"In Soho Square when I knew him first. The house faced to the north, and had a porch and trees in front of it."

The sponge had dropped to the floor, but Roma did not observe it. She took up a tooth-tool and began to work on the clay again.

"A little more that way, please--thanks! Do you think your friend had a right to renounce his rank and to break up his family in Italy? Think of his father--he would be broken-hearted."

"He was--I've heard my old friend say so. He cursed him at last and forbade him to call himself his son."

"There!"

"But he would never hear a word against the old man. 'He's my father--that's enough,' he would say."

The tooth-tool, like the sponge, dropped out of Roma's fingers.

"How stupid! But his mother...."

"That was sadder still. In the early years of his exile she would pray him to come home. 'You are the best of mothers,' he would answer, 'but I cannot do so.'"

"He never saw her again?"

"Never, but he worshipped her very name and she was a tower of strength to him. 'Mothers!' he used to say, 'if you only knew your power! God be merciful to the wayward one who has no mother!'"

Roma's throat was throbbing. "He ... he was married?"

"Yes. His wife was an Englishwoman, almost as friendless as himself."

"Eyes the other way, at the window--thank you!... Did she know who he was?"

"Nobody knew. He was only a poor Italian doctor to all of us in Soho."

"They ... they were ... happy?"

"As happy as love and friendship could make them. And even when poverty came...."

"He became poor--very poor?"

"Very! It got known that Doctor Roselli was a revolutionary, and then his English patients began to be afraid. The house in Soho Square had to be given up at last, and we went into a side street. Only two rooms now, one to the front, the other to the back, and four of us to live in them, but the misery of that woman's outward circumstances never dimmed the radiance of her sunny soul."

Roma's bosom was heaving and her voice was growing thick. "She ...

died?"

David Rossi bent his head and spoke in short, jerky sentences. "Her death came at the bitterest moment of want. It was Christmas time. Very cold and raw. We hadn't too much at home to keep us warm. She caught a cold and it settled on her chest. Pneumonia! Only three or four days altogether. She lay in the back room; it was quieter. The doctor nursed her constantly. How she fought for life! She was thinking of her little daughter. Just six years of age at that time, and playing with her doll on the floor."

His voice had enough to do to control itself.

"When it was all over we went into the front room and made our beds on a blanket spread out on the bare boards. Only three of us now--the child with her father, weeping for the mother lying cold the other side of the wall."

His eyes were still looking out at the window. In Roma's eyes the tears were gathering.

"We were nearly penniless, but our good angel was buried somehow. Oh, the poor are the richest people in the world! I love them! I love them!"

Roma could not look at him any longer.

"It was in the cemetery of Kensal Green. There was a London fog and the grave-diggers worked by torches, which smoked in the thick air. But the doctor stood all the time with his head uncovered. The child was there too, and driving home she looked out of the window and sometimes laughed at the sights in the streets. Only six--and she had never been in a coach before!"

At that moment was heard the boom of the gun that is fired from the Castle of St. Angelo at mid-day, and Roma put down her tools.

"If you don't mind, I'll not try to do any more to-day," she said in a husky voice. "Somehow it isn't coming right this morning. It's like that sometimes. But if you can come at this time to-morrow...."

"With pleasure," said David Rossi, and a moment later he was gone.

She looked at her work and obliterated the expression again.

"Not Thomas," she thought. "John--the beloved disciple! That would fit him exactly."

As she went upstairs to dress for lunch, Felice gave her an envelope bearing the seal of the Prime Minister, and told her the dog was missing.

"He must have followed Mr. Rossi," said Roma, and without ado she read the letter.

"DEAR ROMA,--A thousand thanks for suggesting Charles Minghelli. I sent for him, saw him, and appointed him immediately. Thanks, too, for the clue about your father. Highly significant! I mentioned it to Minghelli, and the dark fire in his eyes shone out instantly.

Adieu, my dear! You are on the right track! I will observe your request and not come near you.--Affectionately,

"BONELLI."

III

Next morning Roma found herself dressing with extraordinary care.

After coffee she went into the Countess's room as usual. The old lady had made her toilette, and her cat was purring on a cushion by her side.

"Aunt Betsy, is it true that my father was decoyed back to Italy by the police?"

"How do I know that? But if he was, it was no more than he might have expected. He had been breeding sedition at the safe distance of a thousand miles, and it was time he was brought to justice. Besides...."

"Well?"

"There were the estates, and naturally the law could not assign them to anybody else while there was no judgment against your father."

"So my father was enticed back to Italy in the interests of the next of kin."

"Roma! How dare you talk like that? About your best friend, too!"

"I didn't say anything against the Baron, did I?"

"You would be an ungrateful girl if you did. As for your father, I'm tired of talking. Only for his exile you would have had possession of your family estates at this moment, and been a princess in your own right."

"Only for this exile I shouldn't have been here at all, auntie, and somebody else would have been the princess, it seems to me."