"Well, Mat," I said, as the last dish was
placed on the table, " what news have you?"

"Bad."

"I guessed that from your face."

"Bad for you—- bad for me. Gianetta."

"What of Gianetta?"

He passed his hand nervously across his lips.

"Giauetta is false—- worse than false," he
said, in a hoarse voice. " She values an honest
man's heart just as she values a flower for her
hair wears it for a day, then throws it aside
for ever. She has cruelly wronged us both."

"In what way? Good Heavens, speak out!"

"In the worst way that a woman can wrong
those who love her. She has sold herself to
the Marchese Loredano."

The blood rushed to my head and face in a
burning torrent. I could scarcely see, and
dared not trust myself to speak

"I saw her going towards the cathedral," he
went on, hurriedly. " It was about three hours
ago. I thought she might be going to confession,
so I hung back and followed her at a distance.
"When she got inside, however, she went
straight to the back of the pulpit, where this
man was waiting for her. You remember him—-
an old man who used to haunt the shop a month
or two back. Well, seeing how deep in
conversation they were, and how they stood close
under the pulpit with their backs towards the
church, I fell into a passion of anger and went
straight up the aisle, intending to say or do
something: I scarcely knew what; but, at all
events, to draw her arm through mine, and
take her home. When I came within a few
feet, however, and found only a big pillar
between myself and them, I paused. They could
not see me, nor I them; but I could hear their
voices distinctly, and—- and I listened."

"Well, and you heard——"

"The terms of a shameful bargain—- beauty
on the one side, gold on the other; so many
thousand francs a year; a villa near Naples—-
Pah! it makes me sick to repeat it."

And, with a shudder, he poured out another
glass of wine and drank it at a draught.

"After that," he said, presently, "I made
no effort to bring her away. The whole thing
was so cold-blooded, so deliberate, so shameful,
that I felt I had only to wipe her out of my
memory, and leave her to her fate. I stole out
of the cathedral, and walked about here by the
sea for ever so long, trying to get my thoughts
straight. Then I remembered you, Ben; and
the recollection of how this wanton had come
between us and broken up our lives drove me
wild. So I went up to the station and waited
for you. I felt you ought to know it all; and
and I thought, perhaps, that we might go back
to England together."

"The Marchese Loredano!"

It was all that I could say; all that I could
think. As Mat had just said of himself, I felt
"like one stunned."

"There is one other thing I may as well tell
you," he added, reluctantly, "if only to show
you how false a woman can be. We—- we were
to have been married next month."

"We? Who? What do you mean?"

"I mean that we were to have been
married—- Gianetta and I."

A sudden storm of rage, of scorn, of
incredulity, swept over me at this, and seemed to
carry my senses away.

"You!" I cried. " Giauetta marry you! I
don't believe it."

"I wish I had not believed it," he replied,
looking up as if puzzled by my vehemence.
"But she promised me; and I thought, when
she promised it, she meant it."

"She told me, weeks ago, that she would
never be your wife!"

His colour rose, his brow darkened; but when
his answer came, it was as calm as the last.

"Indeed!" he said. " Then it is only one
baseness more. She told me that she had
refused you; and that was why we kept our
engagement secret."

"Tell the truth, Mat Price," I said, well-
nigh beside myself with suspicion. " Confess
that every word of this is false! Confess that
Gianetta will not listen to you, and that you are
afraid I may succeed where you have failed. As
perhaps I shall—- as perhaps I shall, after all!"

"Are you mad?" he exclaimed. " What do
you mean?"

"That I believe it's just a trick to get me away
to England that I don't credit a syllable of
your story. You're a liar, and I hate you!"

He rose, and, laying one hand on the back
of his chair, looked me sternly in the face.

"If you were not Benjamin Hardy," he said,
deliberately, " I would thrash you within an
inch of your life."

The words had no sooner passed his lips than
I sprang at him. I have never been able
distinctly to remember what followed. A curse—- a
blow—- a struggle—- a moment of blind fury—- a
cry—- a confusion of tongues—- a circle of strange
faces. Then I see Mat lying back in the arms
of a bystander; myself trembling and bewildered
the knife dropping from my grasp; blood upon
the floor; blood upon my hands; blood upon his
shirt. And then I hear those dreadful words:

"O, Ben, you have murdered me!"

He did not die—- at least, not there and then.
He was carried to the nearest hospital, and lay
for some weeks between life and death. His
case, they said, was difficult and dangerous.
The knife had gone in just below the collar-
bone, and pierced down into the lungs. He
was not allowed to speak or turn—- scarcely to
breathe with freedom. He might not even lift
his head to drink. I sat by him day and night
all through that sorrowful time. I gave up my
situation on the railway; I quitted my lodging
in the Vicolo Balba; I tried to forget that such
a woman as Giauetta Coneglia had ever drawn
breath. I lived only for Mat; and he tried to
live more, I believe, for my sake than his own.
Thus, in the bitter silent hours of pain and
penitence, when no hand but mine approached his
lips or smoothed his pillow, the old friendship
came back with even more than its old trust and
faithfulness. He forgave me, fully and freely;
and I would thankfully have given my life for him.