“Now tell me, Livia,” he said, “what brings you here to-night?”
She answered in an almost inaudible voice, “During the evening four different reporters came at different times to ask if we knew where you were.”
“Four reporters?” Beppo looked astounded.
“Then you have heard nothing? No one has been here?”
“The notice telling of my absence is still on the door downstairs. But why am I sought for?” he asked, bewildered.
The Marchesa Pescobaldi was trembling violently now; it was if she had the ague. He took her cold hand in his.
“Come, Livia, calm yourself! I have done nothing—I swear it!”
“Of course I know that you have done nothing,” she whispered, and then she held out with shaking fingers a strip of thin paper.
Beppo Polda did not know that it was what all the world over is familiar to newspaper men as “flimsy.”
He took it in his hand, and turning away from her held it close up under a lamp which hung from the high ceiling.