“With your lover, eh?”
She nodded.
“And you will marry him?” the young Italian observed slowly. “You do not fear the exposure which afterwards must come? These English are fond of looking closely into the woman’s past, you know.”
She shrugged her shoulders, answering: “My past is secret. Fortunately the one person who knows the truth dares not speak.”
“Then what I know is of no account?” he said, somewhat surprised.
She laughed.
“If you and I have ever flirted, or even exchanged foolish letters, it was long ago, when we had not the experience of the world we now have. I do not dread exposure of your knowledge of my past.”
“But this lover of yours, this Englishman—why does he believe in you so blindly?” Romanelli inquired. “Is he so utterly infatuated that he thinks you absolutely innocent of the world and its ways?”
“My affairs of the heart are of no concern to you now, Arnoldo,” she answered a trifle coquettishly.
“But if I come here to a man’s rooms, and find you in his sitting-room in a half-conscious state, trembling and afraid, with every sign of a desperate struggle in your dress and in the room, and therefore I, once your boy-lover, seek an explanation,” he said. “True, the affection between us is dead long, long ago, but remember that you and I both have interests in common, and that by uniting we may effect the overthrow of our enemies. If we do not—well, you know the fate that awaits us.”