The sudden and quite unexpected meeting with Antonio had troubled Giraldi greatly. He had not thought about the young man for a long time; he had almost forgotten him, as he did all those whom he did not require immediately, or might not require again, for the furtherance of his plans. He required Antonio no longer. For the net which he was weaving for Ottomar and Ferdinanda, Bertalda was a much more accommodating and convenient tool. About Reinhold and Elsa he had long known all that he wished to know; and over the ardour with which at first he had followed up the idea of making out the handsome young man to be the son who should restore the already shaken relations between him and Valerie, he had himself smiled since. If Brother Ambrosio, indeed, had entered willingly into the affair--if by his hints to Valerie he had awakened her longing, if not hope, for the lost son! But the experiment had entirely failed; it had even rather had the contrary result, and had shown him more clearly than ever that her heart was more and more, perhaps was entirely, turned against him. And even if, perhaps under other circumstances, he returned to his plan, there was no use thinking any more of Antonio, against whom Valerie's suspicions had once been roused. She would not now believe in the strongest proof, to say nothing of a more or less well-invented fiction. And it was for this, for this hollow mockery, that he had inspired that passionate spirit with brilliant hopes and ambitious dreams, which must soon prove themselves an empty nothing, in which the young man himself perhaps no longer believed. There was sometimes a wild glare in the black eyes that had suggested to him that the young man would sooner or later go mad--perhaps was already so; and at the moment in which he swore to him that he should be revenged upon his mortal enemy, a smile had passed like a flash across his usually firm-set lips, which only admitted of one interpretation. If he ever learnt that the man who had promised to help him to gain the woman he loved had driven her into the arms of his rival, would it not be well while it was yet time to give the murderous weapon another direction--the right direction--to the heart of their mutual enemy? To say to Antonio, "I must confess to you, my son, that what you have above all things feared is true--the woman you love is now in his arms. I could not prevent it. Kill me! Or, if you would avenge yourself and me, keep your dagger ready--I know you always carry it with you. In a few minutes he will be here, still intoxicated with his happiness. Strike him! strike him down!"