“Of course that is what we want.  But even supposing no light upon the matter can be got at all, it is not to be supposed that—­that any judge would consider there was sufficient ground for assuming our friend to be guilty?”

“Ah, that’s just the point; just the point of the difficulty.  We must not expect, Signor Barone, that the judges will look at the question quite with the same eyes that we do.  They will have none of the strong persuasion that we—­ahem!—­that the Marchese Ludovico’s friends have—­that he is wholly incapable of committing such a crime.  On the other hand, they are men used to suspicion, and to the habit of considering a certain amount of suspicion as equivalent to moral certainty.  And I confess—­I must confess, my dear sir, that I am very far from easy as to the result, if we should be unable to find at least some counterbalancing possibilities, you understand?”

“But it seems to me, Signor, that such are already found; and it was just upon this point that I was anxious to speak with you to-night.  I have just seen Ludovico.  He sent for me to the Circolo.  And what he mainly wanted was to bid me go to the Signorina Paolina Foscarelli, in order to prepare her for the probability of her own arrest, and to comfort her with the assurance that no evil could come to her.  Also I was directed by him to tell you, that any attempt to fix the guilt of this deed on the girl, would be met by an avowal—­a false avowal, of course—­that he is himself the guilty person.”

“Ta, ta, ta, ta!  Mere stuff, chatter, the talk of a boy in love with a pretty girl,” said the lawyer.

“Just so, just so.  Of course we pay no attention to all that.  I promised to go to the girl as he told me; and I shall do so presently.  But I thought it best to see you first.  The fact is, Signor Fortini, that I do not feel any one bit of the certainty that he professes to feel, that this Venetian girl may not have been the real assassin.”

The lawyer looked shrewdly into Manutoli’s face, and nodded his head slowly three or four times.  “What would there be so unlikely in it,” pursued Manutoli; “girls, and Venetian girls too, have done as much and more before now?  We know that she is in love with him.  She sees him going on such an expedition as that with such a girl as La Bianca.  She has already, no doubt, had cause to be jealous of her.  Ludovico used to see the Lalli frequently.  What is more likely?”

“Stay, Signor Barone, one minute.  This is an important point; you say that this Paolina saw her lover with La Bianca.  How do you know that? and how did it come about?”

“Ludovico just told me so; and the girl, it seems, herself told him.  Her story is that she went out to St. Apollinare at an early hour this morning to look after a scaffolding or some preparation of some kind that had been made for her to copy some of the mosaics in the church; and that from a window of the church, being on the scaffolding, she saw Ludovico and La Bianca driving by in a bagarino.  Now all this probably is true enough.  The question is, What did she do then, when she saw what was so well calculated to throw her into a frenzy of jealousy?  My theory is, that she followed them into the forest, dogged their steps, and finding her opportunity at the unlucky moment when Ludovico left Bianca sleeping, did the murder there and then.”