“What shall I do?  I could spoil any game of theirs if I stepped in.  What are they after?  His money, no doubt.

“So am I; I have the best right to it, for I can do most for him.  He is absolutely in my power, and he’ll see that—­he’s no fool—­ directly he knows who I am, and why I’m here.  It will be worth his while to buy me off, if I’m ready to sell myself, and my duty, and the Prefettura—­and why shouldn’t I?  What better can I do?  Shall I ever have such a chance again?  Twenty, thirty, forty thousand lire, more, even, at one stroke; why, it’s a fortune!  I could go to the Republic, to America, North or South, send for Mariuccia—­ no, cos petto! I will continue free!  I will spend the money on myself, as I alone will have earned it, and at such risk.

“I have worked it out thus: 

“I will go to him at the very last, just before we are reaching Paris.  Tell him, threaten him with arrest, then give him his chance of escape.  No fear that he won’t accept it; he must, whatever he may have settled with the others. Altro! I snap my fingers at them.  He has most to fear from me.”

The next entries were made after some interval, a long interval, —­no doubt, after the terrible deed had been done,—­and the words were traced with trembling fingers, so that the writing was most irregular and scarcely legible.

“Ugh!  I am still trembling with horror and fear.  I cannot get it out of my mind; I never shall.  Why, what tempted me?  How could I bring myself to do it?

“But for these two women—­they are fiends, furies—­it would never have been necessary.  Now one of them has escaped, and the other—­ she is here, so cold-blooded, so self-possessed and quiet—­who would have thought it of her?  That she, a lady of rank and high breeding, gentle, delicate, tender-hearted.  Tender? the fiend!  Oh, shall I ever forget her?

“And now she has me in her power!  But have I not her also?  We are in the same boat—­we must sink or swim, together.  We are equally bound, I to her, she to me.  What are we to do?  How shall we meet inquiry? Santissima Donna! why did I not risk it, and climb out like the maid?  It was terrible for the moment, but the worst would have been over, and now—­”

There was yet more, scribbled in the same faltering, agitated handwriting, and from the context the entries had been made in the waiting-room of the railroad station.

“I must attract her attention.  She will not look my way.  I want her to understand that I have something special to say to her, and that, as we are forbidden to speak, I am writing it herein—­that she must contrive to take the book from me and read unobserved.

“_ Cos petto!_ she is stupid!  Has fear dazed her entirely?  No matter, I will set it all down.”

Now followed what the police deemed such damaging evidence.