What a dreadful, what a miserable misfortune was this. A tragedy, if ever there was one, which would for ever strike down from their place an ancient and noble family, whose merit and worth had from generation to generation been the pride and the admiration of the entire city--a tragedy which would come home as such to the heart of every human being in Ravenna. Great heaven, what a fall! And this was the first outcome of the disastrous purpose of his old friend the Marchese. Truly he had felt that nought but evil--evils manifold and wide-spreading--could arise from so insane a line of conduct. But he had been far from anticipating so overwhelming a calamity as the first result of it. Then, the deed itself! It would cause an outcry from one end of Italy to the other. It would be a disgrace, and an opprobrium to the city for many a year. What! Ravenna invites, entices this hapless girl, who had been the admiration of so many cities, to come within her walls; and in return for the delight which she had given them--murders her. Other cities vie with each other in doing honour to the gifted artist. She ventures to Ravenna, and--is murdered. There was a bitterness in Signor Fortini's consideration of the matter from this point of view, which was more poignant than any other man than an Italian would quite understand. For nowhere else do municipal pride, jealousy, and patriotism run so high. A foul and cruel murder had been done: so much was certain. Signor Fortini had not the smallest hope that the death would be found to have resulted from natural causes. And then came the consideration whether there could be any hope that, after all, the deed had been done by some other hand than that of the young Marchese di Castelmare. After thinking deeply for several minutes, the lawyer shook his head. That such a deed might have been done in the forest on the person of one found sleeping there, whose appearance was such as to hold out the expectation of booty to a plunderer, was possible--not very likely, but possible. Possible enough to suppose that lawless and evil-disposed persons might have been wandering there-depredators on the forest, who exist in great numbers--smugglers making their way across the country by hidden paths, or what not? Possible enough that such a deed might have been done, and the perpetrators of it far away before the discovery of the body, away to the southward, and across the Apennine into Tuscany in the space of a few hours. But all such possibilities were conclusively negatived by the certain fact that no plunder had been attempted, that plunder could not have been the object of the murderer. Alarmed before they could carry their object into execution by the approach of footsteps? Was this a plausible or a possible theory?