“No,” Volterra said, without rising, “I think he had better stay, and hear what we have to say about this.  After all, the responsibility for what has happened falls upon him.”

“I should think it did!” cried the Baroness, breaking out at last, in harsh tones.  “You abominable villain, you monster of iniquity, you snake, you viper—­”

“Hush, hush, my dear!” interposed the Baron, realizing vaguely that his wife’s justifiable excitement was showing itself in unjustifiably vulgar vituperation.

“You toad!” yelled the Baroness, shaking her fist in Malipieri’s face.  “You reptile, you accursed ruffian, you false, black-hearted, lying son of Satan!”

She gasped for breath, and her whole frame quivered with fury, while her livid lips twisted themselves to hiss out the epithets of abuse.  Volterra feared lest she should fall down in an apoplexy, and he rose from his seat quickly.  He gathered her to his corpulent side with one arm and made her turn away towards the window, which he opened with his free hand.

“I should be all that, and worse, if a tenth of what you believe were true,” Malipieri said, coming nearer and then standing still.

He was very pale, and he was conscious of a cowardly wish that Volterra’s revolver might have killed him ten minutes earlier.  But he was ashamed of the mere thought when he remembered what Sabina would have to face.  Volterra, while holding his wife firmly against the window sill, to force her to breathe the outer air, turned his head towards Malipieri.

“She is quite beside herself, you see,” he said apologetically.

The Baroness was a strong woman, and after the first explosion of her fury she regained enough self-control to speak connectedly.  She turned round, in spite of the pressure of her husband’s arm.

“He is not even ashamed of what he has done!” she said.  “He stands there—­”

The Baron interrupted her, fearing another outburst.

“Let me speak,” he said in the tone she could not help obeying.  “What explanation have you to offer of Donna Sabina’s presence here?” he asked.

As he put the question, he nodded significantly to Malipieri, over his wife’s shoulder, evidently to make the latter understand that he must at least invent some excuse if he had none ready.  The Baron did not care a straw what became of him, or of Sabina, and wished them both out of his way for ever, but he had always avoided scandal, and was especially anxious to avoid it now.

Malipieri resented the hint much more than the Baroness’s anger, but he was far too much in the wrong, innocent though he was, to show his resentment.

He told his story firmly and coolly, and it agreed exactly with Sabina’s.

“That is exactly what happened last night,” he concluded.  “If you will go down, you will find the breach I made, and the first vaults full of water.  I have nothing more to say.”