And then, at last, when we were quite alone, and within two hundred yards of Fifanti's house, I broke at last the silence.
I had been thinking very busily, and the peasant's words had illumined for me a score of little obscure matters, had explained to me the queer behaviour and the odd speeches of Fifanti himself since that evening in the garden when the Cardinal-legate had announced to him his appointment as ducal secretary.

I checked now in my stride, and turned to face her.
"Was it true ?" I asked, rendered brutally direct by a queer pain I felt as a result of my thinking.
She looked up into my face so sadly and wistfully that my suspicions fell from me upon the instant, and I reddened from shame at having harboured them.
"Agostino!" she cried, such a poor little cry of pain that I set my teeth hard and bowed my head in self-contempt.
Then I looked at her again.
"Yet the foul suspicion of that lout is shared by your husband himself," said I.
"The foul suspicion--yes," she answered, her eyes downcast, her cheeks faintly tinted.

And then, quite suddenly, she moved forward.

"Come," she bade me.

"You are being foolish." "I shall be mad," said I, "ere I have done with this." And I fell into step again beside her.