"Gone! I'll follow him to hell!" roars Nobili "Who is he?"
"Possibly he may find his own way there in time," answers Orazio, with a sneer. He rises so as to increase the distance between himself and Prince Ruspoli. "But as yet the wretch crawls on mother earth."
"Silence, Orazio!" shouts Ruspoli, "or you may go there yourself quicker than Marescotti."
"Marescotti! Is that the name?" cries Nobili, with a hungry eye, that seems to thirst for vengeance. "Who is Marescotti?"
"This is some horrid fiction," Nobili mutters to himself. Stay!—Where had he heard that name lately? He gnawed his fingers until the blood came, and a crimson drop fell upon the marble floor. Suddenly an icy chill rose at his heart. He could not breathe. He sank into a chair—then rose again, and stood before Orsetti with a face out of which ten years of youth had fled. Yes, Marescotti—that is the very man Enrica had mentioned to him under the trees at Corellia. Each letter of it blazes in fire before his eyes. Yes—she had said Marescotti had read her eyes. "O God!" and Nobili groans aloud, and buries his face within his hands.
"You take this too much to heart, my dear Mario," Count Orsetti said; "indeed you do, else I would not say so. Remember there is nothing proved. Be careful," Orsetti whispered in the other's ear, glancing round. Every eye was riveted on Nobili.
Orsetti felt that Nobili had forgotten the public place and the others present—such as Count Malatesta, Orazio Franchi, and Baldassare, who, though they had not spoken, had devoured every word.
"It is nothing but a sonnet found among Marescotti's papers." Orsetti now was speaking. "Marescotti has fled from the police. Nothing but a sonnet addressed to the lady—a poet's day-dream—untrue of course."
"Will no one tell me what the sonnet said?" demanded Nobili. He had mastered himself for the moment.
"Stuff, stuff!" cried Ruspoli. "Every pretty woman has heaps of sonnets and admirers. It is a brevet of beauty. After all this row, it was only an offer of marriage made to Count Marescotti and refused by him. Probably the lady never knew it."