Veronica did not move while she was gone, but stood quite still, watching the door.  She was very pale, with illness and rising anger, but she was not weak, as Matilde was.  She had not gone through half so much.  Presently Matilde returned, followed by Macomer, wrapped in a dark velvet dressing-gown, his face white and twitching, his usually smooth grey beard unbrushed, and his grey hair in disorder.  With drawn lids he looked at Veronica, and in his terror he tried to smile, but there was something at once cowardly and insolent in the expression—­there was something else, too, which the young girl did not understand, a sort of vacancy of the brow and unnatural weakness of the mouth.

“I am glad that you have come,” she said, when the door was shut.  “I have not much to say, and I wish you to hear it.”

They were all standing.  Gregorio steadied himself by the head of the couch, and was as erect as ever.

“I will tell you something which you do not know,” said Veronica, fixing her eyes on him.  “Before Bosio died he told the whole truth to Don Teodoro Maresca, his friend.  And the day after his death, Don Teodoro came and told it all to me.”

“Bosio!” exclaimed Gregorio, his knees shaking.  “Bosio told—­”

“What did Bosio tell?” asked Matilde, interrupting her husband in a loud voice to cover any mistake he might be about to make.

But Veronica had seen Macomer’s face and had heard his tone of dread.  Whatever doubts she still had, disappeared for the last time.

“He told his friend the whole truth about your management of my fortune,” she answered steadily.  “He told how you had lost your own in speculation and had taken everything of mine upon which you could lay hands—­all my income and much more, so long as you were still my guardian—­you and Lamberto Squarci, helping each other.  And I understand now why you would not give me that money the other day.  You had not got it to give me.  My aunt must have borrowed it.  And Bosio told Don Teodoro, that unless he was married to me, you meant to kill me, because I had signed a will leaving you everything.  There was nothing that Bosio did not tell, and Don Teodoro repeated every word of it to me.  I thought him mad.  But now I know that he was not.  I have been saved by a miracle, but you shall not try to murder me again—­so I am going away.”

Macomer had listened to the end, his face working horribly and his hands grasping the head of the couch.  When Veronica paused, his head fell forward as he stood.  Even Matilde could not speak, for a moment.  The revelation that Bosio had told all before he died, and that Veronica knew it, fell upon her like a blow, with stunning force.  The first words came from Gregorio.

“Bosio!” he exclaimed in a loud voice.  “The devil take his soul!”

“God will have mercy upon the soul that was lost through your deeds,” said the young girl, solemnly.  “Amongst you, you drove him to madness—­it was not his fault.  But for his soul you shall answer, as well as for your deeds—­and that is much to answer for, to Heaven and to me.  You neither of you have the strength to deny one word of what Bosio said—­”