"And it is for one so false and cruel that you rest under this dreadful charge," exclaimed the German. "But, please God, you will soon be cleared from it. Of course you will have no difficulty in proving an _alibi_. That is all you need to clear you." But Leslie did not answer, and his friend saw that he was pale as death. "Of course you can prove an _alibi_--cannot you, Leslie?" he asked, with a shade of anxiety in his tone. But Leslie looked at him with a gleam of horror in his dark eyes, and his voice shook with emotion as he answered: "No, Carl, I cannot!" Carl Muller started as though a bullet had struck him. "Leslie you jest," he exclaimed, hoarsely. "Of course you can prove where you were at that exact time when the murder took place. Your safety all hinges upon that. Do you not remember where you were at that time?" "Ah, Heaven, do I not remember? Every moment of that time is indelibly stamped upon my memory," groaned the unhappy prisoner. "Then why do you talk so wildly, my dear fellow? All you have to do is to tell where you were at that time, and produce even one competent witness to prove it." "I cannot do it!" Leslie answered, gravely. "But, good Heavens, man, your life may have to pay the forfeit if you fail to establish an _alibi_ at the trial." "I must pay the forfeit, then. Carl, I choose death rather than the only available alternative," was the inscrutable and final reply. CHAPTER XXXIV. "Words fail me, Colonel Carlyle, when I try to express my burning sense of your injustice in this high-handed outrage! What, in this enlightened age, in this nineteenth century, do men turn palaces into prisons, and debar weak women of their liberties? Am I a slave that you have turned your keys upon me, and set hirelings and slaves to watch me? Am I a criminal? If so, where is my crime?" A long and elegant saloon in a beautiful palace in Italy. The rich curtains of silk and lace are looped back from the windows, and the view outside is the beautiful Bay of Naples with the clear, blue, sunny sky reflected in its blue and sparkling waves. A garden lies below the windows, rich, in this tropical clime, with beautiful flowers, and vines and shrubbery, while groves of oranges, lemons, figs and dates abound in lavish luxuriance. Within the room that was furnished with princely magnificence and taste, were a man and a woman, the man old, and bowed, and broken, the woman young and more beautiful than it often falls to the lot of women to be. Her delicate features, chiseled with the rare perfection of a head carved in cameo, were flushed with passion, and the glow of anger shone through the pure, transparent skin, tinting it with an unusual bloom. As she walked restlessly up and down the room, in her trailing robe of soft azure hue, her sea-blue eyes blazed under their drooping lashes until they looked black with excitement.