“The signorina has done her best to induce her father to sign the order for your release, captain, but, alas!”—And the general sighed without concluding his sentence.
“The Minister refuses!” said the unfortunate man behind the bars. “And yet I tell you I am innocent—innocent.”
“I believe you are, captain. If I did not, I should not interest myself on your behalf. But, unfortunately, the powers in Rome are greater than mine. They are sending you out to Gorgona, it seems.”
“To Gorgona!” he gasped hoarsely, all the light dying from his pale, emaciated face. “Ah! then they mean to drive me mad by solitary confinement. My enemies have, indeed, triumphed!”
“But have courage, Felice,” exclaimed Mary, speaking to him for the first time and taking his thin hand. “Surely one day you will have justice done to you. I cannot understand why my father so steadily refuses to release you.”
“Because he fears to do so,” declared the condemned man. “I am victim of a foul intrigue in which that woman Filoména was one who conspired against me.”
“And yet you loved her,” remarked the girl reproachfully.
“Ah! I believe I did. I know that to you I ought not to mention her, signorina. But forgive me. Do you recollect that night in Rome—at the ball at the Colonna Palace—when I asked you a question?”
“I do,” she responded, now very pale. “I was younger, and did not know my own mind then. I thought—I thought I loved you. It was our flirtation that has brought you to this. I am to blame for everything.”
“No, no,” he declared. “It is I who committed the indiscretion of falling in love with you when I knew that I, a poor captain, could never hope to marry the daughter of the Minister of War.”