“I have carefully considered the whole matter,” he said, after a moment’s pause. “I arrived in London yesterday, and from what I have learnt I have decided to take certain steps without delay.”
“Then you have been to the Embassy!” she exclaimed breathless. “You’ve denounced me to Castellani!”
“There was no necessity for that,” he answered coldly. “He already knows that you are his enemy.”
“I his enemy!” she echoed. “I have never done him an evil turn. He has heard some libellous story, I suppose, and, like all the world, believes me to be without conscience and without remorse.”
“That’s a pretty good estimate of yourself,” the Marquis observed. “If you had any conscience whatever you would have replied to my letters, and not maintained a dogged silence through all these months.”
“I had an object in view,” she answered in a chilling tone. She, quiet and stubborn, was resolved, insolent, like a creature to whom men had never been able to refuse anything.
“What was it?”
She shrugged her shoulders, and, laughing again, replied—
“You have threatened me with arrest, therefore I will maintain silence until it pleases you to endeavour to ruin me. Then together we will provide a little sensationalism for the Farfalla, the Tribuna, the Secolo, and one or two other journals who will only be too ready to see a change of Ministry.”
He hesitated, seeming to digest her words laboriously. She glanced quickly at his dark face, which the distant rays of a lamp illumined, and in that instant knew she had triumphed.