"MY DARLING CHILD,--News at last, too, and success within hail!
Minghelli, the Grand Hotel, the reference in London, and the
dead-and-buried nightmare have led up to and compassed everything!
Prepare for a great surprise--David Rossi is not David Rossi,
but a condemned man who has no right to live in Italy! Prepare
for a still greater surprise--he has no right to live at all!
"So you are avenged! The man humiliated and degraded you. He
insulted me also, and did his best to make me resign my portfolio
and put my private life on its defence. You set out to undo the
effects of his libel and to punish him for his outrage. You've
done it! You have avenged yourself for both of us! It's all your
work! You are magnificent! And now let us draw the net closer ...
let us hold him fast ... let us go on as we have begun...."
Her sight grew dim. The letter seemed to be full of blotches. It dropped
out of her helpless fingers. She sat a long time looking out on the
sunlit city, and all the world grew dark and chill. Then she rose, and
her face was pale and rigid.
"No, I will not go on!" she thought. "I will not betray him! I will
save him! He insulted me, he humiliated me, he was my enemy, but ... I
love him! I love him!"