The manner in which the lawyer received the communication made to
him, and his determination, on further consideration, to make the
Marchese Ludovico at once aware of the step contemplated by his
uncle, will not have been forgotten. The reader will, it is hoped,
remember also how, sallying forth after his early dinner for this
purpose, Signor Fortini encountered the Marchese Ludovico in the
street; how the latter communicated to the old lawyer the state of
anxiety he was in about the Signorina Bianca Lalli, whom he had lost
in the Pineta; and finally how the lawyer and the Marchese together
had gone to the Porta Nuova, by which the road leading to St.
Apollinare and to the Pineta quits the city, in order there to make
inquiries,--and the terrible reply to their inquiries that there met
him.
What that reply was had not been immediately clear to the lawyer.
For, as far as the circumstances of the previous events were then
known to him, there were two persons, Bianca Lalli, the singer, and
Paolina Foscarelli, the Venetian artist--two young girls missing,
who were both known to have been out of the city in that direction
that morning; two young girls of whom he knew little more than this,
that they had apparently reason to feel a deadly jealousy of each
other. Which of these two was the one whose dead body lay there
under the city gateway before him, he had no immediate means of
knowing.
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