t's appearance of uncertainty all would be lost.

"No; of course you cannot understand the vast importance of this
discovery. I must explain. I must enter into historic details, and I am
so much overcome by this extraordinary turn of fortune that I can hardly
speak. Remove all doubt from your mind, my dear lady, for we have already
triumphed. This innkeeper, this Giovanni Saracinesca, this Marchese di
San Giacinto, is the lawful and right Prince Saracinesca, the head of the
house--"

"What!" screamed Donna Tullia, stopping short, and gripping his arm as in
a vice.

"Indeed he is. I suspected it when I first found the signature at Aquila;
but the man was gone, with his newly married wife, no one knew whither;
and I could not find him, search as I might. He is now returned, and
what is more, as this letter says, with all his papers proving his
identity. This is how the matter lies. Listen, Tullia _mia_. The old
Leone Saracinesca who last bore the title of Marquis--"

"The one mentioned here?" asked Donna Tullia, breathlessly.

"Yes--the one who took service under Murat, under Napoleon. Well, it is
perfectly well known that he laid claim to the Roman title, and with
perfect justice. Two generations before that, there had been an amicable
arrangement--amicable, but totally illegal--whereby the elder brother,
who was an unmarried invalid, transferred the Roman estates to his
younger brother, who was married and had children, and, in exchange, took
the Neapolitan estates and title, which had just fallen back to the main
branch by the death of a childless Marchese di San Giacinto. Late in life
this old recluse invalid married, contrary to all expectation--certainly
contrary to his own previous intentions. However, a child was born--a
boy. The old man found himself deprived by his own act of his
principality, and the succession turned from his son to the son of his
younger brother. He began a negotiation for again obtaining possession of
the Roman title--at least so the family tradition goes--but his brother,
who was firmly established in Rome, refused to listen to his demands. At
this juncture the old man died, being legally, observe, still the head of
the family of Saracinesca; his son should have succeeded him. But his
wife, the young daughter of an obscure Neapolitan nobleman, was not more
than eighteen years of age, and the child was only six months old. People
married young in those days. She entered some kind of prot