CHAPTER VII.
CONTAINS A SURPRISE The first object brought to light, about two feet beneath the surface, was a piece of dark gray woolen stuff which, when the mold was removed, proved to be part of a woman's skirt.
With frantic eagerness I got into the hole we had made and removed the soil with my hands, until I suddenly touched something hard.
A body lay there, doubled up and crushed into the well-like hole the men had dug.
Together we pulled it out, when, to my surprise, on wiping away the dirt from the hard waxen features, I recognized it as the body of Armida, the woman who had been my servant in Leghorn and who had afterwards married Olinto.

Both had been assassinated! When Muriel gazed upon the dead woman's face she gave vent to an expression of surprise.

The body was evidently not that of the person she had expected to find.
"Who is she, I wonder ?" my companion ejaculated.

"Not a lady, evidently, by her dress and hands." "Evidently not," was my response, for I still deemed it best to keep my own counsel.

I recollected the story Olinto had told me about his wife; of her illness and her longing to return to Italy.