“Can you tell me who wrote this?” she asked.

Her composure irritated me.  She had rallied all her forces to Briga’s defence, and I felt as though my triumph were slipping from me.

“Probably one of the clerks of the archives,” I answered.  “It is written in the same hand as all the other memoranda relating to the political prisoners of that year.”

“But it is a lie!” she exclaimed.  “He was never admitted to the prisons.”

“Are you sure?”

“How should he have been?”

“He might have gone as his father’s assistant.”

“But if he had seen my poor brother he would have told me long ago.”

“Not if he had really given up this letter,” I retorted.

I supposed her quick intelligence had seized this from the first; but I saw now that it came to her as a shock.  She stood motionless, clenching the letter in her hands, and I could guess the rapid travel of her thoughts.

Suddenly she came up to me.  “Colonel Alingdon,” she said, “you have been a good friend of mine, though I think you have not liked me lately.  But whether you like me or not, I know you will not deceive me.  On your honor, do you think this memorandum may have been written later than the letter?”

I hesitated.  If she had cried out once against Briga I should have wished myself out of the business; but she was too sure of him.

“On my honor,” I said, “I think it hardly possible.  The ink has faded to the same degree.”

She made a rapid comparison and folded the letter with a gesture of assent.

“It may have been written by an enemy,” I went on, wishing to clear myself of any appearance of malice.

She shook her head.  “He was barely fifteen—­and his father was on the side of the government.  Besides, this would have served him with the government, and the liberals would never have known of it.”

This was unanswerable—­and still not a word of revolt against the man whose condemnation she was pronouncing!

“Then—­” I said with a vague gesture.

She caught me up.  “Then—?”

“You have answered my objections,” I returned.

“Your objections?”

“To thinking that Signor Briga could have begun his career as a patriot by betraying a friend.”

I had brought her to the test at last, but my eyes shrank from her face as I spoke.  There was a dead silence, which I broke by adding lamely:  “But no doubt Signor Briga could explain.”

She lifted her head, and I saw that my triumph was to be short.  She stood erect, a few paces from me, resting her hand on a table, but not for support.

“Of course he can explain,” she said; “do you suppose I ever doubted it?  But—­” she paused a moment, fronting me nobly—­“he need not, for I understand it all now.”

“Ah,” I murmured with a last flicker of irony.

“I understand,” she repeated.  It was she, now, who sought my eyes and held them.  “It is quite simple—­he could not have done otherwise.”