se. "I cannot help it. The only thing I can do for my dead
friend is to save you, if I can. I saw the account of his death in a
newspaper an hour ago, and I came at once. Will you please not think
that I am mad, until you have heard me? I was his friend, and I have
eaten your bread these many years. I must speak."

"Tell me your story," said Veronica, leaning back in her chair and
folding her hands.

He began at the beginning, and told her all, as Bosio had told him. He
omitted nothing, for he had the astonishing memory which sometimes
belongs to students, besides the desire to be perfectly accurate, and
to exaggerate nothing. For he knew that she would find it hard to
believe him.

She listened; and as he went on, describing the struggle in poor Bosio's
heart between the desire to save the woman he loved and the horror of
sacrificing Veronica as a means to that end, she leaned forward again,
drawing nearer to him, and watching his face keenly. Her eyes were wide,
and her lips parted a little; for whether true or not, the story was
terrible as he told it, and as he had said that it would be.

"I do not know what he said to you last night," he concluded. "I give
you a dead man's words, as he spoke them to me; but I have no right to
those he spoke to you. This is true, that I have told you, as I hope for
forgiveness of my own sins. If you stay in this house, by the truth of
God, I believe that your life is not safe."

"You believe it, I am sure," said Veronica. "But I cannot. The most I
can believe is that poor Bosio was already mad when he told you this. It
must be true. Even supposing that my uncle were the man you think, and
had ruined himself in speculations and had taken money of mine without
my knowledge, would it not be far more natural that he and my aunt
should come to me and confess everything, and beg me to forgive and help
them for the sake of their good name? Of course it would. You cannot
deny that."

"It is what I told Bosio," answered Don Teodoro, shaking his head; "but
he answered that they feared you, and that your death would be a safer
way, because you might not be so kind. You might go to the cardinal and
lay the case before him, and they would be lost."

"I might. I probably should." Veronica paused. "That is true," she
continued, "but whatever I did, I could not allow the matter to come to
a prosecution--for the sake of my own name, if not for theirs. But I do
not believe it--I do not believ