'Dear Anne, I shall ever hold very gratefully and tenderly the memory of my great debt to you.'

'I ask no more. If you do that, you will repay me.' Again she hesitated. 'Hereafter you may hear things about me . . . unflattering things. Something you may already know, or, at least, suspect. Will you try to remember that whatever else I may have been, with you I have always been genuine and sincere?'

'It is the only thing concerning you that I could ever hold in my thoughts,' he promised her.

'Then I am content.' But there was no contentment in her blue eyes. They were sad to the point of tears. 'I am leaving you today, Marc. There is no longer any excuse for my remaining. Philibert can do all that is necessary now. But you will come and see me sometimes, as before, at the Casa Gazzola? And remember that if you can discover any way in which I can help you to your heart's desire, you have only to command me.'

Her voice had choked on the last words. When they were spoken, she stopped abruptly, impulsively to kiss his cheek. Then she fled from the room almost before he had realized it.

He sat on where she had left him, gloomily pensive, his mind filled with an odd tenderness for this woman whom at any moment he might have accounted it his duty to denounce. Of all that he had done in these months of wasted endeavour here in Venice, his having spared this pseudo-Vicomtesse was the only thing in the thought of which he could now take satisfaction.

Thereafter the care of him rested with Philibert; and at times with that bright young man, Domenico Casotto, who upon occasion came to relieve the valet. Casotto would sit and entertain Messer Melville with news of the events in Venice. He was more entertaining than he suspected, for Marc-Antoine, aware of Casotto's real functions, derived amusement from the rascal's efforts to lure him into a self-incriminating frankness. He might have been less amused had he known how closely the inquisitors of state were watching him through the ingenuous-looking eyes of this lively lad.

Nothing, however, was further from Marc-Antoine's mind than apprehension of the danger of which Isotta had sent him warning on the night when he was assailed. Though the inquisitors might suspect that Lebel and he were one and the same man, proof was not lacking of his devotion to the side that was ranged against Jacobinism or of the services which through Count Pizzamano he had rendered the Most Serene Republic, culminating in the warning which from his sick-bed he had sent the Count.

Hence, when at last in the first week of April he found himself sufficiently recovered to go forth again, he did not hesitate to decide to return to his old quarters at the Inn of the Swords. Confidently he brushed aside the slight misgivings displayed by Lallemant.

'To remain here beyond the time necessary for the healing of my wound would indeed be to invite a suspicion not easily removed. To be of any service I must have complete freedom of movement, and unless I have this, I had better leave Venice at once.'

Villetard was about to set out for Klagenfurth in answer to a summons from Bonaparte. This, as Marc-Antoine surmised, because instructions had reached the General from the Directory similar to those which had been addressed to Lebel.

The campaign was all but over. Lallemant expected news of the end at any moment.

'And then,' he said, 'it will be the turn of these Venetians. But a sound pretext, my friend, is still to seek.'

Marc-Antoine chose to be very much Camille Lebel at that moment.

'What need to be so cursedly fastidious? There's pretext to spare in the shelter given by Venice to the ci-devant Comte de Provence. I established it when I demanded his ejection. I would now present the reckoning if it depended upon me.'

'It doesn't depend upon you,' said Villetard tartly. 'The Directors require something more, as you know.'

'And as you know, too, Villetard,' he was answered, with an asperity serving to remind him that he was not yet forgiven for an interference which had all but cost the supposed Lebel his life. 'What have you done whilst I have been invalided? Here was your opportunity to do some of the fine things you promised us when first you came to Venice. Instead, what have we?' Marc-Antoine looked him over coldly. 'You begin to see perhaps that criticism is easier than performance.'

'Ah, that! Name of a name! It was not in my instructions to act as an agent-provocateur.'

Marc-Antoine's glance was so hard and stern that Villetard's arrogance crumpled before it; the sneer perished on his tight lips.

'Shall I report that speech to the Directors? Shall I tell them how precisely you delimit your service to the instructions you have personally received? They might then remind you that it is in your instructions to do whatever may be necessary for the good of France. However, since it is beneath your dignity to practise acts of provocation . . .'

Villetard was almost frightened. He interrupted vehemently. 'I never said that. Bear me witness, Lallemant, that I never said that.'

Marc-Antoine went steadily on: 'Since that is beneath your dignity, there is all the more reason why I should go and see what I can do.' He turned to take his leave of Lallemant. 'I will report when there is occasion.'

CHAPTER XXXII

THE INQUISITORS OF STATE

Marc-Antoine landed at the Rialto. He sent Philibert on to the Inn of the Swords to inform Battista, the landlord, that he followed.

His natural promptings were to go at once to the Casa Pizzamano at San Daniele; and yet he was withheld by hesitations. He asked himself in a sort of despair what it was that he could go to do there. All that remained, so far as he could see, was to take his leave of the Count's family and depart whilst he was yet free to do so from this doomed capital of a doomed state where his every endeavour had failed.

He was of those who reflect most lucidly whilst moving; and so it was, in spite of the lingering weakness from his long confinement, that he had chosen to land at the Rialto, and set out to walk as far as Saint Mark's, where he would embark again to complete the journey. He hoped that by the time he reached the Piazza he would have resolved the problem that beset him.

Leaning a little heavily upon his cane, he took his way across the Merceria, where all was life and bustle, where traders bawled their wares in the narrow streets and haggling buyers were scarcely less vociferous, yet all of them jocular and good-humoured under the clear spring sky. He made brisk progress notwithstanding a lingering weakness, an elegant figure that took the eye. But by the time he reached the Piazza he was conscious of fatigue, and his brow was damp under his three-cornered hat.

It was the hour when the great square was most crowded, and today the throng of loungers seemed to him more dense than usual, and also a great deal less joyous than he had ever seen it.

A file of Slavonian soldiers guarded the approaches of the Ducal Palace.

Already there had been one or two demonstrations against the Signory, and in the palace they were fearful of a conflagration in material which from being normally docile now gave signs of having become highly inflammable.

Officers from the various regiments quartered about the city, displaying the blue-and-gold cockade of Venice, were numerous among the saunterers. They mingled freely with the idle men and women, drawn to the open perhaps by the precocious geniality of the weather and the anxiety for news of which this was the great mart. It was a crowd sobered by suspense.

Conscious now of lassitude, and with his problem still unsolved, Marc-Antoine found himself a table at Florian's, in the open, and sat down to remove his hat and mop his heated brow. He ordered himself a bavaroise and he had begun to sip it when he was aware of a presence at his elbow. He looked up to find there a stocky figure in rusty black. A pair of beady eyes regarded him out of the yellow vulturine face of Cristofero Cristofoli, the confidente of the inquisitors of state.

The Venetian, smiling upon him with a certain grimness, greeted him in terms which showed him to be startlingly well-informed. 'I rejoice to see you in health and abroad again. My felicitations. We have been anxious for you. May I sit?' He drew up a chair, and sank to it without waiting for permission. 'Thus we shall be less conspicuous. I suffer from being too well known.'

'At present,' said Marc-Antoine, 'you suffer also from being uninvited. I am flattered by your concern for my health. But I do not think my reputation will profit by your presence.'

Cristofoli sighed. 'That is the common complaint against me. But you do me an injustice. Knowing how little my society is desired, I never inflict it unless I have business.'

Marc-Antoine veiled his annoyance. 'Can it be my misfortune that you have business with me?'

'Do not let us regard it as a misfortune—yet.'

'When I know the business I shall be able to judge.' He sipped his bavaroise.

Cristofoli's beady eyes watched him stolidly. 'You keep to your native drinks even here in Venice,' he observed. 'Habit is hard to repress.'

Marc-Antoine set down his glass. 'You are mistaken. The bavaroise is not an English drink.'

'Oh, I am aware of that. But not that you are English. And that brings me to my business with you.' He leaned across the little table, and lowered his voice, an unnecessary and merely instinctive precaution, for there was no one in their immediate neighbourhood. 'Messer, the inquisitors of state desire to resolve a doubt upon this very question of your nationality.'