She laughed as a slight blush suffused her cheeks at recollection of her girlhood days before she went to school at Broadstairs. She recollected how in those youthful days she had admired Vito Ricci, the well-dressed, debonair deputy who was her father’s closest friend.
“I remember,” she admitted, laughing.
“Then let us speak in confidence,” he went on, deeply in earnest. “You were acquainted with Felice Solaro, captain in the 6th Alpine Regiment, who fell in love with you?”
She nodded, with eyes open in surprise.
“He declared his love, and you refused him. Your father, who suspected that the young captain had had the audacity to court you, was furious, and forbade you to receive him. But you saw him in secret one day to bid him farewell as he was ordered to a garrison on the French frontier. Your father being absent, you received him, at his own suggestion, in the library of the palace in Rome. While you were talking with him you heard some visitors approaching, and you rushed out, locking him in the library, pretending that your father had taken the key. He remained there in secret for over two hours, until you could escape from the callers, release him, and let him out in secret. Is that so?”
She blushed to the roots of her hair at recollection of that youthful escapade, and admitted that all he had alleged was the truth.
“And that man is now in prison, charged with having sold military secrets to France—a copy of a confidential document which was in a drawer in your father’s writing-table.”
She stood staring at him, utterly speechless.
“But that is not the charge against him,” she hastened to declare. “He is believed to have sold the plans of the Tresenta fortress.”
“That is so, but there is also the graver charge—the copying of that document which was in your father’s keeping, and one of the most secret and important concerning our army.”