"Who was his enemy?"
"It is no secret, but I must leave him to say."
"You were a witness of the fight?"
"I saw it all."
"The man was one of your party!
"Ah!" exclaimed Vittoria, "lose no time with me, Countess Anna, go to him at once, for though he lived when I left him, he was bleeding; I cannot say that he was not dying, and he has not a friend near."
Anna murmured like one overborne by calamity. "My brother struck down one day—he the next!" She covered her face a moment, and unclosed it to explain that she wept for her brother, who had been murdered, stabbed in Bologna.
"Was it Count Ammiani who did this?" she asked passionately.
Vittoria shook her head; she was divining a dreadful thing in relation to the death of Count Paul.
"It was not?" said Anna. "They had a misunderstanding, I know. But you tell me the man fought with a dagger. It could not be Count Ammiani. The dagger is an assassin's weapon, and there are men of honour in Italy still."