"Is it true?" he cried, a score of times.
"Yes, it is all true," said Gesualdo. His voice was stern and cold: he could not tell what share this man might not have had in the crime.
"But she is innocent as that bird in the air," screamed her lover, pointing to a scops owl which was sailing above the cypresses.
Gesualdo bowed his head and spread out his hands, palm downward, in a gesture which meant hopeless doubt.
"I went away at dark into the town to buy cattle," said the steward, with sobs in his throat. "I rode out by the opposite road. I knew naught of it. Oh, my God, why was I not here? They should not have taken her without its costing them hard."
"You would have done her no good," said Gesualdo, coldly. "You have done her harm enough already," he added, after a pause. Falko did not resent the words: the tears were falling like rain down his cheeks, his hands were clinched on his saddle-bow, the horse stretched its foam-flecked neck unheeded.
"Who did it? Who could do it? He had many enemies. He was a hard man," he muttered.
Gesualdo gave a gesture of hopeless doubt and ignorance. He looked down on the lover's handsome face and head in the moonlight. There was a strange expression in his own eyes.
"Curse you for a cold-hearted priest," thought the young steward, with bitterness. Then he wheeled his horse sharply round, and, without any other word, rode off towards his home in the glistening white light, to stable his weary horse, and to saddle another to ride into the larger village of Sant' Arturo. It was past midnight; he could do no good; he could see no one; but it was a relief to him to be in movement; he felt that it would choke him to sit and sup and sleep and smoke as usual in his quiet house among the magnolias and the myrtles, whilst the love of his life lay alone in her misery.
All gladness which would at any natural death of Tasso Tassilo's have filled his soul was quenched in the darkness of horror in which her fate was snatched from him and plunged into the mystery and the blackness of imputed crime.