The adventurer sighed. To Camillo Morini he owed everything, and was conscious of the fact. He had no words to express his regret at his failure, for he knew too well all that it meant to the man before him.

"The success of the French secret service upon the Alpine frontier is the chief capital of the Opposition," Ricci explained. "They say you have connived at it, and that Solaro was a.s.sisted by your daughter, the Signorina Mary."

"Solaro a.s.sisted by her! How?"

"They have discovered that he was her friend. They were noticed together in Rome a year ago, when they allege that she gave him certain information gathered from your papers, which, in due course, reached the French Ministry of War!"

"Impossible?" declared the Minister. "They are acquainted, I know. But my daughter would never a.s.sist a traitor. It is infamous?"

"I quite agree with you. I cannot believe the signorina guilty of any such action. Yet the truth remains that the secrets of the Tresenta are actually in the hands of France."

"I know," groaned the unhappy man. "I know, Vito. But Solaro is disgraced and imprisoned. Surely that is enough for them?"

"No. You misunderstand. They are raising the cry everywhere that Italy is in danger--that you personally are culpable."

"They will say next that I myself have sold the plans to France!" he cried bitterly.

"Ah! you know the kind of men Borselli has behind him--the most unscrupulous set of office-seekers in Italy. They will hesitate at nothing in order to arouse the public indignation against you. The fire is already kindled, and they are now fanning it into a flame. I tried to extinguish it. I offered a dozen bribes in various quarters, knowing that you would willingly pay to secure safety--but all were rejected because of Borselli's promise to them of fat emoluments in the future."

"Italy!" cried the Minister. "Oh, Italy! Must you fall into the hands of such a gang of thieves? I have done my best. Dishonesty has been forced upon me by this very man who now seeks to hound me out of office and take my place. I have been blind, Vito," he added, "utterly blind."

"Yes," sighed the other, "I fear you have. Borselli has laid his plans too well, and arranged the conspiracy with too deep a cunning, to fail.

I naturally believed that he could be fought with his own weapons, but I have found myself mistaken. We must, alas! face the worst! To-morrow the Socialists are to raise the question of Tresenta in the Camera; the vote will be taken, the Government defeated, and the whole blame will fall upon yourself. Borselli's organs of the Press all have their orders to shriek and scream at you, to demand a searching inquiry regarding the disposal of certain sums set apart for the army--even to the giving of contracts to German contractors."

Morini started, and his grave face went paler.

"Then Borselli has betrayed me--he, who is equally guilty with myself?"

"To his friends who intend to obtain Government appointments at high salaries he is innocent, while you alone are guilty," Ricci pointed out.

Then, sighing again, he added in a sympathetic voice,--for although a political adventurer he was nevertheless a firm personal friend of the Minister's,--"I declare to you, Camillo, I have done my very utmost.

But the weak point in our armour is the Tresenta affair, and the signorina's acquaintance with the traitor Solaro. The natural conclusion, of course, is that she a.s.sisted him."

"But what do they say of his friendship for her?"

"They allege that she was in love with him, but that, being only an officer with little else but his pay, he feared to approach you to obtain your permission to pay court to her, and that she, in order that he might obtain money from the French War Intelligence Department, gave him copies of certain secret doc.u.ments which were in your possession."

"But I have no plans of the Tresenta," he declared quickly.

"There are other matters of which they allege the French have gained knowledge--details of the new mobilisation scheme."

"Those papers are safely locked up at the Ministry," he answered. "Mary has no knowledge of their existence."

"If France obtained copies of them, would they be of service to her?"

"Of course. They would reveal our vulnerable points, and would show where she might strike us in order to destroy the concentration of our troops upon the frontier. Those papers are the most important of any we possess. The commanders of the various military districts have their secret orders, but they would be useless without the key to the complete scheme, which is kept safely from prying eyes in the Ministry. The French have surely not obtained a copy of that!" he gasped.

"It seems that they have--through your daughter, it is alleged." Then he added, with a sigh, "They have all their facts ready to launch against you."

"Their untruths--their lies!" he cried desperately, clenching his fist.

"Ah, it is cruel! It is infamous! They even go so far as to brand my daughter--my dear Mary--as a traitress!"

And the strong man of Italy--the ruler of a European army--covered his face with his hands and sobbed aloud.

Vito Ricci had failed, yet was it any wonder that Morini's enemies sought to attack his honour by making false and ignominious allegations against his daughter?

The unhappy man looked into the future of ruin, disgrace, perhaps prosecution by those very men who had been his friends, and saw but one way open from that shame--death.

And yet was not such a thought irreligious and cowardly? If they intended to attack his daughter, was it not his duty to defend her and vindicate her good name?

Ricci, unscrupulous as he had been through years of political life, sometimes holding by his intrigues the very fate of Italy in his hands, stood by in silence, his chin sunk upon his breast, for he knew too well that the ill-judged man to whom he was indebted for so much was to be made the scapegoat of the corrupt Ministry--he knew that the man before him was doomed, and yet he was utterly powerless to save him, even though he was prepared to go to any length to attain that end.

Then, a moment later, when Camillo Morini thought of that degraded officer, silent and suffering in the gloom of his prison, his mouth hardened, he held his breath, and his jaws became hard set. He remembered how that accused man had broken his sword before him and cast the pieces at his feet as guage of his innocence.

Yet the die was cast. To-day he, Camillo Morini, was Italian Minister of War, and the trusted adviser of his sovereign, King Umberto. But to-morrow--to-morrow? Ah! would that the morrow could not come.

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

THE EAR OF THE MINISTER.

After luncheon Camillo Morini left his wife, Mary, and the three young English girls, Anna and Eva Fry and Violet Walters, and retired as usual to his study. He had been silent and thoughtful at table, and his wife, ignorant of the crisis, attributed it to worry over state affairs, as was so often the case. A Minister's life is never a happy one, and always full of grave responsibilities.

Her Excellency had seen her husband, to whom she was so devoted, age before his time, and in the years gone by she had greatly a.s.sisted him by her wise counsels and womanly help.

He looked at her in silence from where he sat at the head of the table, and sighed bitterly to himself. If he told her all, the shock would be too great for her. It might, indeed, have serious consequences.

Therefore he was compelled to keep his secret from everyone save Mary.

The long green sun-shutters were closed, and the great, high, old frescoed room in which he sat alone was in half-darkness. He had told the liveried servant Francesco that he did not wish to be disturbed, and on entering had locked the door behind him. It was a dull, depressing room at any time, for the ponderous cases of old vellum-bound books breathed an atmosphere of a glorious but forgotten past. Gerino's frescoed angels looked down upon him from the ceiling, and the ponderous beams still bore traces of bright colouring and faded gilt. Closed against the stifling heat outside, only a few rays of light struck across the big writing-table where His Excellency was sitting dejectedly, his head buried in his hands. From without came the monotonous hum of the insects and the harsh chirp of the cicale, the only live things astir under the burning Tuscan sun.

His wife and the girls had gone to their rooms for the siesta, previous to driving over to Montelupo to visit the Marchioness Altieri, and he was alone with his bitter grief and blank despair.

Little sleep had come to his eyes for the past week. Last night he had spent the hours under the steely sky, first down in the valley and then away over the mountains until he reached a point high up on a barren summit, where he sank down upon a heap of stones and watched the breaking of day over the Apennines. His thoughts were always of what Vito had revealed to him, and of his failure.

His return to the house had pa.s.sed unnoticed, and after a wash he had taken his coffee and entered that room with a firm and desperate resolve. The whole morning he had occupied in placing his papers in order, arranging them carefully, tying them in bundles, and scribbling certain instructions upon each, with the names of the secretaries or other officials to whom they were to be handed.

He had worked on in grim silence, sighing sometimes and laughing bitterly to himself at others. More than once he murmured Mary's name or that of his beloved wife, while nearly the whole time his kind eyes were filled with tears.

At luncheon he had motioned Francesco to give him a liqueur-gla.s.s of cognac with his coffee, a most unusual proceeding, for he was a very abstemious man, and now he sat motionless, his fingers in his grey hair, staring thoughtfully at the blotting-pad before him.

For fully half an hour he remained in that position, often murmuring to himself. He was reflecting upon all the bitterness of the past. He, the man whose name was one to conjure with in Italy, was at that moment without one single friend to give him help or sympathy.

Suddenly the silence of the room was broken by the whir-r of the telephone bell--the private line that connected him direct with his secretary at the Ministry at Rome three hundred miles away.

Quickly he rose, walked to the corner where the instrument was placed, and responded.

"The Onorevole Ricci desires to speak with your Excellency in private,"

announced the voice which he recognised as one of his private secretaries.

"Va bene!" was the Minister's anxious response.