"And to you, Signor Marchese, it assuredly cannot appear strange that the circumstances I have enumerated should carry with them the conviction to other minds that Paolina Foscarelli is guilty of the murder of the singer," continued the lawyer, speaking very slowly and fixing the keen glance of his dark bright eyes on the working face of his companion; "to you, above all others, this cannot appear strange, since--to your own mind this suspicion first occurred." "What do you mean? I! Signor Fortini. What strange notion is misleading you? I don't know what you mean!" cried the Marchese, while a look of horror gradually crept over his face. "When the body of the murdered woman was brought into the city,--when we two stood in the gateway, and when your hand raised the sheet that covered the face of the dead, you exclaimed aloud 'Paolina!' What was then the thought that was in your mind? I imagined, at the time, that you recognized her in the dead woman before you. A very few minutes, however, sufficed to show that it was not Paolina, but Bianca who lay there murdered. And then, amid the horror of the first idea of your guilt, which the nature of the circumstances rendered inevitable, I thought no more of the exclamation you had uttered. But I have not forgotten the fact. You did, on seeing Bianca dead before you, exclaim, 'Good God! Paolina!' What was the thought in your mind, Signor Marchese, that prompted that exclamation? What but the sudden spontaneous rush of the conviction that it was she who had done the deed on which you were looking?" For a few moments the Marchese seemed too much stunned by the inference, and the appeal of the lawyer, and by the vision of the consequences, which he purposed drawing from it, to utter any reply to the demand which had been made on him. "You mistake, Signor Fortini," he gasped out at last; "you are in error. I cannot have made any such exclamation. I have no consciousness of anything of the kind. In any case no such monstrous idea, as you would infer from it, ever entered into my mind. You know how anxious I was about Paolina's prolonged absence. I was thinking of her; at least, I suppose so, if, indeed, I uttered her name. I have no recollection. I don't know why I should have done so. All I know is that no such horrible and impossible suggestion ever presented itself to my mind for an instant. If it were otherwise," continued the young man, after a few moments of painfully concentrated thought,--"if it were otherwise, why did I not suggest such a solution of the mystery when I found myself accused of the crime?"