Should she boldly search the house?  Settimia could hardly have had any object in lying.  If she had meant to frighten Regina, she would have spoken very differently.  She would have made out that Corbario was almost within hearing, waiting in a dark corner with a loaded revolver.  But her words had been the cry of truth, uttered to save her life at the moment when death was actually upon her.  She would have screamed out the truth just as certainly if Corbario had already left Rome, or if he were in some hotel for the night—­or even if she had really known nothing.  In the last case Regina would have believed her, and would have let her go.  There is no mistaking the accent of mortal terror, whether one has ever heard it or not.

Corbario was somewhere in the house, Marcello’s enemy, and the man she herself had long hated.  A wild longing came over her to have him in her power, bound hand and foot like Settimia, and then to torment him at her pleasure until he died.  She felt the strength of half a dozen men in her, and the courage of an army, as she rose to her feet once more.  She had seen him.  He was not a big man.  If she could catch him from behind, as she had caught the woman, she might perhaps overpower him.  With the thought of near revenge the last ray of caution disappeared, and from being fearless Regina became suddenly reckless.

But as she rose, she heard a sound overhead, and it was the unmistakable sound of footsteps.  She started in surprise.  It was simply impossible that Settimia should have loosed the cord that bound her.  Regina had been brought up in the low hill country and in the Campagna, and she could tie some of the knots used by Roman muleteers and carters, which hold as well as those men learn at sea.  She had tied Settimia very firmly, and short of a miracle the woman could not have freed herself.  Yet the footsteps had been distinctly audible for a moment.  Since Settimia was not walking about, Corbario must have got into the room.  Yet Regina had locked the door, and had the key in her pocket.  It was perfectly incomprehensible.  She left the sitting-room again, carrying her candle as before; but at the door she turned back, and set the candle-stick upon the table.  She would be safer in the dark, and would have a better chance of taking Corbario by surprise.

Poor Regina had not grown up amongst people who had a high standard of honour, and her own ideas about right and wrong were primitive, to speak charitably.  But if she had dreamt of the deed that was being done upstairs, her heart would have stood still, and she would have felt sick at the mere thought of such villainy.

She had left the room and locked the door, and while her footsteps had been audible on the stairs no other sound had broken the stillness.  But a few seconds later a whispered question came from some person out of sight.

“Is she gone?” the whisper asked.

“Yes,” answered Settimia in a very low voice, which she knew Regina could not hear.