"The girl came rushing down stairs again as pale as a corpse. 'Something must have happened,' said she, 'for the Signora's door is standing wide open, and everything in the room is tumbled up and down, and the stranger's door is locked.' I ran up with the girl, and Felicina and her sister—it was frightful to see my poor Signora's room—the Italian's door was fastened. We knocked, we called, at last we tore the door off its hinges—there, Signor, we saw before us!—but I shall tell you no more." No, not a word more, Marcantonia! I rose, thrilled and shocked, and went out. The little Felicina and the housekeeper followed me. They led me to the little chapel. The child and the old woman kneeled down before the altar, and prayed. I took a myrtle twig from the altar, and threw it on the spot beneath which Vittoria lies buried. And sadly I wandered down towards Isola Rossa. One can hardly grasp in thought the enormity of such a deed, much less prevail on one's-self to talk of it. Giustiniano had suddenly returned after leaving Monticello, and secretly gone up stairs; his room, and that of Vittoria, were on the same flat, separated by a passage. Giustiniano rushed in on her, armed with a pistol and a dagger. He wrestled fearfully with the powerful woman. He threw her on the floor, he dragged her into his room;—she was already dying, pierced with his dagger-thrusts. Her beautiful hair was found strewed about the floor, and the room all disordered with the struggle. Giustiniano threw the unhappy lady on his bed—he shot her with a pistol through the temples—he took her rings from her fingers, and put them on his own—then he lay down by her side, and blew out his brains. So they were found by old Marcantonia, and poor little Felicina, then a child of five; weeping, she cried: "That is my mother's blood"—a fearful sight, a horrid catastrophe, to be impressed for life on a child's soul. The people of Monticello wanted to tear Giustiniano limb from limb. Malaspina, who had returned without the least misgiving from Speloncato, prevented this. The body was interred among the rocks of Mount Monticello. Vittoria was thirty-six years old, and the mother of six children. Giustiniano had scarcely reached his twenty-fifth year.