to report the fruitless search; and the servants had nothing to tell
beyond the bare truth. The young gentleman had gone for a walk near the
sea, down at the cottage by the Roman shore, and he had never been heard
of again. His mother had been suffering from a bad headache, had lain
down to rest in a cane chair on the verandah, and had been found dead,
with a smile on her face, by her husband, when he came back from his
first attempt to find Marcello. The groom who always went down with the
carriage could describe with greatest accuracy the spot where the
Signorina Aurora had last seen him; the house servants gave the most
minute details about the cane chair, the verandah, and the position in
which the poor lady had been found; but that was all, and it was not at
all what the reporters wanted. They had all been down to the cottage,
each with his camera and note-book, and had photographed everything in
sight, including Nino, Ercole's dog. What they wanted was a clue, a
story, a scandal if possible, and they found nothing of the sort.

Folco Corbario's mourning was unostentatious and quiet, but none of the
few persons who saw him, whether detectives or servants, could doubt
that he was profoundly affected. He grew paler and thinner every day,
until his own man even began to fear that his health was failing. He had
done, and continued to do, everything that was humanly possible. He had
brought his wife's body to Rome, and had summoned the very highest
authorities in the medical profession to discover, if possible, the
cause of her death. They had come, old men of science, full of the
experience of years, young men of the future, brimming with theories,
experts in chemistry, experts in snake poisons; for Folco had even
suggested that she might have been bitten by a viper or stung by a
venomous spider, or accidentally poisoned by some medicine or something
she had eaten.