have you seen him often?"
"Yes." Aurora laughed again. "He always turns up wherever we are, pretending that it is the most unexpected meeting in the world. He is just like a boy!"
"What do you mean? Is he in love with you?"
"With me? No! He is madly in love with my mother! Fancy such a thing! When he found that we were coming back to Rome he gave up his professorship in Milan, and he has come to live here so as to be able to see her. So I hear them talking a great deal, and he seems to have found out a great many things about your stepfather which nobody ever knew. He takes an extraordinary interest in him for some reason or other."
"What has he found out?" asked Marcello.
"Enough to hang him, if people could be hanged in Italy," Aurora answered.
"I should have thought Folco too clever to do anything really against the law," said Marcello, who did not seem much surprised at what she said.
"The Professor believes that it was he that tried to kill you."
"How is that possible?" Marcello asked, in great astonishment. "You would have seen him!"
"I did. You had not been gone three minutes when he came round to the gap in the bank where I was standing. He came from the side towards which I had seen you go. It was perfectly impossible that he should not have met you. The Professor says he must have known that you were there, looking at the storm, but that he did not know that I was with you, and that he was lying in wait for you to strike you from behind. If we had gone back together he would not have shown himself, that's all, and he would have waited for a better chance. If I had only followed you I should have seen what happened."