The lieutenant made a sign to his follower, who instantly quitted the room.
“There must be some mistake in this, signor,” said the old porter, approaching the lieutenant and speaking in a voice tremulous with emotion. “The master whom I serve, and whom you accuse, is incapable of the deed imputed to him.”
“Yes. God knows how truly you speak!” ejaculated Wagner, raising his head. “That girl—oh! sooner than have harmed one single hair of her head—— But how know you that it is Agnes who is murdered?” he cried abruptly, turning toward the lieutenant.
“It was you who said it, signor,” calmly replied the officer, as he fixed his dark eyes keenly upon Fernand.
“Oh! it was a surmise—a conjecture—because I parted with Agnes a short time ago in the garden,” exclaimed Wagner, speaking in hurried and broken sentences.
“Behold the victim!” said the lieutenant, who had approached the window, from which he was looking.
Wagner sprung from his couch, and glanced forth into the garden beneath.
The sbirri were advancing along the gravel pathway, bearing amongst them the corpse of Agnes upon whose pallid countenance the morning sunbeams were dancing, as if in mockery even at death.
“Holy Virgin! it is indeed Agnes!” cried Wagner, in a tone of the most profound heart-rending anguish, and he fell back senseless in the arms of the lieutenant.
An hour afterward, Fernand Wagner was the inmate of a dungeon beneath the palace inhabited by the Duke of Florence.