When Count Guiccioli crossed the threshold of the candle-lighted room he came upon a strange scene. Teresa bent over the bed, her face colorless as a mask. Her father, opposite, to whom she had as yet told nothing, was tying a temporary bandage. Between them lay the inert form of the man against whom his own morbid rage had been amassing. His eyes flared. Where had she found him? Had Trevanion bungled or betrayed? Did she guess? And guessing, had she brought him to this house, in satanic irony, to die before his very sight?
At the suspicion the fever of his moody eyes flew to his face. His countenance became distorted. He burst upon them with a crackling exclamation: “The Venetian dog! Who has dared fetch him here?”
“Zitto!” said Count Gamba pettishly. “Don’t you see the man is wounded?”
“Wounded or whole, by the body of Bacchus! He shall go back to-night to Bologna!” He took a menacing step forward.
“How did you know he was lodged there?”
Teresa’s steely inquiry stayed him. She had lifted her face, calm as a white moon. He stopped, nonplussed.
“You had good reason to know.” She drew from her belt a Malay kriss, its blade stained with red. “This is what struck him. It belonged to you. Am I to learn what it means to bear the name of a murderer?”
Her father stared his amazement. “Dio santissimo!” he exclaimed. Was this why she had been so pale?
Before her movement her husband had shrunk involuntarily. “I knew nothing of it,” he said in a muffled fury; “I am just come from Faenza.”