a criminal convicted long ago for
conspiring against the person of the late King.

The sun shone, the sparrows chirped, the church bells rang the whole day
long. Towards evening the warder came with another newspaper, the
_Corriere della Sera_. It explained that the sensational arrest of the
illustrious Deputy, which had fallen on the country like a thunderbolt,
was not intended as punishment for an offence long past and forgotten,
but as a means of preventing a political crime that was on the eve of
being committed. The Deputy had been abroad since the unhappy riots of
the First of February, and advices from foreign police left no doubt
whatever that he had contemplated a preposterous raid of the combined
revolutionary clubs of Europe against Italy, timed with almost fiendish
imagination to break out on the festival of the King's Jubilee.

Rossi slept as little on Sunday night as on the night before. The
horrible doubts which he had driven away were sucking at his heart like
a vampire. He tried to invent excuses for Roma. She was intimidated; she
was a woman and she could not help herself. Useless, and worse than
useless! "I thought the daughter of Joseph Roselli would have died
first," he told himself.

The good-natured warder brought him another newspaper in the morning,
the _Secolo_, an organ of his own party. Its tone was the bitterest of
all. "We have reason to believe that the unfortunate event, which cannot
but have the effect of setting back the people's cause, is due to the
betrayal of one of their leaders by a certain fashionable woman who is
near to the person of the President of the Council. It is the old story
over again, the story of man's weakness and woman's deception, with
every familiar circumstance of humiliation, folly, and shame."

There could be no doubt of it. It was Roma who had betrayed him.
Whatever her reasons or excuse, the result was the same. She had given
up the deepest secrets of his soul, and his life's work was in the dust.

The marshal of Carabineers came to say that they were to go on to Rome,
and at nine o'clock they were again in the train. People in holiday
dress were promenading the platform and the station was hung with flags.
A gentleman in a white waistcoat was about to step into the compartment
with the Carabineers and their prisoner, when, recognising his
travelling companions, he bowed and stepped back. It was the Sergeant of
the Chamber, returning after the Easter vaca