Had it been no more than Antonio’s tale, she thought that she might have beaten it down, but there were the two years between the flight from Genoa, and when she came to La Cerda’s bed, and what—if she could only guess!—might be known of them . . . ? There was the merchant who was robbed and slain in Turin. Her hands, in fact, had been clean of that, but she had been in the house, plying the same trade, even in the next room when they choked his scream, and afterwards they had given her fifty ducats to keep her still. . . . It was by that gold she had made advance. But she knew that three had been hanged for that deed (after a time on the wheel), and that another was wanted, who was not unlike to herself. . . .
“You would think,” she said, “that none would believe such tales, which it is
