"
"Colomba," said Orso, moving uneasily to his chair. "You are very tired.
You had better go to bed."
Colomba shook her head. She had recovered all her usual composure, and
her burning eyes were fixed on the prefect.
"M. Barricini," the prefect continued, "is exceedingly anxious to put an
end to the sort of enmity . . . or rather, the condition of uncertainty,
existing between yourself and him. . . . On my part, I should be
delighted to see you both in those relations of friendly intercourse
appropriate to people who certainly ought to esteem each other."
"Monsieur," replied Orso in a shaking voice, "I have never charged
Barricini with my father's murder. But he committed an act which must
always prevent me from having anything to do with him. He forged a
threatening letter, in the name of a certain bandit, or at least he
hinted in an underhand sort of way that it was forged by my father. That
letter, monsieur, was probably the indirect cause of my father's death."
The prefect sat thinking for a moment.
"That your father should have believed that, when his own hasty nature
led him into a lawsuit with Signor Barricini, is excusable.
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