tions.
CHAPTER IX.
THE ANONYMOUS LETTER.
No sooner had her lawyer left her than a letter was delivered to Blanka
by one of the hotel servants. It was unsigned, and to the following
effect:
"PRINCESS CAGLIARI:--Be cautious. Prince Cagliari is
carrying out a fiendish scheme against you. Like yourself, he is
bent on securing a divorce, but only that he may marry you to his
protege and favourite. He is even capable of selling his own wife.
Hitherto you have been Cagliari's wife, and the Marchioness
Caldariva his mistress; now he wishes to reverse these relations,
and make the marchioness his wife, and you his mistress. Be on your
guard. You are in the country of the Borgias."
The princess was not a little disturbed by this communication. Monstrous
as was the plot which it purported to disclose, she could not disbelieve
it when ascribed to the two men in question. Certain fearful
remembrances of the past confirmed her suspicions, and even inspired her
in her distress with thoughts of suicide.
But what if this letter were merely a trap? Who could have written it?
Who, in that city, where so few knew even of her existence, was
sufficiently familiar with her private affairs to be able to write it?
Whom could she now consult, with whom share her anxious forebodings?
Involuntarily she took up her sketch-book, and turned its leaves once
more. In vain; the address was gone--gone with the leaves she had torn
out and thrown away in the Colosseum.
Having no further engagements for that morning, she proposed to her
companion a second visit to the Colosseum, that she might once more
essay the sketch which had baffled her the day before. Both Madam
Dormandy and the advocate signified their readiness to accompany her,
the more so as a party of German visitors was planning an inspection of
the Colosseum's subterranean chambers and passages, and Zimandy proposed
to join them.
Blanka made it her first care, on arriving at the Colosseum, to search
for the lost sketch-book leaves; but though she remembered exactly where
she had dropped them, neither she nor her friend could discover the
least trace of them. Who could have appropriated them? The artist in the
gallery had been the only stranger present at the time of her previous
visit.
While the advocate and Madam Dormandy went with the German party to
inspect the lower regions, Blanka remained above, on the plea that such
su
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