The unhappy man looked into the future of ruin, disgrace, perhaps prosecution by those very men who had been his friends, and saw but one way open from that shame—death.
And yet was not such a thought irreligious and cowardly? If they intended to attack his daughter, was it not his duty to defend her and vindicate her good name?
Ricci, unscrupulous as he had been through years of political life, sometimes holding by his intrigues the very fate of Italy in his hands, stood by in silence, his chin sunk upon his breast, for he knew too well that the ill-judged man to whom he was indebted for so much was to be made the scapegoat of the corrupt Ministry—he knew that the man before him was doomed, and yet he was utterly powerless to save him, even though he was prepared to go to any length to attain that end.
Then, a moment later, when Camillo Morini thought of that degraded officer, silent and suffering in the gloom of his prison, his mouth hardened, he held his breath, and his jaws became hard set. He remembered how that accused man had broken his sword before him and cast the pieces at his feet as guage of his innocence.
Yet the die was cast. To-day he, Camillo Morini, was Italian Minister of War, and the trusted adviser of his sovereign, King Umberto. But to-morrow—to-morrow? Ah! would that the morrow could not come.
Chapter Twenty One.
The Ear of the Minister.
After luncheon Camillo Morini left his wife, Mary, and the three young English girls, Anna and Eva Fry and Violet Walters, and retired as usual to his study. He had been silent and thoughtful at table, and his wife, ignorant of the crisis, attributed it to worry over state affairs, as was so often the case. A Minister’s life is never a happy one, and always full of grave responsibilities.