Moving to the door of the cell, the mysterious visitor bolted it across and locked it—­then dropped the disguising folds of his heavy mantle and monk’s cowl, and disclosed the face and form of Domenico Gherardi.  Paralysed with fear Varillo stared at him,—­every drop of blood seemed to rush from his heart to his brain, turning him sick and giddy, for in the dark yet fiery eyes of the priest, there was a look that would have made the boldest tremble.

“I knew that you were here,” he said, his thin lips widening at the corners in a slight disdainful smile.  “I saw you at the inn on the road to Frascati, and watched you shrink and tremble as I spoke of the murder of Angela Sovrani!  You screened your face behind a paper you were reading,—­that was not necessary, for your hand shook,—­and so betrayed itself as the hand of the assassin!”

With a faint moan, Varillo shudderingly turned away and buried his head in his pillow.

“Why do you now wish to hide yourself?” pursued Gherardi.  “Now when you are an honest man at last, and have shown yourself in your true colors?  You were a liar hitherto, but now you have discovered yourself to be exactly as the devil made you, why you can look at me without fear—­we understand each other!”

Still Varillo hid his eyes and moaned, and Gherardi thereupon laid a rough hand on his shoulder.

“Come, man!  You are not a sick child to lie cowering there as though seized by the plague!  What ails you?  You have done no harm!  You tried to kill something that stood in your way,—­I admire you for that!  I would do the same myself at any moment!”

Slowly Varillo lifted himself and looked up at the dark strong face above him.

“A pity you did not succeed!” went on Gherardi, “for the world would have been well rid of at least one feminine would-be ‘genius,’ whose skill puts that of man to shame!  But perhaps it may comfort you to know that your blow was not strong enough or deep enough, and that your betrothed wife yet lives to wed you—­if she will!”

“Lives!” cried Florian.  “Angela lives!”

“Ay, Angela lives!” replied Gherardi coldly.  “Does that give you joy?  Does your lover’s heart beat with ecstasy to know that she—­ twenty times more gifted than you, a hundred times more famous than you, a thousand times more beloved by the world than you—­lives, to be crowned with an immortal fame, while you are relegated to scorn and oblivion!  Does that content you?”

A dull red flush crept over Varillo’s cheeks,—­his hand flenched the coverlet of his bed convulsively.

“Lives!” He muttered.  “She lives!  Then it must be by a miracle!  For I drove the steel deep . . . deep home!”

Gherardi looked at him curiously, with the air of a scientist watching some animal writhing under vivisection.

“Perhaps Cardinal Felix prayed for her!” he said mockingly, “and even as he healed the crippled child in Rouen he may have raised his niece from the dead!  But miracle or no miracle, she lives.  That is why I am here!”