It chanced, for the inevitable was at work, that the mail steamer for Italy was to leave the next morning and a small man-of-war on the following day, also homeward bound. Giovanni wrote to Angela Chiaromonte by the former and went on board the Government vessel twenty-four hours afterwards. He himself sent no telegram, because he did not know where his brothers were and he feared lest a telegraphic message might give Angela a bad shock, if it reached her at all. Moreover, he had no news of her and could get no information whatever, so that he addressed his letter to Madame Bernard's old lodgings on the mere possibility that it might reach its destination.
Any one might have supposed that the news of his escape would have been in the papers before he reached Italy, for it was telegraphed to the War Office in Rome by the officer in command of the force at Massowah. But the Minister chose to keep the intelligence a secret till Giovanni's arrival, because he expected to gain much information from him and feared lest the newspapers should get hold of him and learn facts from him which would be more useful to Italy if not made public; and when the Italian Government wishes to keep a secret, it can do so quite as well as any other, to the despair of the public press.
The consequence of the Minister's instructions was that Giovanni was met by a superior officer who came on board the man-of-war at Naples in order to forestall any possible attempt on the part of correspondents to get hold of him, and also for the purpose of giving him further directions for his conduct. He was to proceed to Rome at once, and the Minister would receive him privately on the following day at twelve o'clock. He was recommended not to go to an hotel, but to put up with his brother, who, as he now learned, was at Monteverde, and had been privately informed of his arrival and warned to be discreet.
The mail steamer which had brought Giovanni's letter to Madame Bernard had stopped at Port Said, Alexandria, and Messina, but the man-of-war came direct to Naples, and though slower than the packet-boat, arrived there only a few hours later. Madame Bernard's inquiries, made through the old colonel whose daughter she had formerly taught, proved fruitless, because the War Office would not allow Giovanni's coming to be known, and the result was that she took the letter home with her in her bag, and spent the evening in a very disturbed state of mind, debating with herself as to what she ought to do. She would have given anything to open the envelope, if only to see the date, and once or twice, when she reflected on the importance of knowing whether the writer was alive before giving his letter to Sister Giovanna, she almost yielded; but not quite, for she was an honourable little woman, according to her lights.