And if aught had been wanting to increase the weight of fear and anguish on my already over-burdened mind, and to aid in what almost seemed an infernal plot to utterly distract me, I had it in fresh, wild conjectures touching Madonna Paola.

Where indeed could she be that Ramiro's men had failed to find her for all that they had scoured that part of the country in which I had left her to wait for my return?
What if, by now, worse had befallen her than the capture with which Ramiro's lieutenant was charged?
With such doubts as these to haunt me, fretted as I was by my utter inability to take a step in her service, I lay.

There for an hour or so in such agony of mind as is begotten only of suspense.

In my girdle still reposed the treasonable letter from Vitelli to Ramiro, a mighty weapon with which to accomplish the butcher's overthrow.

But how was I to wield it imprisoned here?
I wondered why Mariani had not returned, only to remember that the soldier who had locked me in had carried the key of my prison-chamber to Ramiro.
Suddenly the stillness was disturbed by a faint tap at my door.