ay of a public work, the Holy
Father might condescend to make Del Ferice a "duca" in the ordinary
course as a step in the nobility. Donna Tullia dreamed many things that
night, and she afterwards accomplished most of them, to the surprise of
everybody, and, if the truth were told, to her own considerable
astonishment.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

"Giovanni, you are the victim of some outrageous plot," said old
Saracinesca, entering his son's room on the following morning. "I have
thought it all out in the night, and I am convinced of it."

Giovanni was extended upon a sofa, with a book in his hand and a cigar
between his lips. He looked up quietly from his reading.

"I am not the victim yet, nor ever will be," he answered; "but it is
evident that there is something at the bottom of this besides Madame
Mayer's imagination. I will find out."

"What pleases me especially," remarked the old Prince, "is the wonderful
originality of the idea. It would have been commonplace to make out that
you had poisoned half-a-dozen wives, and buried their bodies in the
vaults of Saracinesca; it would have been _banal_ to say that you were
not yourself, but some one else; or to assert that you were a
revolutionary agent in disguise, and that the real Giovanni had been
murdered by you, who had taken his place without my discovering it,--very
commonplace all that. But to say that you actually have a living wife,
and to try to prove it by documents, is an idea worthy of a great mind.
It takes one's breath away."

Giovanni laughed.

"It will end in our having to go to Aquila in search of my supposed
better half," he said. "Aquila, of all places! If she had said Paris--or
even Florence--but why, in the name of geography, Aquila?"

"She probably looked for some out-of-the-way place upon an alphabetical
list," laughed the Prince. "Aquila stood first. We shall know in two
hours--come along. It is time to be going."

They found Corona in her boudoir. She had passed an uneasy hour on the
previous afternoon after they had left her, but her equanimity was now
entirely restored. She had made up her mind that, however ingenious the
concocted evidence might turn out to be, it was absolutely impossible to
harm Giovanni by means of it. His position was beyond attack, as, in her
mind, his character was above slander. Far from experiencing any
sensation of anxiety as to the result of Donna Tullia's visit, what she
most felt was curiosity to see what