When seated at the breakfast table, meagrely spread with what Beppe had contrived to prepare, Tarsis allowed the superintendent to be ushered in. If the servant’s disquieting report had needed verification, here it was. Those rosy cheeks were not puffing now with excitement and indignation against ungrateful strikers; his lips were ashen, his voice subdued; the events of the morning had given him an enlarged appreciation of the meaning and possibilities of the power that had risen in Italy; and the new light frightened him. Believing that bad news of the man who held secret meetings with his wife would be pleasing to Tarsis, the visitor’s first announcement was that Mario Forza had been wounded. Of the episode in Cathedral Square--the stampede of the mob, the saving of La Ferita from the rushing cavalry, and the inadvertent blow that cut Forza’s forehead--Signor Ulrich was able to narrate only so much as he had learned from the hastily gathered accounts of the journals. “Is it known if the wound is severe?” Tarsis inquired, feigning a casual interest in the detail. “One account--that of the _Secolo_, I think--says it is not likely to prove mortal.” “But it is enough to keep him from journeying to the Brianza to-night,” Tarsis told himself, and cursed the woman whose fall and rescue had thwarted his purpose. He saw the Panther waiting vainly in the gloom of the cloister and the return to its sheath of his blade unstained with blood. But Tarsis did not rage or brood over the miscarried plan. He knew how to bide his time. Moreover, there had begun to run in his veins a terror that made all other considerations small indeed. Signor Ulrich told his story as one might have recounted the devastations of a tornado. His recital was grimly quiet until he touched upon the part played by the women. Then the pictures of what he saw, filling his mind again, caused him to roll up the whites of his eyes and shake his head in token that the world had gone to the dogs. Per Bacco! They were no longer women, but devils from the under world! Did they not go through fire and wreck like fiends of inferno? Did they not bare their breasts to musket fire and invite death? Tarsis betrayed no sign of impatience, as he was wont to do when Signor Ulrich indulged his gift for detailed narrative. Indeed, he himself lengthened the story by putting questions to bring out salient facts. The general superintendent could not credit the startling deduction, at first, but he became positive, as the evidence increased, that his master--Antonio Tarsis, possessor of untold wealth, the industrial ruler who in the past had only a smile for the demonstrations of labour--Signor Ulrich perceived that he was concerned, in this avalanche of rage, for the security of his person. “Do you think the military will be able to hold them at bay until re-enforcements come?” he asked. “I am afraid not, signore,” the other replied. “Why?”