“I know! I know!” she said, with earnest apprehension. “But he says that the plot is so formed that its result will reflect upon you personally,” and then she went on to describe exactly what Dubard had told her.
His Excellency, nervously toying with the quill, listened, and as he did so reflected upon what Ricci had already told him.
How was it, he wondered, that the Frenchman, who was outside the inner ring of Italian politics, knew all this? He must have some secret source of knowledge. That was plain.
Morini looked into his daughter’s great brown eyes, and read the deep anxiety there. Within his own heart he was full of apprehension for the future lest the Socialists might defeat the Government; yet, with the tact of the old political hand, he betrayed no concern before her. What she told him, however, revealed certain things that he had not hitherto suspected, and rendered the outlook far blacker than he had before regarded it.
“The count has also told me that there is a charge of treason against Captain Solaro.”
Instantly her father’s face changed.
“Well?” he snapped.
“The captain is innocent,” she declared. “He must be. He would never betray the military secrets of his country.”
“That is a matter which does not concern you, Mary,” he exclaimed quickly. “He has been tried by court-martial and been dismissed the army.”
“But you surely will not allow an innocent man to suffer, father!” she urged in a voice of quick reproach.