I sat there by the lake-side, watching with breathless interest. What would I not have given to be sufficiently near to catch the drift of their conversation!
Presently, in the height of their argument, he pushed a second letter before her face roughly, as though to convince her of his words; but she, seeing in his action a desire to insult her, snatched the letter from his hands, tore it into fragments, and cast them in his face.
It was done in an instant, and sitting as they were in that secluded corner in the shadow, none witnessed the incident save myself.
The man rose quickly, with an air of fierce resentment, bowed to her with mock courtesy, and strode off. But as he passed out into the gaslight, I saw his face, and recognising it, could not suppress a cry of amazement.
He was not young, as I had supposed, but old and decrepit. The countenance was the ugly, sinister one of Branca, the queer old fellow with whom I had had such a strange interview in Leghorn only a few days before.
CHAPTER XXV
PRESENTS A CURIOUS PHASE
This discovery increased the mystery. Yet it was plain that he was acting according to his promise, and was leaving no effort untried in order to solve the problem. But why? What possible interest could he have in discovering the truth regarding Reggie's assassination?
Certainly his appearance was greatly altered. Instead of the unkempt, shuffling Italian whom I had visited in the Via Magenta, in Leghorn, he was spruce, well-shaven, and smartly dressed, although his dwarfed and slightly deformed personality could not be disguised.
The look upon his countenance was the reverse of reassuring. Ugly even when smiling, his face was distorted by rage, and absolutely forbidding, as he walked hurriedly past within half-a-dozen feet of me, and away towards the exit from the garden. The insult he had sustained was one which angered him terribly, and if ever vengeance was written upon a man's face it was written upon his.