"Mr. Minghelli, our interview is at an end."
"So you dismiss me?"
"I do," said David Rossi. "It is such men as you who put back the progress of the world and make it possible for the upholders of authority to describe our efforts as devilish machinations for the destruction of all order, human and divine. Besides that, you speak as one who has not only a perverted political sentiment, but a personal quarrel against an enemy."
The man faced round sharply, came back with a quick step, and said:
"You say I speak as one who has a personal quarrel with the Prime Minister. Perhaps I have! I heard your speech this morning about his mistress, with her livery of scarlet and gold. You meant the woman who is known as Donna Roma Volonna. What if I tell you she is not a Volonna at all, but a girl the Minister picked up in the streets of London, and has palmed off on Rome as the daughter of a noble house, because he is a liar and a cheat?"
David Rossi gave a start, as if an invisible hand had smitten him.
"Her name is Roma, certainly," said the man; "that was the first thing that helped me to seize the mysterious thread."
David Rossi's face grew pale, and he scarcely breathed.
"Oh, I'm not talking without proof," said the man. "I was at the Embassy in London ten years ago when the Ambassador was consulted by the police authorities about an Italian girl who had been found at night in Leicester Square. Mother dead, father gone back to Italy—she had been living with some people her father gave her to as a child, but had turned out badly and run away."
David Rossi had fixed his eyes on the stranger with a kind of glassy stare.