“All the more reason that we should see him through.”
Teresa’s tone was uncompromising. Wilbraham half liked her for it, and was half provoked. It gave him a slightly malicious pleasure to find at the questura that all her fluent and impetuous Italian could not obviate the usual delay. Wilbraham felt it must be his duty to calm her, as she walked with an extraordinary swift grace up and down the room in which they waited; but his efforts failed, and evidently she was neither thinking of herself nor her companion. He, on his part, found it difficult to understand or sympathise with her extreme remorse. Cesare, with his excited, somewhat theatrical gestures, seemed to him a man who, if he had not committed one crime, was probably well up to the throat in others. The very reason which had awakened Teresa’s compassion—that he had been the slayer of his sister—at once destroyed any germ of pity in Wilbraham’s mind; his theory of cause and effect being more direct and more of the nature of a sledgehammer than Teresa’s.
Shown into another room, the marchesa hurried eagerly to a gentleman who was sitting, and who rose courteously.
“The Marchesa di Sant’ Eustachio, I believe?” he said, glancing at the card in his hand. “You have come, doubtless, eccellenza, about this affair of your purse?”
“It was all a mistake. I have come to say how grieved I am,” began Teresa breathlessly. “When I reached home my sister told me she had seen the man pick it up; that was what he said. I am so very, very sorry that I did not believe him.”
The questor looked incredulous.
“She did not speak of this before, however?”
“She had no time. I missed my purse and ran after him. When I reached home she told me. Pray, signore, do me the kindness to send one of your men to tell him that it was a mistake.”
“As to that, he is already here, marchesa. This gentleman!”—he bowed to Wilbraham—“was desirous that no time should be lost, and my own view coincided with his.”
Teresa looked very unhappy.