Roma put her hands together, repeated the Confiteor, and then said:
"Father, I am a great, great sinner, and when I charged myself in court with having killed the Minister, I told falsehood to shield another."
"My child!" The Pope had risen to his feet.
There was a moment of painful silence, and then the Pope sat down again with rigid limbs, saying in a husky voice:
"Go on, my daughter."
Roma went on with her confession. She told of the mad impulse that came to her to kill the Baron after he had forced her to denounce her husband. She told of her preparations for killing him, and of the incidents of the night of the crime when she was making ready to set out on her awful errand.
"But he came to me in my own rooms at that very moment, your Holiness, and then...."
"In ... your own rooms?"
"Yes, indeed, and that was really the cause of everything."
"How so?"