I never saw her gayer than on that day, and when I looked askance as she jested with his Holiness and flirted with Riario, daring him to give a supper in her honour in his new palace, she pressed my foot beneath the table and looked me smilingly in the face, as though striving to assure me that all was well. But she would not comply with Leo's request for his father's canzone, _Quant e bella_, which she had sung with such effect the previous evening. She left the gay company while they were all clamoring for more, and insisted that I should urge the horses to the utmost as we dashed back to Rome. Our common anxiety to know the outcome of Maria Dovizio's visit to Chigi's villa, together with her great longing for sympathy in this crisis of her life, so wrought with the favouring opportunity of that wild drive that Imperia granted me such a revelation of her inmost soul as I believe no other man can boast, and I knew her that night as God knew her. She had sought Margherita the night before a criminal at heart, for she had determined to sacrifice the girl. Imperia possessed a house in Rome. It was on her lips to tell Margherita that Raphael, who had met with an accident, was lying there at the point of death, and had sent for her to come to him. She had already instructed her servants, and had Margherita once entered that house its doors would never again have been opened for her. But Imperia's guardian angel was kind. Before the words could be uttered Margherita had poured out her heart in gratitude to the woman whom she believed to be her benefactress. While the girl spoke, Imperia strove to steel herself, repeating mentally the round of cruel reasoning which had been the Ixion's wheel on which her tortured brain had unceasingly revolved: "If Margherita speaks to Maria Dovizio, Maria will never be reconciled with Raphael. Unless Maria weds Raphael she will surely marry Chigi. Either Margherita or I must perish. Which shall it be?"