I need hardly say that I was very much excited over the strange discovery I had made, as there now appeared to be a reasonable chance of clearing up the mystery of the Palazzo Morone. I had discovered the name of the unhappy young man, which gave me a most important clue to the reading of the enigma; but I had yet to find out the name of the lady who had behaved in such an extraordinary manner and committed so daring a crime. After hearing Peppino's story I fancied that she might perchance be the Contessa Morone, but had later on dismissed this idea as idle, seeing that she had been absent from Verona for many months; but now that Bianca had told me that Pallanza had come straight from Rome, I began to suspect that I had been right in my surmise. According to Peppino the Contessa had taken up her residence at the Italian capital, so what was more likely than that she had fallen in love with Guiseppe while he was singing at the Teatro Apollo, and, following him to Verona, had killed him by means of poison, in revenge for his determination to leave her? So far everything was feasible enough, but two points of the affair perplexed me very much, one being the choosing of the deserted palace as a place of meeting, the other the visit to the burial ground by the woman. We do not live in the times of the Borgias, when noble ladies can thus rid themselves of their lovers with impunity, else I might have believed that this phantom of Donna Lucrezia had gone to the old Veronese cemetery to select a grave for the unfortunate young man she intended to murder. To think thus, however, was foolish, and although I guessed that she had used the old palace of her family as a safe place for a lovers' meeting, seeing its gruesome reputation secured it from public curiosity, yet I was quite unable to explain the cemetery mystery. One thing, however, appeared to me to be certain, that Guiseppe Pallanza had been carrying on an intrigue with the Contessa--presuming the ghoul to be her--and that he had gone to the Palazzo Morone on the night in question at her request. As to the sick friend----