"'It is all like a strange dream now. But, _Illustrissima_, as I look back to that moment, what I remember is a huge beating of a heart that will not be still. It is there, and a gleam of light through a narrow wall-slot in the masonry is there; but should you ask me how I read, until I knew by rote, what was written on that paper, I could not tell you. Yet I can repeat every word now: "'"This is to be destroyed, should it reach you, before the next round of l'Uguccione. "'"I can get speech of you through the slot. Watch there always in the early night. It must be when the old wretch, my master, is in his deepest sleep. "'"Your word came to me through la Marta, months ago, from l'Attilio. They are keen for their reward. Take heart, oh my dearest one, and watch for me. "'"I have sat at the board of my tyrant, and each day he has taunted me, and pointed down to the cruel prison of my darling. Oh, if, after all, it is a lie that you still live! Pray God Attilio is right, and that this may reach you! "'"Oh, my beloved, if no better may be, at least I may compass that you shall receive a tiny flask of poison; whereof I too may take a fatal draught, and each may know of the other that trouble is at an end." "'She had signed no name, but none was needed. Hope waked in my heart, for I knew that Attilio...'" Here Mr. Pelly stopped reading. Another hiatus! "The loss of this passage," said he, "is especially irritating, as it might have supplied a clue to the identity of the writer of this letter. The remainder of the story, as I recollect it, leaves us quite in the dark as to who she was, though I am inclined to surmise, from the use of the expression 'my master,' that she was a young person attached to the household of the Duchess." But for all that, Mr. Pelly's dream about the picture disturbed his memory. How could his inner consciousness have concocted it, consistently with this interpretation of the manuscript? Still, he was bound to "dismiss it from his mind," and give his support, provisionally, to the theory of the Herr Professor. How could he cite a mere dream in refutation of it? So he "dismissed it from his mind," and when Madeline said, "Never mind that now, Uncle Christopher! Do go on and see if it doesn't all come right in the end. We'll talk about who she was, after," he was rather glad to resume, without further comment: "'... I am hanging in mid-air. Below me is an awful precipice. If Attilio were to fail me, or the rope break, what should I do? But I care not; I care only to succour my darling love, in his dungeon underground. Do not speak again, dear love, lest you be overheard within. Attilio says that if I whisper to you through the little opening no other prisoner need hear.... I will tell you all. Attilio knew from his boyhood that the _sfiatatoio_...'"