Would the Eccellenza like to stop there? It is as far
as I can go, for I am wanted to-night in Rome."
"Very well--stop where you like--only get on now!" said Varillo,
pulling his head in with a jerk. And sinking back in his seat again
he wiped his hot face and cursed his miserable destiny. It would
have been all right if he had only remembered that sheath! No one
would have got on such a track of suspicion as that he, the lover
and affianced husband of Angela, was her brutal assassin!
"I wrote a loving letter and sent her flowers," he argued with
himself, "when I knew she would be dead! But her father would have
got them, and he would have wired to me in Naples, and I should have
come back overcome with sorrow,--and then I should have told them
all how the picture was a secret between my Angela and myself,--how
_I_ had painted the greater part of it, and how she in her sweetness
had wished me to surprise the world,--the plan was perfect, but it
is all spoiled!--spoiled utterly through that stupid blunder of the
sheath!"
Such a trifle! It seemed to him incredible--unjust--that so slight a
thing could intervene between him and the complete success of his
meditated treachery. For notwithstanding the fact that he had been a
great reader and student of books, he now, in this particular hour
of his own emergency, completely forgot what all the most astute and
learned writers have always expounded to an inattentive world--
namely, the fact that crime holds within itself the seed of
punishment.
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