“Diplomacy is the art of lying artistically,” he answered. “It is impossible to achieve success in diplomacy without resorting to realistic perversions of the truth. Every diplomatist must be a born liar—but he need not be a thief.”
“Some are,” she retorted. “You are one.”
His face went purple in anger.
“I—a thief?” he blurted forth. “Have you taken leave of your senses, woman?”
“Not entirely. I believe I have some remaining,” she replied. “I again repeat that you, the Count Castellani, His Majesty’s Ambassador, are a mean, despicable thief, whom the Tribunal at Rome would sentence to seven years’ imprisonment if they became acquainted with the facts.”
“Enough! Not another word, woman!” he cried in a towering passion. Then, grasping her arms, he, after a short desperate struggle, succeeded in wrenching from her the envelope for which she had risked so much. “Now you may go,” he said, as she stood flushed, panting, and breathless before him, her hair a trifle disarranged, the lace upon one of her cuffs torn and hanging. “If you don’t leave at once, I’ll ring and have you turned out.”
“I shall go when you give me back that paper,” she answered, facing him.
“You’ll never have it.”
“Then, listen,” she went on calmly, taking a few hasty steps towards where he was standing astride before the fire. “The worth of that document is to you considerable, I know, but there are others to whom its value is even greater. Just now I charged you with theft, and you feigned to have forgotten. Well, I will recall a fact or two to your memory. A year ago, at Como, there was an inquiry into certain scandals connected with the Bank of Naples.” Then she paused. The Ambassador’s face had instantly blanched. “Ah!” she went on, “I see that event has not quite slipped your memory. Well, as the result of that inquiry, in which certain statesmen were implicated, two well-known public men received sentences of ten years’ imprisonment, and others ranging from two to five years. But, at that inquiry, it was shown that a certain cheque was missing, and it was further proved that this cheque had been drawn for half a million francs. To whom that sum passed remained a mystery.”
“Well?” His Excellency gasped, still pale, glaring at her as if she were some object supernatural. All his self-possession had left him.