“She is dead, Signor Marchese,” said the lawyer, looking at him curiously.

“Dead—­La Bianca dead!  I don’t believe it.  It is some scheme for frustrating the purpose you disapproved of—­some plan managed between you and my nephew.  You have sent her away, and want to persuade me that she is dead.”

“Your mind is unhinged by the shock of my intelligence, Signor Marchese—­naturally enough—­or such an absurd notion would not have occurred to you.  I have seen the dead body of Bianca Lalli.  It is now in the custody of the police,” said the lawyer, with slow gravity.

“The police!” cried the Marchese, shooting a momentary glance up into the lawyer’s face.

“Necessarily so; for, Signor Marchese, the unhappy—­the miserable truth is that a foul murder has been committed.  The girl was murdered in the Pineta this morning.”

“Murdered!  Gracious heaven!  Murdered—­but why murdered?  Why may she not have died by a natural death?—­that is—­I mean—­of course I mean, if there were no evident marks of violence on the body.”

The lawyer paused a minute, as if some cause of perplexity had been suggested to him by the words of the Marchese, before he replied,—­

“There were, in truth, no marks of evident violence on the body, or, at least, none such as an unskilled eye would observe on a very superficial examination.  But all that will be ascertained at the medical examination, which will take place to-morrow morning.  But I think it can hardly be doubted that the death was not a natural one,” said the lawyer, shaking his head gravely.

“And the Marchese Ludovico?” asked the Marchese, rather strangely, as it struck the lawyer, seeing that nothing had as yet been said to connect the young Marchese with the catastrophe, and he was not aware of the fact that the Marchese knew of his nephew’s excursion to the Pineta.

“That, alas! is the worst part of the bad story—­we, at least, here in Ravenna are perhaps excusable in thinking it the worst.  The fact is, Signor Marchese, that this death took place under circumstances which seem to leave no doubt that the deed was done by the hand of the Marchese Ludovico.”

“The hand of the Marchese Ludovico!  Gracious heaven!  But that is nonsense, Signor Fortini.  No doubt?  How can there be no doubt, merely because he was with her in the forest?”

There was something in the Marchese’s manner which made it seem to the lawyer as if he must have already heard of the tragedy that had happened, and of the suspicion that had been thrown on his nephew.  “Were you aware, then, Signor Marchese,” he asked, “that the Marchese Ludovico had gone to the Pineta with this unhappy woman?”

The Marchese dropped his head upon his chest and paused a minute, passing his hand slowly across his brow and before his eyes, before he replied,—­

“Yes, I knew that,” he said, at length; “the Conte Leandro told me of it.”