"Of course, just so. And what you have learned this morning--"
"Tell's all t'other way; I have no difficulty in allowing that, on
the first blush of the matter, I felt no doubt that the Marchese was
the guilty party. It only shows that one ought always to have doubts
of everything. It looked so very bad. The Marchese takes the girl
into the wood, comes back without her, and very shortly afterwards
she is found where he left her, murdered. And he is known to have
had the greatest possible interest in getting rid of her. Would it
not have seemed a clear case to any one?"
"So one would have said indeed," assented the Commissary.
"Well, the Marchese had nothing to do with it. At the present moment
I feel--well, hardly any doubt at all that the deed was done by the
girl Paolina Foscarelli."
"That's my notion too," said the Commissary, taking a pinch of
snuff, and proferring his box to his visitor; "but what is the new
evidence."
"Well, the girl lives, it seems, with an old woman, a country-woman
of hers, a certain Orsola Steno. And this morning the old lady comes
to my studio for the avowed purpose of begging me not to countenance
in any way the very mistaken notion that her adopted daughter had
murdered the prima donna; the truth being, as she was good enough to
inform me, that the latter had committed suicide.
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