esson, as palpable
as pitiless, what was the impediment which made her marriage with David
Rossi impossible.

The marriage could not be celebrated until after eleven days, but the
meeting at the Coliseum must take place to-morrow, and as surely as it
did so it must result in riot and David Rossi must be shot.

The secretary gathered up his note-book and left the room, and then the
Baron turned to Roma with beaming eyes and lips expanding to a smile.

"Finished at last! A thousand apologies, my dear! Twelve o'clock
already! Let us go out and lunch somewhere."

"Let me go home," said Roma.

She was trembling violently, and as she rose to her feet she swayed a
little.

"My dear child! you're not well. Take this glass of water."

"It's nothing. Let me go home."

The Baron walked with her to the head of the staircase.

"I understand you perfectly," she said in a choking voice, "but there is
something you have not counted upon, and you are quite mistaken."

And making a great call on her resolution, she threw up her head and
walked firmly down the stairs.

Immediately on reaching home she wrote to David Rossi:

"I _must_ see you to-night. Where can it be? To-night! Mind,
to-night. To-morrow will be too late. ROMA."

Bruno delivered the note by hand, and brought back an answer:

"DEAREST,--Come to the office at nine o'clock. Sorry I cannot
go to you. It is impossible. D. R.

"P.S.--You have converted Bruno, and he would die for you. As for
the 'little Roman boy,' he is in the seventh heaven over your
presents, and says he must go up to Trinita de' Monti to begin
work at once."

IV

The office of the _Sunrise_ at nine o'clock that night tingled with
excitement. A supplement had already gone to press, and the machines in
the basement were working rapidly. In the business office on the first
floor people were constantly coming and going, and the footsteps on the
stairs of the composing-room sounded through the walls like the
irregular beat of a hammer.

The door of the editor's room was frequently swinging open, as reporters
with reports, messengers with telegrams, and boys with proofs came in
and laid them on the desk at which the sub-editor sat at work.

David Rossi stood by his desk at the farther end of the room. This was
the last night of his editorship of the _Sunrise_, and by various silent
a