on his brain,—­yet—­half-reeling with the shock of them, he still went on his way,—­straight on to the house and studio of Florian Varillo.  There, he rang the bell loudly and impatiently.  A servant opened the door in haste, and stared aghast at the tall old man with the white hair and blazing eyes, who was wrapped in a dark cloak, the very folds of which seemed to tremble with the suppressed rage of the form it enveloped.

“Il Principe Souvrani!” he stammered feebly, falling back a little from the threshold.

“Where is your master?” demanded Sovrani.

“Eccellenza, he has gone to Naples!”

“When did he leave?”

“But two hours ago, Eccellenza!”

Prince Pietro held up the dagger-sheath he had just found.

“This—­belongs—­to—­him—­does it not?” he asked slowly, detaching his words with careful directness.

The man answered readily and at once.

“Yes, Eccellenza!”

Sovrani uttered a terrible oath.

“Let me pass!”

The servant made a gesture of protest.

“But—­Eccellenza—­my master is not here! . . .”

Prince Pietro paying no heed to him, strode into the house, and brusquely threw open the door of a room which he knew to be Varillo’s own specially private retreat.  A woman with a mass of bright orange-gold hair, half-dressed in a tawdry blue peignoir trimmed with cheap lace, was sprawling lazily on a sofa smoking a cigarette.  She sprang up surprised and indignant,—­but shrank back visibly as she recognised the intruder, and met the steady tigerish glare of the old man’s eyes.

“Where is your lover?” he asked.

“Eccellensa!  You amaze—­you insult me—!”

“Basta!” and Sovrani came a step nearer to her, his wrath seeming to literally encompass him like a thunder-cloud—­“Play me no tricks!  This is not the time for lying!  I repeat my question—­where is he?  You, the companion of his closest thoughts,—­you, his ’model’—­you, Mademoiselle Pon-Pon, his mistress—­you must know all his movements.  Tell me then, where he is—­or by heaven, if you do not, I will have you arrested for complicity in murder!”

She fell back from him trembling, her full red mouth half open,—­and her face paling with terror.

“Murder!” she whispered—­“Dio mio!  Dio mio!”

“Yes—­murder!” and the Prince thrust before her wide-opened eyes the dagger-sheath he held—­“What!  Have you not heard?  Not yet?  Not though the whole city rings with the news?  What news?  That Angela Sovrani is dead!  That she—­my daughter—­the sweetest, purest, most innocent and loving of women as well as the greatest and most gifted—­has been mortally stabbed in her own studio this very day by some cowardly fiend unknown!  Unknown did I say?  Not so—­known!  This sheath belongs to Florian Varillo.  Where is he?  Tell me at once—­if only to save yourself trouble!”

Overcome by fear, and to do her justice, horror as well, the miserable Pon-Pon threw herself on her knees.