Panting, exhausted, Colomba was utterly incapable of uttering a single word. Her head rested on her brother's shoulder, and she clasped one of his hands tightly between her own. Orso, though secretly somewhat annoyed by her peroration, was too much alarmed to reprove her, even in the mildest fashion. He was silently waiting till the nervous attack from which she seemed to be suffering should have passed, when there was a knock at the door, and Saveria, very much flustered, announced the prefect. At the words, Colomba rose, as though ashamed of her weakness, and stood leaning on a chair, which shook visibly beneath her hand.
The prefect began with some commonplace apology for the unseasonable hour of his visit, condoled with Mademoiselle Colomba, touched on the danger connected with strong emotions, blamed the custom of composing funeral dirges, which the very talent of the /voceratrice/ rendered the more harrowing to her auditors, skilfully slipped in a mild reproof concerning the tendency of the improvisation just concluded, and then, changing his tone--"M. della Rebbia," he said, "I have many messages for you from your English friends. Miss Nevil sends her affectionate regards to your sister. I have a letter for you from her."
"A letter from Miss Nevil!" cried Orso.
"Unluckily I have not got it with me. But you shall have it within five minutes. Her father has not been well. For a little while we were afraid he had caught one of our terrible fevers. Luckily he is all right again, as you will observe for yourself, for I fancy you will see him very soon."
"Miss Nevil must have been very much alarmed!"
"Fortunately she did not become aware of the danger till it was quite gone by. M. della Rebbia, Miss Nevil has talked to me a great deal about you and about your sister."
Orso bowed.
"She has a great affection for you both. Under her charming appearance, and her apparent frivolity, a fund of good sense lies hidden."
"She is a very fascinating person," said Orso.
"I have come here, monsieur, almost at her prayer. Nobody is better acquainted than I with a fatal story which I would fain not have to recall to you. As M. Barricini is still the mayor of Pietranera, and as I am prefect of the department, I need hardly tell you what weight I attach to certain suspicions which, if I am rightly informed, some incautious individuals have communicated to you, and which you, I know, have spurned with the indignation your position and your character would have led me to expect."
"Colomba," said Orso, moving uneasily to his chair. "You are very tired. You had better go to bed."
Colomba shook her head. She had recovered all her usual composure, and her burning eyes were fixed on the prefect.
"M. Barricini," the prefect continued, "is exceedingly anxious to put an end to the sort of enmity . . . or rather, the condition of uncertainty, existing between yourself and him. . . . On my part, I should be delighted to see you both in those relations of friendly intercourse appropriate to people who certainly ought to esteem each other."
"Monsieur," replied Orso in a shaking voice, "I have never charged Barricini with my father's murder. But he committed an act which must always prevent me from having anything to do with him. He forged a threatening letter, in the name of a certain bandit, or at least he hinted in an underhand sort of way that it was forged by my father.
That letter, monsieur, was probably the indirect cause of my father's death."
The prefect sat thinking for a moment.
"That your father should have believed that, when his own hasty nature led him into a lawsuit with Signor Barricini, is excusable. But such blindness on your part really can not be admitted. Pray consider that Barricini could have served no interest of his own by forging the letter. I will not talk to you about his character, for you are not acquainted with it, and are prejudiced against it; but you can not suppose that a man conversant with the law----"
"But, monsieur," said Orso, rising to his feet, "be good enough to recollect that when you tell me the letter was not Barricini's work, you ascribe it to my father. And my father's honour, monsieur, is mine!"
"No man on earth, sir, is more convinced of Colonel della Rebbia's honour than myself! But the writer of the letter is now known."
"Who wrote it?" exclaimed Colomba, making a step toward the prefect.
"A villain, guilty of several crimes--such crimes as you Corsicans never pardon--a thief, one Tomaso Bianchi, at present confined in the prison at Bastia, has acknowledged that he wrote the fatal letter."
"I know nothing of the man," said Orso. "What can have been his object?"
"He belongs to this neighbourhood," said Colomba. "He is brother to a man who was our miller--a scamp and a liar, unworthy of belief."
