And was it not possible that, on the theory of Ludovico’s innocence, the true explanation of the exclamation, which had escaped from him at the city gate, was to be found in supposing that he, too, had been struck by a similar thought?  Might not that outcry on Paolina, uttered when the speaker knew well that it was Bianca and not Paolina that lay dead before him, have been forced from him by the sudden thought that she had done the deed then revealed to him?

For the first time the shrewd lawyer began to feel a real doubt as to the author of the crime, It might be that the Marchesino was innocent after all, that his account of the events of that morning, as far as he was concerned, was simply true.  As his mind dwelt on the matter the case against Paolina seemed to acquire additional force.  It could be proved that this girl had been deeply and seriously attached to the Marchese Ludovico.  It could be proved that she had seen her lover tete-a-tete with so dangerous a rival as the singer in circumstances that she had every right to consider very suspicious.  It could be proved that she had been not far from the spot where the murder was committed much about the time when the deed must have been done.

It is an essentially and curiously Italian characteristic that the lawyer’s rapidly growing conviction that Paolina had indeed been the criminal was strengthened and made easier of acceptance to his mind by the fact that the suspected criminal was not; a townswoman but a Venetian.  It would have seemed less possible to him that a young Ravenna girl should have done such a deed.  But one of those terrible Venetian women of whom so many blood-stained tale of passion and crime were on record!

Signor Fortini really began to think that his mind had strayed into the true path towards the solution of the mystery at last.  And he was very much inclined to think that the germ of such a notion had already been deposited in the mind of the Police Commissioner.

In any case here was wherewithal to establish such a case of suspicion as should make it difficult for the tribunal to condemn the Marchesino on such evidence as could be brought against him, supposing no new circumstances to be brought to light.

Not for that reason, however, was the lawyer disposed to relinquish the idea which had occurred to him as to the possibility of incriminating the Conte Leandro.  The more circumstances of doubt it was possible to accumulate around the facts, so much the better.

Signor Fortini thought that he saw his way clearly enough to the means to showing that it was very presumable that the Conte Leandro had conceived a violent and bitter hatred of the murdered woman, It was enough to base a case for suspicion on.  The lawyer had no idea that the poet had been the murderer.  He did not dream of the possibility that he should be convicted of the crime.  He had, doubtless, been quietly in bed in Ravenna at the hour it had been committed.  But he might find it difficult to prove that he had not quitted the city on that Wednesday morning.  And the suggestion of the possibility of his guilt would, at all events, be an element of doubt and difficulty the more.