You best know whether you have
any reason for alarm. My own opinion is, that if you have nothing to
reproach yourself with, you have nothing to fear. I trust it may be
so."
"I am grateful to you for coming, Signor," Paolina said. "You will
see Ludovico again. Tell him that I am as sure of his innocence of
this horrid thing as if he had never quitted my side."
How Paolina passed that miserable night it is useless to attempt to
tell. How happy all, ay, even all, the days of her previous life
seemed to her in comparison with the misery of the minutes that were
then so slowly passing.
Early the next morning Signor Fortini called at the house of his
friend Dr. Buonaventura Tomosarchi, the great anatomist, for the
purpose of accompanying the Professor to the room at the hospital,
where the body of Bianca was awaiting the post-mortem examination
which had been ordered by the police.
"I suppose," said Fortini, as they walked together, "that there is
no possibility, in such a case as this, that the death may have been
a natural one?"
"Oh, I would not say that at all. Such things occur at all ages. I
do not think it is likely,--specially in the case of such a
magnificent organization as that of yonder poor girl; but there is
no saying, and, above all, no use in attempting to guess when we
shall so soon know all about it," said the Professor, a man some ten
or fifteen years younger than the old lawyer.
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