“It is not a matter that concerns either of us, my dear,” he answered in a hard tone. “He has been found guilty—that is sufficient.”
She was silent, for suddenly she recollected what the count had said, namely, that any effort on her part to prove poor Solaro’s innocence must reflect upon her father, whose enemies would use the fact to prove that Italy had been betrayed with the connivance of the Minister of War.
She sighed. She had suspicions—grave ones; but she knew that at least Felice Solaro had been made the scapegoat of some cunning plot, and that his sentence was unjust. Yet what could she do in such circumstances? She was powerless. She could only remain patient and wait—wait, perhaps, for the final blow to fall upon her father and her house! A silence fell, broken only by the low ticking of the marble clock and the measured tramp of the sentry down in the sun-baked courtyard.
Her father sighed, rose from his chair, and with his hands behind his back paced anxiously up and down the room.
“Mary!” he exclaimed suddenly, in a changed voice, hoarsely in earnest, “if the secrets hidden in that safe have actually fallen into the hands of my enemies, then I must resign from office?” His face was now blanched to the lips, for all his self-possession seemed to have deserted him in an instant as the ghastly truth became revealed. “I know—I know too well—how cleverly the conspiracy has been formed, but I never dreamed that that safe could be opened, and the truth known. No,” he said in a low voice of despair, his chin sunk upon his breast; “it would be better to resign, and fly from Italy.”
His daughter looked at him in silence and surprise. She had never seen him plunged in such despair. A bond of sympathy had always existed between father and daughter ever since her infancy.
“Then you dare not face your enemies if they are actually in possession of what is contained in the safe?” she said slowly, rising and placing her hand tenderly upon her father’s shoulder. She realised for the first time that her father, the man whom she had trusted so implicitly since her childhood, held some guilty secret.
“No, my dear, I dare not,” was his reply, placing his trembling hand upon her arm.
“But you are unaware of how much knowledge Count Dubard has obtained,” she pointed out.
“Sufficient in any case to cause my ruin,” replied the grey-haired Minister of War. “That is, of course, if he is not after all my friend.”