“I will tell the Marchese of your kind intention, Signor Conte,” said the lawyer; “I think it would be better for you not to attempt seeing him now.  And, in the meantime, you cannot do better than to contradict, most emphatically, any such monstrously absurd reports, as those you have mentioned.”

“You know, of course, that Ludovico is arrested; and I am shocked to say, that the general opinion in the city is very much against him.  Of course I need not tell you that I am perfectly convinced of his entire innocence.  But who, except a really attached friend, would you get to believe it, under the circumstances?  Ah!  I am afraid it will go hard with him,” said the Conte; speaking with eager volubility,—­“I am sadly. afraid it will go hard with him.”

“It seems to me, Signor Conte, that any such speculations are a little premature.  The Marchese Ludovico has not been even officially accused as yet.  At any rate you can console yourself, Signor Conte, with the consideration that you have a magnificent subject for a tragedy in your hands.  To such a genuine poet as yourself, that is enough to counterbalance any misfortune that only touches our friends.”

And with that the old lawyer turned away to go back to the library; while the poet, though not altogether without a somewhat annoying notion that he was laughed at, was nevertheless delighted with the excellent idea that had been suggested to him.

“I made him understand that you could not see him.  All he wanted was to tell you just what I have already communicated to you,” said the lawyer, as he came back into the room.  “He said too, by-the-by, that all the town was talking of the offer of marriage made by the Marchese Lamberto to Signora Bianca Lalli—­”

“Of course, of course,” groaned the Marchese, tossing himself restlessly from one side to the other of his chair.  “And to think that at the very time,—­at the hour when I was communicating to you the decision I had arrived at with regard to—­to that unfortunate—­ to poor Bianca, she was even then, as it would seem, lying dead in the forest.  It is very, very terrible.”

“And I told the Signor Conte that he could not do better than contradict such a report wherever he heard it,” added the lawyer, who began almost to fancy, from a something that seemed strange to him in the Marchese’s manner, that the catastrophe which had come to relieve him in such a terrible manner from the scrape he had got himself into with the singer, was not altogether unwelcome to him.

“It is of no use, Fortini,” returned the Marchese, with a groan; “it is of no use.  That old man, her reputed father, knows it; their servant knows it; Ludovico knows it:  and, of course, his knowledge of it will have to be made public.”

“Nevertheless, the denial of it by such a tongue as that of the Conte Leandro Lombardoni can do no harm in the meantime,” said the lawyer, quietly.  “It may be,” he added, “it may be that something may turn up to prevent any public accusation of the Marchese.  It may be that he is not guilty.  It may be that the deed may yet be brought home to some other hand.”