"Yes," she answered hoarsely. "I became a mean, despicable traitor, a wretched, soul-tortured woman, whose denunciations caused the arrest and imprisonment of the more dangerous members of the gang, while at the same time, moving in the diplomatic circle in Rome, I furnished constant reports to Montelupo of the feeling existing towards Italy. Friendless and helpless, I became that man's catspaw. He held me for life or death. He spread reports about me, vile scandals which caused respectable people to shun me, but increased my popularity among the faster set in Rome and Florence, to whom I became known as the Contessa Funaro although I was unmarried. When I protested, he merely laughed in my face, saying that he had done so for political reasons, because it had got abroad that I was in the pay of the Ministry, and if I showed myself to be a gay, heartless woman, instead of a patrician diplomatist, this rumour might be refuted. "So, compelled to suffer this indignity in silence, and maintain the ignominious part he had allotted to me, I went to Livorno under the assumed name of Fanetti, and attended the constant meetings of the league which were taking place there. Was it any wonder that I should, under such circumstances, actually become an Anarchist? Among the members of this band of secret assassins--an offshoot of the dreaded Mafia--was a girl named Vittorina Rinaldo, who, having ascertained by some means that Nenci and Malvano, then in England, had misappropriated the greater part of the funds of the league, resolved to travel to London and denounce them. This she did, being accompanied thither by Captain Tristram, who had been induced to join us by Lady Marshfield, and, I suppose, with some vague hope that the knowledge thus acquired might be of service to the British Foreign Office. Vittorina and myself had taken the oath at the same meeting of the league, and had on that night received from Nenci, the leader, rings of exactly similar pattern--`marriage rings,' he laughingly termed them. Well, you are aware of that scoundrel's devilish ingenuity. It was he who had made those rings so that by a mere pressure of his hand upon the ring the poison was injected, and the girl's life taken. You know how cleverly circumstantial evidence was fastened upon her friend. From recent inquiries, I have discovered that Vittorina's relations on her mother's side were English, and had a villa up at Como, and that Major Maitland, having a couple of years before appropriated a large sum of money belonging to her, was no doubt an accessory to her death, for he has never been heard of since the night of the crime. Remember that his photograph was found among her possessions, and that he was no doubt with Nenci awaiting her arrival that night at Charing Cross."