"Is it possible? I myself was in Rome during the same year and painted this picture at that time. Were—were you in the city long?" he concluded, in a voice that trembled in spite of himself.
"From January until—until June."
For the second time that evening Mr. Goddard suppressed a groan with a cough.
"Ah! It is a singular coincidence, is it not, that I also was there during those months?" he finally managed to articulate.
"A coincidence?" his companion repeated, with a slight lifting of her shapely brows, a curious gleam in her eyes. Then throwing back her head with an air of defiance which was intensified by the glitter of those magnificent stones which crowned her lustrous hair, and with a peculiar cadence ringing through her tones, she observed: "Rome is a lovely city—do you not think so? And, as it happened, I resided in a delightful portion of it. Possibly you may remember the locality. It was a charming little house, with beautiful trees—oleander, orange, and fig—growing all around the spacious court. This pretty ideal home was Number 34, Via Nationale."
The wretched man stared helplessly at her for one brief moment when she had concluded, then a cry of despair burst from him.
"Oh, God! I knew it! You—you are Isabel?"
"Yes."
"Then you were not—you did not—"
"Die? No," was the brief response; but the beautiful eyes looking so steadily into his seemed to burn into his very soul.