“So have I!” she declared, earnestly, with a frank and open look; “I have often wondered why people tell them.  They are so sure to be found out!”

I bit my lips hard to shut in the burning accusations that my tongue longed to utter.  Why should I damn the actress or the play before the curtain was ready to fall on both?  I changed the subject of converse.

“How long do you propose remaining here in retreat?” I asked.  “There is nothing now to prevent your returning to Naples.”

She pondered for some minutes before replying, then she said: 

“I told the superioress I came here for a week.  I had better stay till that time is expired.  Not longer, because as Guido is really dead, my presence is actually necessary in the city.”

“Indeed!  May I ask why?”

She laughed a little consciously.

“Simply to prove his last will and testament,” she replied.  “Before he left for Rome, he gave it into my keeping.”

A light flashed on my mind.

“And its contents?” I inquired.

“Its contents make me the owner of everything he died possessed of!” she said, with an air of quiet yet malicious triumph.

Unhappy Guido!  What trust he had reposed in this vile, self-interested, heartless woman!  He had loved her, even as I had loved her—­she who was unworthy of any love!  I controlled my rising emotion, and merely said with gravity: 

“I congratulate you!  May I be permitted to see this document?”

“Certainly; I can show it to you now.  I have it here,” and she drew a Russia-leather letter-case from her pocket, and opening it, handed me a sealed envelope.  “Break the seal!” she added, with childish eagerness.  “He closed it up like that after I had read it.”

With reluctant hand, and a pained piteousness at my heart, I opened the packet.  It was as she had said, a will drawn up in perfectly legal form, signed and witnessed, leaving everything unconditionally to “Nina, Countess Romani, of the Villa Romani, Naples.”  I read it through and returned it to her.

“He must have loved you!” I said.

She laughed.

“Of course,” she said, airily.  “But many people love me—­that is nothing new; I am accustomed to be loved.  But you see,” she went on, reverting to the will again, “it specifies, ’everything he dies possessed of;’ that means all the money left to him by his uncle in Rome, does it not?”

I bowed.  I could not trust myself to speak.

“I thought so,” she murmured, gleefully, more to herself than to me; “and I have a right to all his papers and letters.”  There she paused abruptly and checked herself.

I understood her.  She wanted to get back her own letters to the dead man, lest her intimacy with him should leak out in some chance way for which she was unprepared.  Cunning devil!  I was almost glad she showed me to what a depth of vulgar vice she had fallen.  There was no question of pity or forbearance in her case.  If all the tortures invented by savages or stern inquisitors could be heaped upon her at once, such punishment would be light in comparison with her crimes—­ crimes for which, mark you, the law gives you no remedy but divorce.  Tired of the wretched comedy, I looked at my watch.