“You do not need to trouble yourself about Beppo Polda. By a strange and wonderful piece of good fortune for him, poor fellow, he killed himself accidentally in a shooting gallery the very night he arrived in Rome—before there was time for him to have learnt the awful truth.”
Lily’s lip quivered, the tears ran down her face. And yet—yes, she was glad!
“And Cristina?” she ventured. “What do you think has really happened to her, Monsieur Popeau?”
“I think I know what has happened to Cristina,” he said mysteriously. Then he stopped walking, and looked round, but there was no one near enough to hear what he had suddenly made up his mind to tell her. He knew that he could trust her.
“I am quite sure that the unhappy woman fled on that awful night down to the valley, and then up to old Monaco, to the Convent of the White Sisters,” he said in a low voice.
Before Lily’s inward vision there rose up the great forbidding-looking iron gates which gave access to the sunny courtyard beyond. She saw again the stately Mother Superior, heard her reprove poor Cristina, kindly but firmly, for the wild way in which she had spoken of herself.
“The Order was founded by one of Cristina’s own ancestresses,” went on the Frenchman, “and there has always been a close connection between the Convent and the Poldas. It is possible, but I do not say it is likely—for after all, women are women, even when they wear the Holy Habit—that the nuns have not yet heard the story of what has happened at La Solitude, though all Monaco is ringing with it! But in any case, the nuns would never give Cristina up to justice. The poor soul will spend her life henceforth in work and prayer, repenting of her part in her wicked sister-in-law’s crimes, and praying for Beppo Polda’s soul.”
“I cannot understand how Cristina could ever have allowed herself to be used in that way,” said Lily in a deeply troubled tone. “She was so very kind and gentle.”
“I have little doubt that at first she was but an unconscious accomplice, and that at last the Count and Countess had to take her into their confidence. You may think of her now as being happier than she has been for years and years, for her life must have been one long torture. Yes, during the last two days I have liked to think of poor Cristina in that quiet old convent on the hill,” he said meditatively. “There must be wonderful views of both sea and land from those of the nuns’ cells which overlook the sea.”
“Two days ago?” said Lily suddenly. “Then did something happen two days ago that made you feel sure that Cristina had taken refuge there?”