'You are very impertinent, Tito.
You will kindly leave the room.'
He looked very stern and dignified, and Tito, furious and yet slightly intimidated, leapt to his feet and stalked out slamming the door behind him. He took the car and drove in to Florence.
He won quite a lot of money that day (lucky at cards, unlucky in love) and to celebrate his winnings got more than a little drunk.
He did not go back to the villa till the following morning.
Laura was as friendly and placid as ever, but his father was somewhat cool.
No reference was made to the scene. But from then on things went from bad to worse.
Tito was sullen and moody, the count critical and on occasion sharp words passed between them.
Laura did not interfere, but Tito gained the impression that after a dispute that had been more than acrimonious Laura interceded with his father, for the count thenceforward, refusing to be annoyed, began to treat him with the tolerant patience with which you would treat a wayward child.
He convinced himself that they were acting in concert and his suspicions grew formidable.
They even increased when Laura in her good-natured way, saying that it must be very dull for him to remain so much in the country, encouraged him to go more often to Florence to see his friends.
He jumped to the conclusion that she said this only to be rid of him.
He began to watch them.
He would enter suddenly a room in which he knew they were, expecting to catch them in a compromising position, or silently follow them to a secluded part of the garden. They were chatting unconcernedly of trivial things.
Laura greeted him with a pleasant smile.
He could put his finger on nothing to confirm his torturing suspicions.
He started to drink. He grew nervous and irritable.
He had no proof, no proof whatever, that there was anything between them, and yet in his bones he was certain that they were grossly, shockingly deceiving him.
He brooded till he felt he was going mad.
A dark aching fire within him consumed his being.
On one of his visits to Florence he bought a pistol.
He made up his mind that if he could have proof of what in his heart he was certain of, he would kill them both.
I don't know what brought on the final catastrophe.
All that came out at the trial was that, driven beyond endurance, Tito had gone one night to his father's room to have it out with him.
His father mocked and laughed at him.
They had a furious quarrel and Tito took out his pistol and shot the count dead.
Then he collapsed and fell, weeping hysterically, on his father's body; the repeated shots brought Laura and the servants rushing in.
He jumped up and grabbed the pistol, to shoot himself he said afterwards, but he hesitated or they were too quick for him, and they snatched it out of his hand.
The police were sent for.
He spent most of his time in prison weeping; he would not eat and had to be forcibly fed; he told the examining magistrate that he had killed his father because he was his wife's lover.
Laura, examined and examined again, swore that there had never been anything between the count and herself but a natural affection.
The murder filled the Florentine public with horror.
The Italians were convinced of her guilt, but her friends, English and American, felt that she was incapable of the crime of which she was accused.
They went about saying that Tito was neurotic and insanely jealous and in his stupid way had mistaken her American freedom of behaviour for a criminal passion.
On the face of it Tito's charge was absurd.
Carlo di San Pietro was nearly thirty years older than she, an elderly man with white hair; who could suppose that there would have been anything between her and her father-in-law, when her husband was young, handsome, and in love with her?
It was in Harding's presence that she saw the examining magistrate and the lawyers who had been engaged to defend Tito.
They had decided to plead insanity.
Experts for the defence examined him and decided that he was insane, experts for the prosecution examined him and decided that he was sane.
The fact that he had bought a pistol three months before he committed the dreadful crime went to prove that it was premeditated.
It was discovered that he was deeply in debt and his creditors were pressing him; the only means he had of settling with them was by selling the villa, and his father's death put him in possession of it.
There is no capital punishment in Italy, but murder with premeditation is punished by solitary confinement for life.
On the approach of the trial the lawyers came to Laura and told her that the only way in which Tito could be saved from this was for her to admit in court that the count had been her lover.
Laura went very pale.
Harding protested violently. He said they had no right to ask her to perjure herself and ruin her reputation to save that shiftless, drunken gambler whom she had been so unfortunate as to marry.
Laura remained silent for a while.
'Very well,' she said at last, 'if that's the only way to save him I'll do it.'
Harding tried to dissuade her, but she was decided.
'I should never have a moment's peace if I knew that Tito had to spend the rest of his life alone in a prison cell.'
And that is what happened.