Then she turned to Concetta quickly.
"How did you come here, and why should you do this thing for me?" she asked, almost fiercely. "Are you sent to lay a trap for me? Speak!"
Concetta Fontana flung herself upon her knees, and taking Bianca's hand, covered it with kisses. "No, no," she exclaimed. "I have come because my father sent me—my father and Don Agostino—because you are the padrona—not—not that other one—the foreigner. Eccellenza, you have no right to mistrust me. I swear to God that there is no deceit, no trap. Nobody knows of the secret passage—only my father and I. My father could not come here—in the dead of night—so I came."
"The secret passage!" repeated Bianca, wonderingly.
Concetta pointed to the hole in the wall where the cardinal's portrait had been. "It is there," she said, "and it runs the whole length of the piano nobile and down into the entrance-court. See!" Going to the aperture, she pressed a spring concealed in the groove, and slowly, noiselessly, the picture of Cardinal Acorari glided back into its original position.
"I can come and go when I please," said Concetta, with a smile, "so the principessina is no longer a prisoner who cannot communicate with the world outside. Oh, and there are those outside who mean to help her—Don Agostino, and my father, and others besides. We will not have our padrona shut up in the castle of Montefiano to please a foreign priest. Sicuro! very soon—in a few days perhaps—the principessina will understand that she is at Montefiano—among her own people."
Bianca scarcely heard Concetta Fontana's latter words.
"Who is Don Agostino?" she asked, suddenly. "Silvio—this letter—says that the packet will be brought or conveyed to me by Monsignor Lelli."
"Don Agostino—Lelli—it is all one," replied Concetta. "He is our parroco, eccellenza; and he is good, oh, he is good! If all priests were like Don Agostino—mah!"
Bianca took out her letter again. As yet she could hardly realize her happiness. A few minutes ago she had felt utterly alone, almost without hope, save the hope that her own courage and her trust in Silvio gave her. Now the world seemed different. She had got her message from that great world outside, which until just now had seemed so far away from her own—that world where life and love were waiting for her.