ts, soon found themselves in Pasquale Solara's hut
and in the presence of the fair Annunziata herself."

Peppino paused for an instant and then continued:

"These preliminary details, Signor Count, are necessary to enable you to
understand the conspiracy which was speedily to be hatched. The peasant,
who had conducted Massetti and your son to the very spot the former had
left Rome to seek, was Annunziata's brother. Old Pasquale Solara was
absent from home at the time of the arrival of the strangers, but
returned shortly afterwards. I have no doubt that he had long been in
league with Luigi Vampa and had been secretly acting as his agent and
confederate. At any rate, when he arrived he was well aware that the
young men were at his cabin and was also thoroughly informed as to their
identity, though, with his habitual cunning, he concealed both facts,
feigning surprise and dissatisfaction when it was announced to him by
his children that he had guests. Secretly he was delighted, for the
presence of young Massetti gave him an opportunity at once to take a
signal revenge on the old Count, whom he had long bitterly hated, and to
divert the crashing stigma of a fiendish act he meditated from himself
to the name and fame of another."

"Do you mean to assert that this wretched old man had base designs
against his own daughter?" said the Count, his visage expressing all the
horror he felt.

"Exactly," answered Peppino, coolly. "Old Solara, miserable miser as he
is, had for a very large sum of the gold he so ardently coveted sold his
own child, his beautiful daughter Annunziata, to the bandit chief Luigi
Vampa!"

"The black-hearted demon!" exclaimed Monte-Cristo. "He is unworthy of
the name of man! In Paris the indignant populace would crush him to
death beneath their feet!"

"So, you see," resumed the Italian, "the arrival of Massetti was
opportune, and Pasquale Solara, after having seen that the Viscount was
safely housed beneath the roof of his cabin, hastened back to Luigi
Vampa and together they laid the foul plot that succeeded but too well.
A more shrewdly devised and thoroughly concealed piece of diabolical
villainy has never stained the annals of the civilized world!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

MORE OF PEPPINO'S STORY.

Monte-Cristo was horrified by what he had heard. His whole soul revolted
at the idea of a father who could deliberately and in cold blood sell
his daughter, at the idea of a wretch who with equal