"Tell me the truth." After the exciting incidents of our last meeting, I was half inclined to doubt him.
"The truth is, Signor Commendatore, that my wife has mysteriously disappeared.

Last Saturday, at eleven o'clock, she was talking over the garden wall with a neighbor and was then dressed to go out.

She apparently went out, but from that moment no one has seen or heard of her." It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him the ghastly truth, yet so strange was the circumstance that his own double, even to the mole upon his face, should be lying dead and buried in Scotland that I hesitated to relate what I knew.
"She spoke English, I suppose ?" "She could make herself understood very well," he said with a sigh, and I saw a heavy, thoughtful look upon his brow.

That he was really devoted to her, I knew.

With the Italian of whatever station in life, love is all-consuming--it is either perfect love or genuine hatred.