“I confess that I should have preferred, Signor Fortini, that my own assertion should have sufficed to produce that conviction,” replied the young man, somewhat drily.

“My dear Signor Marchese, permit me to say that such preference would have been ill founded.  Is not my conviction, based upon the probabilities of the known facts, of much greater value than any mere acquiescence with your assertions?  These are matters, my dear sir, which must be looked at reasonably, and not merely sentimentally.  If you had committed murder—­if I had committed murder,—­should we not either of us, have denied it as resolutely as you denied this?  If the circumstances are such as to cause a man—­ any man—­to be suspected at all, no words of his can be worth anything whatsoever on the subject; and you must admit that, the circumstances being as they were, it was impossible that the first suspicion should not have fallen on you.  You may believe that no efforts or activity have been wanting on my part for:  the discovery of the means of removing this suspicion.  Let us be thankful that they have, to a very great degree, been successful.”

“And what has been found out?  For God’s sake tell me all about it!  I declare, for my own part, I could almost believe that I had done it myself in my sleep, or in a fit of madness without knowing it, so utterly impossible does it seem to me to imagine what hand it could have been that did the deed.”

“Signor Marchese, the hand that did that deed was no other than the hand of the Venetian girl, Paolina Foscarelli,” said the lawyer, with deliberate and impressive slowness, emphasizing his words with extended forefinger as he uttered them.

“Pshaw!  Is that all you have to tell me?” cried the Marchese, jumping up from his chair, and pacing the room with impatient strides.  “It is an absurdity upon the face of it; I should have hoped that nobody in Ravenna would have believed it possible that I could have been guilty of such a deed; but, by Heaven, the whole city will see that it is more likely that I should have done it than Paolina!  It is simply absurd.”

“Signor Marchese, prepossessions, and previous notions of what might have been expected to be possible, are of no value in such a case as this against the logic of facts and circumstances.  Other young women, who seemed as little likely to be capable of such a deed as this Signorina Foscarelli, have committed such—­and have done it under the pressure of motives exactly similar to those which we know with certainty to have been vehemently operative in the heart of the Venetian.”

“Motives!  What conceivable motive could have existed to—­”