"I have only to whisper that, dear friend, and society, at all events, will credit it. Already it knows the very minute details of your life, and it will believe that when you threw away every shred of propriety and went to live in that man's apartment, it was only in order to play the old part--shall I say the Scriptural part?--of possessing yourself of _the inmost secrets of his soul_."

The clear, sharp whisper in which the Baron spoke his last words cut Roma like a knife. She threw up her head with scorn.

"Let it believe what it likes," she said. "If society cares to think that I have allowed my life to be turned upside down for the sake of hatred, let it do so."

The Baron's secretary interrupted by opening the door.

"Nazzareno, Excellency," said the secretary.

"Ah! Let him come in," said the Baron. "You remember Nazzareno, Roma? My steward at Albano?"

An elderly man with a bronzed face and shaggy eyebrows, bringing an odour of the fields and the farmyard, was ushered into the room.

"Come in, Nazzareno! You've not forgotten Donna Roma? You planted a rosebush on her first Roman birthday, you remember. It's a great tree by this time, perhaps."

"It is, Excellency," said the steward, bowing and smiling, "and nearly as full of bloom as the Signorina herself."

"Well, what news from Albano?"

The steward told a long story of operations on the estates--planting birch in the top fields, and eucalyptus in the low meadow, fencing, draining, and sowing.

"And ... and the Baroness?" said the Baron, turning over some papers.

"Ah! her Excellency is worse," said the old man. "The nurse and the doctor thought you had better be told exactly, and that is the object of my errand."

"Yes?" The papers rustled in the Baron's fingers as he shuffled and sorted them.

The steward told another long story. Her Excellency was weaker, or she would be quite ungovernable. And so changed! When he was called in yesterday she was so much altered that he would not have known her. It was a question of days, and all the servants were saying prayers to Mary Magdalene.

"Have some dinner downstairs before you return, Nazzareno," said the Baron. "And when you see the doctor this evening, say I'll come out some time this week if I can. Good-morning!"

The repulsion the Baron had inspired in Roma deepened to loathing when he began to speak affectionately the moment the door had closed on the steward.

"Look at this, dearest. It's from his Majesty."

She did not look at the letter he put before her, so he told her what it contained. It offered him the Collar of the Annunziata, the highest order in Italy, making him a cousin to the King.

She could not contain herself any longer. "I want to tell you something," she said, "so that you may know once for all that it is useless to waste further thought on me."

He looked at her with an indulgent smile.

"I am married to Mr. Rossi," she said.

"But that is impossible. There was no time."

"We were married religiously, in the parish church, on the morning he left Rome."

The indulgent smile gave way to a sarcastic one.

"Then why did he leave you behind? If he thought _that_ was a good marriage, why didn't he take you with him? But perhaps he had his own reason, and the denunciation of the poor man in prison was not so far amiss."

"That was an official lie, a cowardly lie," said Roma, and her eyes burned with anger.

"Was it? Perhaps it was. But I have just heard something else about Mr.

Rossi that is undoubtedly true. I have heard from the Prefect of Paris that he is organising a conspiracy for the assassination of the King."

A look of fear which she could not restrain crossed Roma's face.

"More than that, and stranger than that, I have just heard also that the Pope has some knowledge of the plot."

Roma felt terror seizing her, and she said in a constrained voice, "Why?

What has the Pope told you?"

"Only that an insurrection is impending. It seems that his informant is a woman.... Who can she be, I wonder?"

The Baron was fixing his eyes on her and she tried to elude his gaze.

"Whoever she is she must know more," he said in a severe voice, "and whatever it is she must reveal it."

Roma got up, looking very pale, and feeling very feeble. When she reached the door the Baron was smiling and holding out his hand.

"Will you not shake hands with me?" he said.

"What is the use?" she answered. "When people shake hands it means that they wish each other well. You do not wish me well. You are trying to force me to betray my husband.... _But I'll die first_," she said, and then turned and fled.

When Roma was gone the Baron wrote a letter to the Pope:

"YOUR HOLINESS,--Providential accident, as your chamberlain would tell you, has enabled his Majesty's Government to judge for itself of that source of your Holiness's information which your Holiness very properly refused to reveal. At the same time official channels have disclosed to his Majesty's Government the nature of the conspiracy of which your Holiness so patriotically forewarned them. This conspiracy appears to be no less serious than an attempt to assassinate the King, but as detailed knowledge of so vile a plot is necessary in order to save the life of our august sovereign, his Majesty's Government asks you to grant the Prime Minister the honour of an audience with your Holiness in the cause of order and public security. Hoping to hear of your Holiness's convenience, and trusting that your Holiness will not disappoint the hopes of those who are dreaming even yet of a reconciliation of Church and State, I am, with all reverence, your Holiness's faithful son and servant, BONELLI."

IX

Roma went home full of uncertainty, and wrote in a nervous and straggling hand a hasty letter to Rossi.

"My dearest," she said, "your letter reached me safely last evening, and though I cannot answer it properly at the present moment, I must send a brief reply by mid-day's mail, because there are two or three things it is imperative I should say immediately.

"The first is that I wrote you a very important letter to London twelve days ago, and it is clear that you have not yet received it. The contents were of the greatest seriousness and also of the greatest secrecy, and I should die if any other eye than yours were to read them; therefore do not lose a moment until you ask for the letter to be sent after you to Paris. Write to London by the first post, and when the letter has come to your hand, do telegraph to me saying so. 'Received,'

that will be sufficient, but if you can add one other little word expressing your feeling on reading what I wrote--'Forgiven,' for instance--my feeling will not be happiness, it will be delirium.

"The next thing I have to say, dearest, is about your letters. You know they are more precious to me than my heart's blood, and there is not a word or a line of them I would sacrifice for a queen's crown. But they are so full of perilous opinions and of hints of programmes for dangerous enterprises, that for your sake I am afraid. It is so good of you to tell me what you are thinking and doing, and I am so proud to be the woman who has the confidence as well as the love of the most-talked-of man in Europe, that it cuts at my heart to ask you to tell me no more about your political plans. Nevertheless, I must. Think what would happen if the police took it into their heads to make a domiciliary visitation in this house. And then think of what a fearful weapon it puts into the hands of your enemies, if, hearing that I know so much, they put pressure upon me that I cannot withstand! Of course, that is impossible. I would die first. But still....

"My last point, dearest...."

Her pen stopped. How was she to put what she wished to say next? David Rossi was in danger--a double danger--danger from within as well as danger from without. His last letter showed plainly that he was engaged in an enterprise which his adversaries would call a plot. Roma remembered her father, doomed to a life-long exile and a lonely death, and asked herself if it was not always the case that the reformer partly reformed his age, and was partly corrupted by it.

If she could only draw David Rossi away from associations that were always reeking of revolution, if she could bring him back to Rome before he was too far involved in plots and with plotters! But how could she do it? To tell him the plain truth that he was going headlong to _domicilio coatto_ was useless. She must resort to artifice. A light shot through her brain, her eyes gleamed, and she began again:

"My last point, dearest, is that I am growing jealous. Yes, indeed, jealous! I know you love me, but knowing it doesn't help me to forget that you are always meeting women who must admire and love you. I tremble to think you may be happy with them. I want you to be happy, yet I feel as if it would be treason for you to be happy without me. What an illogical thing love is! But where Love reigns jealousy is always the Prime Minister, and in order to banish my jealousy you must come back immediately...."