"You did. On seeing the face you exclaimed, 'Paolina mia!'—so much so, that I felt no doubt that it was this Paolina who lay dead there. What was it moved you to that exclamation?"
"I don't know. I can't tell. I was very anxious about Paolina. The thought of her was uppermost in my mind, I suppose."
"Humph!" said the lawyer, thoughtfully and doubtingly.
All this conversation had passed hurriedly in the small deserted street into which Ludovico and the lawyer had turned on leaving the city gate; and, when they parted, the two men took different directions,—the lawyer returning to the gate with the germ of an idea in his mind, which the last portion of his conversation with the Marchese had generated there, and which subsequent circumstances tended to develop, and the Marchese Ludovico going in the direction of the Palazzo del Governo.
CHAPTER II
Suspicion
The Marchese Ludovico told the lawyer that he would go immediately to the magistrates and make a voluntary statement of all that he knew of the circumstances connected with Bianca's death; and he fully purposed doing so. But he did not do it immediately. There was another visit which he was more anxious to pay; and which the hint that had dropped from the old lawyer to the effect that it was very probable he might not pass that night in his own home, determined him to pay first at all hazards.
This visit, as may readily be imagined, was to Paolina. And to the modest little home in the Strada di Santa Eufemia he hurried as fast as his legs would carry him, as soon as he quitted Signor Fortini. Paolina, on returning home after her conversation with the Contessa Violante in the Cardinal's chapel, had remained there busy with the preparation of her materials for beginning her work at Saint Apollinare on the following day.
She looked up as he entered the room with an arch smile on her lips and in her eyes which, perhaps, did not reflect altogether faithfully the feeling in her heart.
"Yes, I saw you, you naughty, inconstant boy, when you little thought my eye was upon you. I saw you with—Ludovico, there is something wrong," she said, suddenly changing her laughing tone for one of alarm as her eye marked the expression of his face. "I am sure from the way you look at me there is something amiss. What is it, Ludovico mio? What has happened to vex you?"
"A great and terrible misfortune has happened, my Paolina; and I have run to you in all haste that you might not hear it from any lips but my own. You were going to say just now that you saw me with Bianca Lalli, were you not? Where and when did you see us?"