“Signor Rivarez,” said Montanelli, stopping at last in front of him, “you have done a thing to me that a man who was born of a woman should hesitate to do to his worst enemy. You have stolen in upon my private grief and have made for yourself a mock and a jest out of the sorrow of a fellow-man. I once more beg you to tell me: Have I ever done you wrong? And if not, why have you played this heartless trick on me?” The Gadfly, leaning back against the chair-cushions, looked up with his subtle, chilling, inscrutable smile. “It am-m-mused me, Your Eminence; you took it all so much to heart, and it rem-m-minded me--a little bit--of a variety show----” Montanelli, white to the very lips, turned away and rang the bell. “You can take back the prisoner,” he said when the guards came in. After they had gone he sat down at the table, still trembling with unaccustomed indignation, and took up a pile of reports which had been sent in to him by the parish priests of his diocese. Presently he pushed them away, and, leaning on the table, hid his face in both hands. The Gadfly seemed to have left some terrible shadow of himself, some ghostly trail of his personality, to haunt the room; and Montanelli sat trembling and cowering, not daring to look up lest he should see the phantom presence that he knew was not there. The spectre hardly amounted to a hallucination. It was a mere fancy of overwrought nerves; but he was seized with an unutterable dread of its shadowy presence--of the wounded hand, the smiling, cruel mouth, the mysterious eyes, like deep sea water---- He shook off the fancy and settled to his work. All day long he had scarcely a free moment, and the thing did not trouble him; but going into his bedroom late at night, he stopped on the threshold with a sudden shock of fear. What if he should see it in a dream? He recovered himself immediately and knelt down before the crucifix to pray. But he lay awake the whole night through. CHAPTER IV. MONTANELLI'S anger did not make him neglectful of his promise. He protested so emphatically against the manner in which the Gadfly had been chained that the unfortunate Governor, who by now was at his wit's end, knocked off all the fetters in the recklessness of despair. “How am I to know,” he grumbled to the adjutant, “what His Eminence will object to next? If he calls a simple pair of handcuffs 'cruelty,' he'll be exclaiming against the window-bars presently, or wanting me to feed Rivarez on oysters and truffles. In my young days malefactors were malefactors and were treated accordingly, and nobody thought a traitor any better than a thief. But it's the fashion to be seditious nowadays; and His Eminence seems inclined to encourage all the scoundrels in the country.” “I don't see what business he has got to interfere at all,” the adjutant remarked. “He is not a Legate and has no authority in civil and military affairs. By law------”