But Regina had gained time to prepare her story.

“Why should I tell you who they are?” she asked.  “They did no harm, after all, and they let him lie in their house.  At first they hoped he would get well, but you know how it is in the country.  When sick people linger on, every one wishes them to die, because they are in the way, and cost money.  That is how it is.”

“But you wished him to live,” said the Superintendent in an encouraging tone.

Regina shrugged her shoulders and smiled, without the slightest affectation or shyness.

“What could I do?” she asked.  “A passion for him had taken me, the first time that I saw him.  So I stole for him, and sat up with him, and did what was possible.  He lay in an attic with only one blanket, and my heart spoke.  What could I do?  If he had died I should have thrown myself into the water below the mill.”

Now there had been no mill within many miles of the inn on the Frascati road, in which there could be water in summer.  Regina was perfectly sincere in describing her love for Marcello, but as she was a clever woman she knew that it was precisely when she was speaking with the greatest sincerity about one thing, that she could most easily throw a man off the scent with regard to another.  The Superintendent mentally noted the allusion to the mill for future use; it had created an image in his mind; it meant that the place where Marcello had lain ill had been in the hills and probably near Tivoli, where there is much water and mills are plentiful.

“I suppose he was a poor relation of the people,” said the Superintendent thoughtfully, after a little pause.  “That is why they wished to get rid of him.”

Regina made a gesture of indifferent assent, and told something like the truth.

“He had not been there since I had been servant to them,” she answered.  “It must have been a long time since they had seen him.  We found him early in the morning, lying unconscious against the door of the house, and we took him in.  That is the whole story.  Why should I tell you who the people are?  I have eaten their bread, I have left them, I wish them no harm.  They knew their business.”

“Certainly, my dear, certainly.  I suppose I may say that Marcello Botti comes from Rocca di Papa?”

“Oh, yes,” answered Regina readily.  “You may say that, if you like.”

As a matter of fact she did not care what he wrote in his big book, and he might as well write one name as another, so far as she was concerned.

“But I never saw him there,” she added by an afterthought.  “There are many people of that name in our village, but I never saw him.  Perhaps you had better say that he came from Albano.”

“Why from Albano?” asked the Superintendent, surprised.

“It is a bigger place,” explained Regina quite naturally.

“Then I might as well write ‘Rome’ at once?”

“Yes.  Why not?  If you must put down the name of a town in the book, you had better write a big one.  You will be less likely to be found out if you have made a mistake.”