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After standing still three or four minutes longer, she turned away with a discontented look in her face, all rosy with the wind and spray. She started as she saw Corbario standing before her, for she had not heard his footsteps in the gale. He wore his shooting-coat and heavy leathern gaiters, but he had no gun.
The Signora Corbario had not appeared yet, but the Contessa was already out. As a rule the Signora preferred to have her coffee in her room, as if she were in town. For some time no one spoke. "Had we not better send Ercole to find Marcello?" the Contessa asked at last. "I had to send Ercole to Porto d'Anzio this morning," Corbario answered.
"He said, 'You shall wish me back, but I will not come. I think those were his last words." "You have broken my boy's heart!" cried the Signora Corbario, turning her face away. Maddalena, whose heart had really been broken long ago, could not help smiling. "I am sure I did not mean to," cried Aurora, contritely.
"Here it is." He took a small leather case from his pocket, opened it, and drew out a short blue glass tube, with a screw top. It contained half a dozen white tablets, apparently just like those in common use for five-grain doses of quinine. A little murmur of disappointment went around the table. The new form of death looked very commonplace. Corbario was the only one who showed any interest.
"You must go and look for him," said Maddalena quietly to Corbario. "I think you are right," he answered. "I am going to find him," he said softly, bending down to his wife as she lay in her chair, trying to control her sobs. "I will send some of the men towards Porto d'Anzio and will go towards Nettuno myself."
Lawyers would make speeches about her to excite the pity of the jury and to turn the whole tide of feeling against Corbario. Marcello would himself be held up to public commiseration, as one of Corbario's victims. There would be allusions covert and open to Regina and to the position in which she stood to Marcello. There would be talk about Aurora.
It seemed impossible to go back and live under the same roof with Corbario now. He flushed with shame when he remembered the luncheon at Saint Moritz, and how he had been almost persuaded to leave poor Regina suddenly, and to go back to Paris with his stepfather.
"If you wish to go away," Corbario said, as he was leaving, "it might be as well to leave your next address, so that you may get letters. But please don't fancy that I want to know everything you do, my dear boy. You are quite old enough to take care of yourself, and quite sensible enough, too. The only thing you had better avoid for a few years is marriage!"
I have made experiments on animals, and have not succeeded in waking them by any known means." "I suppose it congests the brain, like opium," observed Corbario, quietly. "Not at all, not at all!" answered Kalmon, looking benevolently at the little tube which contained his discovery. "I tell you it leaves no trace whatever, not even as much as is left by death from an electric current.
They listened in respectful silence now, and waited till he was out of the house before meeting to discuss the tragedy and to decide that Corbario had got his deserts at last. In a few hours Regina was installed in her new lodging with such belongings as she needed immediately.
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