morning.

"Wait!" said Roma. A new light had come into her face--the light of a
new idea.

"What is it, my daughter?" said the Pope.

"Holy Father, there is something I had forgotten. But I must tell you
before it is too late. It may alter your view of everything. When you
hear it you may say, 'You must not speak a word. You shall not speak. It
is impossible.'"

"Tell me, my child."

Roma hesitated and looked from the Capuchin to the Pope. "How can I tell
you," she said. "It is so difficult. I hadn't meant to tell any one."

"Go on, my daughter."

"My husband's name...."

"Well?"

"Rossi is not really his name, your Holiness. It is the name he took on
returning to Italy, because the one he had borne abroad had been
involved in trouble."

"Just so," said the Pope.

"Holy Father, David Rossi was a friendless orphan."

"I have heard so," said the Pope.

"He never knew his father--not even by name. His mother was a poor
unhappy woman who had been cruelly deceived by everybody. She drowned
herself in the Tiber."

"Poor soul," said the Pope.

"He was nursed in the Foundling, your Holiness, and brought up in a
straw hut in the Campagna, and then sold as a boy into England."

The Pope moved uneasily in his seat.

"My father found him on the streets of London on a winter's night, your
Holiness, carrying a squirrel and an accordion. He wore a ragged suit of
velveteens which used to be laughed at by the London boys, and that was
all that sheltered his little body from the cold. 'Some poor man's
child,' my father thought. But who can say if it was so, your
Holiness?"

The Pope was silent. A sudden change had come over his face. Roma's eyes
were held down, her voice was agitated, she was scarcely able to speak.

"My father was angry with the boy's father, I remember, and if at that
time he had known where to find him I think he would have denounced him
to the public or even the police."

The Pope's head sank on his breast; the Capuchin looked steadfastly at
Roma.

"But who knows if he was really to blame, your Holiness? He may have
been a good man after all--one of those who have to suffer all their
lives for the sins of others. Perhaps ... perhaps that very night he was
walking the streets of London, looking in vain among its waifs and
outcasts for the little lost boy who owned his own blood and bore his
name."

The Pope's face was white and quivering. His elbows rested on the arms
of his chair and