"You!" gasped Borselli quickly, staring at the speaker. "Ah yes! I was a fool to have trusted you after all. I recognised it when too late.

You have turned in Morini's favour."

"I have my own interests to serve as well as yours," Dubard remarked quite frankly. "It is to my interest that the question is postponed."

"And it is to mine that it should be put."

"But you will not allow Montebruno to proceed, and risk your own position. Remember that in this affair my interests at the moment are not the same as yours."

"And you actually declare that you will tell the truth if Montebruno speaks?" said Borselli hoa.r.s.ely, realising how completely the man before him held his future in his hands.

"I do," was the response. "You surely know me well enough! In such moments as these I do not trifle. Give me the letter! It is already a quarter to five, and I have only just time to drive to the Camera and place it in Montebruno's hand."

"But I can't understand your motive," exclaimed Borselli, realising that his companion meant what he said. "Remember what we agreed that night in London."

"Perfectly. While our interests are similar, I am your friend; but where they divide, I am friend of myself alone. Come, Angelo, we cannot afford to waste further words--the letter, just two lines, or exposure of the truth. The latter would, I think," he laughed, "be even a greater sensation to the public than the allegations against the Minister."

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

IN THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES.

The man who had laid such an elaborate plot against His Excellency stood hesitating and confounded. He had never dreamed that Dubard, upon whom he had relied so implicitly, would be seized with this sudden caprice to defend Morini. Mary might have persuaded him to adopt this course, he reflected, yet he knew Jules too well as a man in whose heart there did not exist a single spark of either respect or true affection for the opposite s.e.x.

"Come," exclaimed the elegant Frenchman, with a look of determination on his pallid countenance. "Write the note quickly, or it will be too late. Recollect, if Montebruno speaks, I shall tell the truth."

"And betray me?"

"Of necessity."

Then Angelo Borselli, seeing that all his elaborate preparations for a _coup_ were checkmated by the very man who had rendered him such valuable help, threw himself into a chair, and muttering some hard words, scribbled three lines to the man, his puppet, who was to hurl those terrible charges against the Minister of War.

"Good," exclaimed Dubard airily, as he took the letter and thrust it into his pocket. "You have done well to save your own reputation, my dear Angelo. It would not be wise for the public to know everything, would it? Excuse me running away so quickly, but I have only just time to drive down to the Camera." And s.n.a.t.c.hing up his hat he rushed out, leaving the Under-Secretary standing in the centre of the room, silent in disappointment and chagrin.

Meanwhile, in the Chamber the excitement among the Socialist group had gradually increased as the hands of the big clock moved on towards the hour of five. They watched Montebruno seated in his place armed with many formidable doc.u.ments, and saw how he was preparing himself for one of those oratorical efforts for which he was so famous. He was a thin, black-bearded man with small dark eyes and aquiline features--a man who had made the law a stepping-stone to politics like so many of his _confreres_. Time after time he fidgeted, changed his position, stroked his beard thoughtfully, and re-examined his papers, every action being watched anxiously by his party, among whom it was whispered that he was to put some sensational question--but of what character was to them a mystery.

The hand of the big clock pointed to the hour of five, and the Chamber was occupied with other business. Vito Ricci, sitting in his place almost opposite Montebruno in the great horseshoe chamber, waited breathlessly, well knowing that the words which would fall from his lips would seal the doom of that man waiting so patiently in his library in the far-off Apennines.

The tension of those moments of expectancy was terrible.

The clock marked five, ten, fifteen minutes past the hour, when, of a sudden, the voluble Socialist rose, and began by expressing regret at being compelled to take up the time of the Chamber upon a most important and very pressing matter. He had just arrived at that point, holding the whole Camera in attention by his clever oratory, when a prominent member of his own party pulled his coat-tails and handed him a letter.

This he tore open mechanically while still speaking, but on glancing at the contents, he hesitated and stopped short in utter confusion.

"Go on! Go on!" urged his party wildly, eager to hear what allegations he was about to make against the Government.

But regaining his self-possession in a moment, he turned to them, and with a smile said--

"Gentlemen, I have just learned, and very fortunately perhaps, that I have been somewhat misinformed regarding certain matters to which I intended directing the attention of the Camera, and therefore I will no longer occupy your time."

And he sat down abruptly, whereat those in opposition jeered at him, and even the Socialists themselves rose and went out in disgust, disappointed at relinquishing what was promised to be a staggering blow against the Government. With them went Vito Ricci, who, ten minutes later, was in the Ministry of War describing the curious scene to Camillo Morini over the telephone.

The words he spoke put fresh life and hope into the despairing Minister.

He breathed again when he heard how he had been saved almost by a miracle. Then he walked to his table, and the letters he had written he carried to the fireplace and there lit them with a wax vesta and watched them consume--all save the order for Solaro's release and reinstatement.

He held the latter in his hand for a long time thinking deeply. But at last the temptation grew too strong within him, for slowly, and with seeming reluctance, he opened it, applied a match, destroying it as he had done the others, and as he watched it burn to black tinder he murmured to himself--

"No! I dare not release him. If I did they might suspect--suspect.

And yet Mary declares that he is innocent! What, I wonder, can she know?"

New life had been created within him, new hope, new aspirations. A moment before he had looked upon that tiny tube with its fatal tabloids as the only means by which he could escape his enemies, but now he laughed to himself as he placed it in a drawer of the writing-table-- laughed at his own cowardice.

He never dreamed that he had been saved by Mary's self-sacrifice. The incident, as related by Ricci over the telephone, was curious and mysterious. The letter handed to the man who had risen to denounce him had evidently contained something which prevented him making the charges, but what it was he could not imagine.

To him the whole affair was a complete mystery, which he left to Vito Ricci to unravel and report.

When his wife and the girls returned, they found him idling on the terrace beneath the pretty arbour from which spread that glorious view of the Arno valley up to Florence. He was a changed man from an hour before--that hour when he had come face to face with ruin and death. By the mysterious turn which events had taken a new life had suddenly opened to him. The blow they intended to aim at him had apparently been abandoned, even though all preparations had been made. The reason was an utter enigma.

He laughed merrily with Mary and the English girls as they came along the terrace where he was sitting idly smoking a cigar, inquiring where they had been and how they had found the lady they had visited.

All three began to chatter, as was their wont, while Her Excellency, fatigued after the drive, entered the house to rest before dinner. She, however, did not fail to notice her husband's unusual good-humour, for of late he had been thoughtful and depressed, silent and moody when in her presence, and apparently full of serious state affairs.

The instant Mary saw her father's countenance she read the truth. She had left the villa well knowing--through Dubard, who had sent her word in secret--that the blow was to be dealt that afternoon. She knew all that her father was suffering, and she feared the worst, even though she had made that compact with the man she suspected and despised. She had dreaded to return lest some hideous tragedy should have occurred, and all the time she was absent she had reproached herself that she had not remained at his side to support and encourage him in face of the threatened peril.

But the danger was over. He had no doubt received word over the telephone, for he was his own old self again, and began chaffing Violet Walters, the blue-eyed daughter of the London barrister, regarding a young lieutenant of the _bersaglieri_, an aristocrat of Florence, who had dined with them on the previous evening, and towards whom she had been very much attracted.

"It is really too bad!" declared the English girl, blushing to her eyes.

"You declare that I'm in love with every good-looking man, and I'm sure I'm not."

"We Italians always find English girls very charming," His Excellency said, smiling. "That is why I married an Englishwoman myself," whereat the two Fry girls, pale-faced and insipid, t.i.ttered to themselves.

"Really it was most disgraceful of Violet to flirt with young Capponi as she did last night!" exclaimed Mary mischievously, upholding her father's view.

"I did not!" protested the barrister's daughter. "You know I didn't, Mary!"

"He'll be proposing next Monday when he comes again to dinner, and you'll be the Marchesa Capponi," Mary said, spreading out her skirts and bowing with mock obeisance.

Her father, full of good-humour now that the terror of those anxious hours had pa.s.sed, rose, and placing his hand kindly on Violet's shoulder, a.s.sured her that his words were not meant to be taken seriously; for he saw the girl's indignation was rising, and that she resented being accused of flirtation before the two daughters of the Genoese merchant.

They all gossiped together for some time, until presently Mary went forth, as usual, to accompany her father on his evening stroll through the pine woods.

When alone, His Excellency was the first to speak, explaining to her all that Vito Ricci had related over the telephone.

"Then the crisis is prevented," she remarked, in a strange, mechanical voice, he thought. He had expected her to betray surprise and joy, but, on the contrary, she received the information of his escape with an inertness which surprised him. "It must have been the letter handed to the Socialist deputy," she added.

"Without doubt," he remarked. "But how annoyed and disappointed Angelo must be at the failure of his scheme just at the very moment when his triumph was a.s.sured."

"I expect so," his daughter said, walking slowly at his side, her eyes fixed upon the ground. Her father had been saved at the cost of her own happiness, her own life. But would that man adhere to his compact? she wondered. Was the crisis only postponed until after her marriage--until after she had given herself to him in exchange for her father's life?

She knew too well that he would never face exposure; she knew, alas!

that, like many before him, he would rather take his own life than bear the brunt of those scurrilous and unscrupulous attacks. He had more than once told her so--not directly, of course, but in language that was unmistakable.

She had had no confidence in Dubard since the night when he had examined the safe in the library. He would, she felt a.s.sured, play her false.