and that each one would suspect and accuse one of his companions of the carelessness.  Nothing was easier than to construct the story, and he had supposed that nothing would be simpler than to make the cardinal believe it.  He had been surprised to find himself mistaken upon this point, but he felt a thrill of triumph that more than repaid him for what he had done, when he saw the messenger leave the room with the order to liberate Faustina.  Corona had spoken, had asked him to do a hard thing for her sake, and her caprice was satisfied, it mattered little at what cost.  She had given him an opportunity of showing what he would do for her, and that opportunity had not been thrown away.

But as he sat alone in the little room the cardinal had assigned to him, he began to realise the magnitude of what he had been doing, and to see how his actions would be judged by others.  He had surrendered himself as a murderer, and was to be treated as one.  When the time came for the trial, might it not happen with him as with many another innocent man who has put himself into a false position?  Might he not be condemned?  Nothing that he could say hereafter could remove the impression created by his giving himself up to justice.  Any denial hereafter would be supposed to proceed from fear and not from innocence.  And if he were condemned, what would become of Corona, of his father, of little Orsino?  He shuddered at the thought.

What, he asked himself, would be the defence?  Yesterday afternoon he had been out of the house during several hours, and had walked alone, he hardly remembered where.  Since the crisis in his life which had separated him from Corona in fact, if not in appearance, he often walked alone, wandering aimlessly through the streets.  Would any of his acquaintance come forward and swear to having seen him at the time Montevarchi was murdered?  Probably not.  And if not, how could it be proved, in the face of his own statement to the cardinal, that he might not have gone to the palace, seeking an opportunity of expending his wrath on the old prince, that he might not have lost his self-control in a fit of anger and strangled the old man as he sat in his chair?  As he himself had said, there was far more reason to believe that the Saracinesca had killed Montevarchi out of revenge, than that a girl like Faustina should have strangled her own father because he had interfered in her love affairs.  If the judges took this view of the case, it was clear that Giovanni would have little chance of an acquittal.  The thing looked so possible that even Corona might believe it—­even Corona, for whose sake he had rushed madly into such desperate danger.