The Marquis Marinelli.
CLAUDIA.
True. Hear, then, Marquis Marinelli. Your name, accompanied with a curse----but no--I will not wrong the noble man--the curse was inferred by myself--your name was the last word uttered by the dying Count.
MARINELLI.
The dying Count? Count Appiani?----You hear, Madam, what most surprises me in this your strange address--the dying Count?--What else you mean to imply, I know not.
CLAUDIA (with asperity, and in a deliberate tone).
Marinelli was the last word uttered by the dying Count.--Do you understand me now? I myself did not at first understand it, though it was spoken in a tone--a tone which I still hear. Where were my senses that I could not understand it instantly?
MARINELLI.
Well, Madam, I was always the Count's friend--his intimate friend. If, therefore, he pronounced my name at the hour of death----