“Yes, I forgive you. The fault was not all yours. He insulted you—he struck you—and you were maddened—and the dagger was there. It was a fatality. Let us think of it no more. We cannot bring him back. It is best to forget.”
“You know, Lisa, that you have it in your power to blight my life—to tell the world what I did that night—to give me up to the strong arm of the law to answer for the life I destroyed. You could do that if you liked. Do you mean to do it?”
“No,” she said resolutely.
“And you, Signora,” to the aunt, “are you of the same mind as your niece?”
“In all things. Lisa is much cleverer than her poor old aunt. I do as she does.”
“But some day, Fiordelisa, you might change your mind,” urged Vansittart. “Women are capricious. You might take it into your head to betray me—to tell people of that tragedy in Venice, and that I was the chief actor in it.”
“Not for the world would I tell anything that would injure you,” she said.
“Do you mean that, Lisa?”
“A thousand times yes.”
“Promise then, thus, with your hand in mine,” taking her hand as he spoke, “promise by the Mother of God and by His Saints that, come what may, you will never tell how I stabbed an unarmed man in the Caffè Florian. Promise that as I am frank and true with you, so you will deal frankly and fairly by me, and will do no act and will say no word to my injury.”