"Ah, so! And is he fit to be a Cardinal?" queried the Princesse
D'Agramont dubiously.
Angela gave her a quick look, but had no time to reply as at that moment a servant entered and announced, "Monsignor Moretti!"
Angela started nervously.
"Moretti!" she said in a low tone, "I thought he had left Paris!"
Before she had time to say any more the visitor himself entered, a tall spare priest with a dark narrow countenance of the true Tuscan type,—a face in which the small furtive eyes twinkled with a peculiarly hard brilliancy as though they were luminous pebbles. He walked into the room with a kind of aggressive dignity common to many Italians, and made a slight sign of the cross in air as the two ladies saluted him.
"Pardon me, Mesdames, for this intrusion," he said in a harsh metallic voice, "But I hear that the Abbe Vergniaud is in this house,—and that Cardinal Felix Bonpre has received him here SINCE" (and he emphasised the word "since") "the shameful scene of this morning. My business in Paris is ended for the moment; and I am returning to Italy to-night,—but I wish to know if the Abbe has anything to say through me to His Holiness the Pope in extenuation of his conduct before I perform the painful duty of narrating this distressing affair at the Vatican."
"Will you see him for yourself, Monsignor?" said Angela quietly, offering to lead the way out of the studio, "You will no doubt obtain a more direct and explicit answer from the Abbe personally."
For a moment Moretti hesitated. Princesse D'Agramont saw his indecision, and her smile had a touch of malice in it as she said,
"It is a little difficult to know how to address the Abbe to-day, is it not, Monsignor? For of course he is no longer an Abbe—no longer a priest of Holy Church! Helas! When anybody takes to telling the truth in public the results are almost sure to be calamitous!"
Moretti turned upon her with swift asperity.