, hard,
white hand, with a ring in which was set an engraved amethyst, Ortensia
touch the stone with her lips, and he motioned to her to be seated in a
comfortable chair at his left.

'I know everything,' he said quietly. 'I always do.'

The comprehensiveness of this sweeping statement might have made
Ortensia smile at any other time. But she was staggered by it now, and
forgot the speech she had prepared. On the face of it, to tell anything
to a man who knew everything was superfluous. She reflected a moment,
and he took advantage of her silence to speak again in the same calm
tone.

'You sent me word that you had found something of value belonging to me,
madam. I shall be glad to receive it, but, in the first place, I have
the honour of returning to you some of your own property, which you left
last night in a little house in the Via di Santa Sabina.'

As he spoke the last words he put down his right hand on the side away
from her and brought up a long veil, a silver hairpin, and one white
doeskin glove all together.

'That is all, I believe,' he said, with a very faint smile. 'If you
left anything else there, I will order a more careful search to be made.
I may add that there were stains of blood on the floor and one of the
walls, and as you do not appear to be wounded, madam, the inference
is----'

Before he could explain his inference, Ortensia stretched out her arm
from beneath the cloak she wore, and showed him that it was bound up in
a blood-stained handkerchief; for the small cut had been deep. With her
other hand she took the purse from within her dress and held it out to
the Cardinal.

'A thousand crowns in gold ducats,' she said, 'which your Eminence's
nephew paid two Bravi for the privilege of giving me this scratch. But
they cheated him and drove him away and then quarrelled, and fought
about which should have me for his share. I escaped from the house while
they were fighting outside, I stepped on this purse and I picked it up,
being sure that the money belonged to you, and there it is! In return, I
ask for my husband's liberty.'

She saw from his face that he was much surprised, and that what she had
just told him had produced a decided effect in her favour; for it is
almost needless to say that the account of the affair which Don Alberto
had dictated to his secretary and had sent to his uncle late on the
previous evening gave a very different view of the case. According to
the young man, Orte