With these thoughts in his mind Signor Fortini suddenly changed his immediate purpose of going to the Professore Tomosarchi; and determined to walk as far as the Porta Nuova and make inquiry himself of the people at the gate as to the testimony they might be able to give respecting Paolina’s exit from the city at a very early hour on that morning.  At the same time, it might be possible to lead them into imagining that they had seen some other passenger, who might have been the Conte Leandro.  It was very desirable that this inquiry should be made without delay.  For it was no part of the duty of the gate officers to make any written note of such a circumstance; and it would entirely depend on their recollection to say whether such or such a person had passed the gate.  At the same time, that such a person as this Paolina Foscarelli should pass out of the city at such an hour in the morning, was sufficiently out of the ordinary course of things to make it very unlikely that it should not be remembered by the officials.

As the lawyer pursued his way towards the gate in deep thought he was comforted as to the complexion of his client’s case by the consideration of his own state of mind.  He found it impossible to come to any definitive conclusion as to the balance of the probabilities.  At one moment his mind swung back to his original conviction that the Marchese Ludovico had yielded to the temptation of making himself safe from the destitution that awaited him if his uncle’s purpose were carried out.  The persuasion that it was so seemed to come like a flash of light upon him.  Then, again, thinking of all the stories of what women have done under the influence of a maddening jealousy, he reverted to the superior probability of the other hypothesis.

Arrived at the gate the lawyer’s success was greater than he had ventured to anticipate.  Both the persons respecting whom he made inquiry had been seen to pass out of the city at a very early hour that morning.

To his great surprise he heard that the Conte Leandro had passed the gate before it was daylight; and the officer had been struck by the strangeness of the circumstance.  He was much muffled up in a large cloak, with a broad-brimmed hat drawn down over his eyes and face.  But his person was perfectly well known to the official; and he had recognized him without difficulty.

He also perfectly well remembered seeing the girl—­a remarkably pretty girl—­pass through about an hour or a little more afterwards.  And, imagining that the one circumstance explained the other—­that it was an affair of some assignation outside the city in the interest of some amourette that was attended by difficulties within the walls—­he had thought no more about it.

But Signor Fortini knew enough to feel very sure, that the exceedingly singular facts, as they seemed to him, of both these persons having gone out of the city in the direction of the Pineta at such an unusual hour, was not to be accounted for by any such explanation.  But neither did it seem in any degree likely or credible, that these two facts, the passing out of the Conte Leandro, and the passing out of Paolina, should have had any connection with each other in reference to the murder in the Pineta.