She asked for pen and paper and wrote a letter to Rossi:
"Dearest,—I hear the good news, just as I am on the point of leaving Rome, that you have returned to it, and I write to ask you not to try to alter what has happened. Believe me, it is better so. The world wants you, dear, and it doesn't want me any longer. Therefore return to life, be brave and strong and great, and think of me no more until we meet again.
"You will know by what I have done that what you thought was quite unfounded. Whatever people say of me, you must always believe that I loved you from the first, and that I have never loved anybody but you.
"You were angry with me when we parted, but more than ever I love you now. Don't think our love has been wasted. ''Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.' How beautiful!
Roma."
Having written her letter, and put her lips to the enclosure, she addressed the envelope in a bold hand and with a brave flourish: "All' Illustrissimo Signor Davide Rossi, Camera dei Deputati."
"You'll post this immediately I am gone, Sister," she said.
Elena pretended to put the letter away for that purpose, but she really smuggled it down to the Major, who despatched it forthwith to the Chamber of Deputies.
"And now I'll go to sleep," said Roma.
She slept until mid-day with the sun's reflection from the white plaster of the groined ceiling of the loggia on her still whiter face. Then the twelve o'clock gun shook the walls of the Castle, and she awoke while the church bells were ringing.