"Her name in maidenhood," I said, "was Aurelia Gualandi. There upon your
handkerchief I read her initials, 'A. G.'"

"The handkerchief is my own, I swear it!" he cried with passion. "Will
you make the merest coincidence accuse her again? Shame upon you, sir."

"Never in the world," said I. "I never doubted but it was your own. The
cipher saved you, not the handkerchief."

I suppose that he was too faint by now to understand me, for he only put
his hand up and shook it to and fro. "Exquisite fool!" I heard him say,
and then with a groan, "Gesu, I die!" he fainted in earnest. I helped
the surgeon carry him to his coach, then walked to my lodging, leaving
the marchese astare at the trees.




CHAPTER XLVI

THE DISCOVERY


I was to dine that night with the Prior of Saint Mark's, a former
acquaintance of mine, and I kept my engagement, though I left the party
early. My wound, which was painful but not dangerous, was not the cause
of that. The fact is that I was arrested while we were sitting over our
fruit and wine, at a moment when I was enunciating a favourite theory of
mine that this world is a garden for every man alive of us who happens