hair. As Teresa came in, she stretched out a welcoming hand.

“So here you are, my dear child,” she said. “Sylvia is disturbed about you. Sylvia!”

The girl came hurriedly. Seen thus, without her hat, she looked even prettier than before. The lines of her face were delicate, and there was an appealing expression in her eyes to which a man could scarcely be indifferent. She rushed to kiss her sister.

“Oh, Teresa, I hope you did not mind! I thought I ought to have stayed, but Mrs Scott was certain you would rather I went with her, and Mr Wilbraham said he would go after you, and—and—”

“Suppose we hear what Teresa has to say?” put in Mrs Brodrick drily.

“Of course you were right to go,” said the marchesa, smiling at her sister. “You could not have done any good by staying.”

“Did you get your purse?” demanded her grandmother.

“Yes, I did—in a way. It was empty, though,” added Teresa, sitting down and taking off her hat.

“Then it was the man?”

“I suppose so. I thought so. The police were as unsatisfactory as usual, and Mr Wilbraham has gone to the questura to stir them up.” Her face darkened again, and she added inconsequently, “I rather wish he hadn’t.”

“Oh, let him,” returned her grandmother smiling. “A thief ought to be punished.”

Teresa looked at her reflectively.

“I suppose so,” she repeated. “Certainly he had the purse.”

“Proof enough, I should say.”

“Yes. Oh, he must have taken it,” she added quickly, with the air of one who was seeking confidence. “But he is a man with a story. He shot his sister some little time ago. On purpose, if you understand.”

Sylvia cried out, but Mrs Brodrick had lived a long life.

“That is very terrible,” she said gravely.

“Terrible. Granny,”—Teresa knelt by her grandmother’s chair—“you know things. Do you believe a man could do that, and afterwards go about the streets picking pockets? He is young, remember. Could he?”

Perhaps Mrs Brodrick’s beliefs reached higher and lower than Teresa’s. She hesitated.

“What did he say about it himself?”

“He said he picked up the purse in the church.”

“Oh, but, Teresa—” cried Sylvia, squeezing her hands together, and tripping over incoherent words, “he—yes—oh, he did! Now I remember looking back just before we went out, and I saw a man stooping down and couldn’t think why. It was—yes, indeed, of course it was—that very man!”

Teresa turned pale. Naturally generous in all her thoughts and impulses, the dismal experiences of her life had added a more acute horror of injustice than often belongs to women. She said in a low voice—

“I must go to the questura instantly.”

“Wait half an hour. You are so tired,” urged Mrs Brodrick. But the marchesa had sprung to her feet.

“How can I?” she cried impatiently.

“I don’t know what steps Mr Wilbraham may have taken; but it is all my fault. I accused the man publicly, and have no right to keep him in that position a minute later than necessary. I wish I had left the horrid purse alone. His eyes have haunted me ever since.”

Mrs Brodrick, slower to move, still looked doubtful.

“I don’t like your going alone. People will talk.”

“Let them!” Donna Teresa drew herself up with a sudden hardening of her face. It softened again as she caught her grandmother’s look. “Dear, remember I am going to forget all about the marchesa. I have no children to be hurt by what I do, and don’t care the least little bit in the world for what may be said behind my back. But I care horribly for having made an unjust accusation, and it must be unsaid without delay.”

“Go, then,” said Mrs Brodrick, smiling again. She added hesitatingly, “You might take Sylvia.”

“Sylvia would not like it. I’ll be extravagant and take a botte instead.”

“Here are English letters.”

“Oh, let them wait.”

She spoke from the door, and looked back to kiss her hand before running down the grey stone staircase, and calling one of the little open carriages with which Rome abounds. They are cheap enough, but she rarely indulged in such luxuries, for the marchese, her husband, had squandered what he could of her small fortune, and her grandmother’s income was ridiculously inadequate to all that she contrived to do with it. Just now, however, Teresa would not have begrudged a larger outlay, for she was on thorns at the idea of having committed an injustice. She searched the pavements anxiously for Wilbraham, but had gone down the crowded Tritone, and passed the Trevi, before she caught sight of him. She stopped the carriage, stepped out, and dismissed it, even at this moment amusedly conscious of Wilbraham’s startled face.

“Well?” she asked quickly.

“I have done all that’s necessary,” he answered with a touch of stiffness. “I don’t think there’s anything more wanted. I worked them up to send to the man’s house, and if he hasn’t bolted, he’ll be arrested.”

“Oh,” cried Teresa despairingly, “then I am too late!”

“Too late? What for?”

“To spare him the disgrace. What he said was true—isn’t it awful? Sylvia saw him pick up the purse, which, of course, the real thief had thrown away. I am so sorry they have sent. Let us go at once.”

Wilbraham did not look pleased. He hated scenes, and still more hated women to be mixed up in them. There was no help for it, however, for Teresa was already walking rapidly in the direction from whence he had come, and of course he had to stick to her.

“They don’t think much of your friend at the questura,” he said drily.

“All the more reason that we should see him through.”

Teresa’s tone was uncompromising. Wilbraham half liked her for it, and was half provoked. It gave him a slightly malicious pleasure to find at the questura that all her fluent and impetuous Italian could not obviate the usual delay. Wilbraham felt it must be his duty to calm her, as she walked with an extraordinary swift grace up and down the room in which they waited; but his efforts failed, and evidently she was neither thinking of herself nor her companion. He, on his part, found it difficult to understand or sympathise with her extreme remorse. Cesare, with his excited, somewhat theatrical gestures, seemed to him a man who, if he had not committed one crime, was probably well up to the throat in others. The very reason which had awakened Teresa’s compassion—that he had been the slayer of his sister—at once destroyed any germ of pity in Wilbraham’s mind; his theory of cause and effect being more direct and more of the nature of a sledgehammer than Teresa’s.

Shown into another room, the marchesa hurried eagerly to a gentleman who was sitting, and who rose courteously.

“The Marchesa di Sant’ Eustachio, I believe?” he said, glancing at the card in his hand. “You have come, doubtless, eccellenza, about this affair of your purse?”

“It was all a mistake. I have come to say how grieved I am,” began Teresa