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Updated: June 3, 2025
"Oh, Signor Ludovico," said Fortini, as he met him, "I was on my way, to the Circolo, on purpose to see if I could meet with you there." "Why, what is it? Have you any news to tell me?" said the young man in a hurried manner, that the lawyer thought odd. "Yes. I wished to speak to you on rather an important matter. Have you seen the Marchese Lamberto this morning?" "No.
I did receive the intelligence in question from the lady concerned, and I have just returned to the city. She communicated the fact to me during a little excursion we made together to the Pineta this morning, after the ball. Now you know all about it," said Ludovico, still in a hurry to get away. "Not quite!" rejoined Fortini, quite imperturbably.
"Well; enough, I think, has been discovered to relieve you of all suspicion enough, as I said, to convince my own mind very satisfactorily that you are innocent of all complicity in the matter." "I confess that I should have preferred, Signor Fortini, that my own assertion should have sufficed to produce that conviction," replied the young man, somewhat drily.
"That, alas! is the worst part of the bad story we, at least, here in Ravenna are perhaps excusable in thinking it the worst. The fact is, Signor Marchese, that this death took place under circumstances which seem to leave no doubt that the deed was done by the hand of the Marchese Ludovico." "The hand of the Marchese Ludovico! Gracious heaven! But that is nonsense, Signor Fortini. No doubt?
And, while my blood boiled, I remembered the priest, Martinelli, and the gray old man at Rome. The thing was clear. It was deliberate. It was the long arm. Fortini smiled lazily at me while I thus paused for the moment to debate, but in his smile was the essence of all insolence. This, of all times, was the time I should have been cool. But the old red anger began to kindle in me.
He was altogether in such a state that Signor Fortini began to fear that there really would be some catastrophe in the court before the business of the day could be concluded.
I want you to see Fortini also. I want you to ascertain from him how far it is possible or probable that any suspicion may rest on Paolina in consequence of the facts which are known; how far it is likely that any attempt may be made to set up a case against her.
Nevertheless, Signor Fortini, who, in the course of his seventy years, had had a tolerably wide experience of mankind, was astonished that the Marchese Lamberto di Castelmare should have been tempted to act as he proposed to act. "The very last man," said Signor Fortini musingly to himself, "that I could have suspected of such a thing!
"It is an extraordinary circumstance," said the Baron Manutoli, "that they were jeering at the Conte Leandro at the Circolo just now, about the way the Diva had snubbed him and his verses, and accusing him in joke of having been her murderer. And, as sure as I am now speaking to you, Signor Fortini, he looked in a way then that I a a in short that I thought very odd turned all sorts of colours.
Of course when a man speaks as Signor Fortini spoke to the Marchese, he does it not without some hope that his words may produce an effect on the person he addresses. But the lawyer had not much expectation that in the present case what he said would be listened to.
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