He was disappointed with the information he received. Alma had left Milan some time before the séance in London had been held.
Entering a restaurant, he found that he could get a train to Tome at midnight. He returned to his hotel, ate a morsel of food, drank some wine, and then went to the railway station.
It was early morning when he entered the Eternal City, and the lack of stir upon the streets troubled and depressed him. It accentuated the difference between his present visit and the last he had made, and he cried in his heart most bitterly that the burden of his sorrow was too great.
He was about to tell the driver of the fiacre to take him to his old quarters on the Piazza di Spagna, when he changed his mind. If he went there he would be in the midst of his countrymen, and in his then mood the last being he wished to see was an Englishman. So he asked the driver to take him to any quiet and good boarding-house he knew, and was taken to one in the Piazza Sta. Maria in Monti.
In the course of the day he went out to learn what he could of Alma.
He met several acquaintances, but they had neither seen nor heard of her; indeed, they were not in her circle, and though they had seen or heard of her, they would hardly have remembered. Bradley well knew the families Alma would be likely to visit, but he shrank from inquiring at their houses; he went to the doors of several and turned away without asking to be admitted.
By-and-by he went into the Caffé Nuovo, and eagerly scanned the papers, but found no mention of Alma in them. A small knot of young Englishmen and Americans sat near to him, and he thought at last that he caught the name of Miss Craik mentioned in their conversation.
He listened with painful attention, and found that they were speaking of some one the Jesuits had ‘hooked,’ as they put it.
‘And, by Jove, it was a haul!’ one young fellow said. ‘Any amount of cash, I am told.’
‘That is so,’ replied one of his comrades; and the girl is wonderfully beautiful, they say.’