Regina and Marcello sat side by side, talking in a low voice, and
looking at each other now and then. The little house in which they had
been happy was turned to a place of death and horror, and both knew that
some change was coming to themselves.
"You cannot live here any more," Marcello said at dawn, "not even till
to-night."
"Where could I go?" Regina asked. "Why should I not stay here? Do you
think I am afraid of the dead woman?"
"No," Marcello answered, "but you cannot stay here."
He guessed what talking and gossiping there would be when the newspapers
told what had happened in the little house, how the reporters would
hang about the street for a week to come, and how fashionable people
would go out of their way to see the place where a murder had been
committed by such a well-known person as Corbario, and where he had been
taken almost in the very act, and himself nearly killed. Besides all
that, there would be the public curiosity about Regina, who had been so
intimately concerned in a part of the tragedy, and whose name was
everywhere associated with his own.
He would have taken her away from Rome at once, if he could have done
so. But he knew that they would both be called upon during the next few
days to repeat in court the evidence they had already given in their
first deposition. There was sure to be the most frightful publicity
about the whole affair, of which reports would be published not only in
Rome but throughout Italy, and all over the world.
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