Bradley repeated his question, while the vehicle moved slowly away.
‘I am going to make inquiries,’ was the reply; ‘and as an assurance of my sympathy and good faith, I have obtained permission for you to accompany me. But let me now conjure you to summon all your strength to bear the inevitable; and let it be your comfort if, as I believe and fear, something terrible has happened, to know that there is much in this world sadder far than death.’
‘I ask you once more,’ said Bradley in a broken voice, ‘where are you taking me?’
‘To those who can set your mind at rest, once and for ever.’
‘Who are they?’
‘The Farnesiani sisters,’ returned the Abbé.
Bradley sank back on his seat stupefied, with a sickening sense of horror.
The mental strain and agony were growing almost too much for him to bear. Into that brief day he had concentrated the torture of a lifetime; and never before had he known with what utterness of despairing passion he loved the woman whom he indeed held to be, in the sight of God, his wife. With frenzied self-reproach he blamed himself for all that had taken place. Had he never consented to an ignoble deception, never gone through the mockery of a marriage ceremony with Alma, they might still have been at peace together; legally separated for the time being, but spiritually joined for ever; pure and sacred for each other, and for all the world. But now—now it seemed that he had lost her, body and soul!
The carriage presently halted, and Bradley saw at a glance that they were at the corner of the cul-de-sac leading to the convent. They alighted, and the Abbé paid the driver. A couple of minutes later they were standing on the platform above the walls of the houses.
All around them the bright sunshine burnt golden over the quivering roofs of Rome, and the sleepy hum of the Eternal City rolled up to them like the murmur of a summer sea.