e. He wished to see me once to say
good-bye. Was it _very_ wrong of me to let him come once,--just once?"

"It was perhaps natural. And after Michael had said good-bye why did not
he leave Rome?"

"He was arrested the same night," faltered Fay. "I said good-bye to him
in the garden, and then the garden was surrounded because they were
looking for the murderer of the Marchese, and Michael could not get out.
And he was afraid of being seen for fear of compromising me. So he hid
behind the screen in my room. And then--you know the rest--the police
came in and searched my rooms, and Michael came out and confessed to the
murder, and said I had let him hide in my room. It was the only thing to
do to save my reputation, and he did it."

"And what did you say?"

"Nothing. What could I say? Besides, I was too faint to speak."

"And later on when you were not too faint?"

"I never said anything later on either." Fay's voice had become almost
inaudible. "I hoped the real murderer would confess."

"But when he did not confess?"

"I have always clung to the hope. I have prayed day and night that he
might still confess. Sinners do repent sometimes, Magdalen."

There was a terrible silence, during which several fixtures in
Magdalen's mind had to be painfully and swiftly moved, and carefully
safeguarded into new positions. Magdalen became very white in the
process.

At last she said, "Did Andrea _know_ that Michael was innocent of the
murder?"

"I never thought so at the time, but just before he died he said
something cruel to me which shewed he knew Michael's innocence for
certain, had known it from the first."

"Then if he knew Michael had not murdered the Marchese, how do you
suppose he accounted for his being hidden in your rooms at midnight,
after he had ostensibly left the house?"

Fay stared at her sister aghast.

"I never thought of that," she said.

"What _can_ Andrea have thought of that?"

"Andrea was very secretive," faltered Fay. "You never could tell what he
was thinking. And I was the last person he ever told things to. Roman
Catholics are like that. The priest knows everything instead of the
wife."

There was another silence.

Magdalen's question vaguely alarmed Fay. Natures such as hers if given
time will unconsciously whittle away all the sinister little incidents
that traverse and render untenable the position in which they have taken
refuge. They do not purposely ignore these conflicting memo