"Captain Fyffe," said Miss Rossano, suddenly, in the midst of our enthusiastic talk upon this theme, "I am going to ask you a favor. I know very little of my father as yet. I have not spent twelve hours in his society, but it is easy to find out two things about it: he will be mad to join in any effort that The Cause may make, and—"

She paused there, with a look of semi-embarrassment.

"And?" I interrogated.

"I think," she continued, "that he is likely to be very much influenced by your opinion."

"We have scarcely exchanged a word together on that topic," I responded.

"Ah," she returned, quickly, "you have influenced his judgment without that. He has formed opinions about you, and he has expressed them more than once. He thinks you are a man of unusually solid character, and I am sure you will be able to influence him greatly. You must remember, too, what a debt of gratitude he owes you. The more warmly you are disposed to The Cause yourself, the more necessary it seems to beg you not to allow him to rush into any new danger. Give us, at least, a little time in which to know each other before he leaves me again."

I promised earnestly that I would never say a word to induce him to leave her side. I promised that if any undertaking should seem to lead him into useless danger, I would do my best to warn him from the enterprise. I promised further (but this was to myself, and I said no word about it) that in the event of any effort being made the count should be my comrade, and that I would do my loyal best for him.

That brought our conversation to an end, and I took leave of her, but not before she had assured me that I should always be a welcome visitor. I went away mighty proud and happy, and when I got home to my chambers who should I find awaiting me but the Count Ruffiano, buttoned to the throat to disguise the absence of the linen which had been so shabbily conspicuous yesterday. He was in a state of intense excitement, and when I entered was pacing up and down the room like one scarcely able to control himself.

"Pardon this second intrusion, my dear sir," he began; "I will explain its purport in a moment."

I induced him to be seated; but before he had got out half his statement he was on his feet again, striding about my little room in such a heat of excitement that, lean as he was, the perspiration fell in big drops from his thatched eyebrows and the tip of his Quixote nose.

"To begin with, sir," he said, when I had persuaded him to be seated, "you are one of us? That you are a friend to humanity, I know, but a friend to Italy—yes?"

I was still hot from my talk with Miss Rossano, and I assured the count that I was very much a friend to Italy indeed.

"Then, sir," he cried, "we have need of you! We have need of every counsel—of every hand."

He was on his feet again, and had intrenched himself behind the arm-chair. He declaimed from that position as if it had been a rostrum, employing a wealth and variety of gesture which no English mimic could succeed in copying in a year.

News, it appeared, had arrived that morning from Paris which led to the belief that an uprising against Louis Philippe might shortly be looked for. The messenger who brought that news had within twenty-four hours encountered a messenger from Turin, who prophesied insurrection there; this messenger in turn had news from Vienna from another comrade, who was assured that Metternich was trembling in his shoes at the thought of Charles Albert's threatened advance on Piedmont.

"The wine," cried my Italian Quixote, "is in ferment! We drink of it, and our hearts are turned to madness! We need more of your English sang-froid"—he called it "sanga-froida," and puzzled me for a passing instant. "The hour is here," he declared, "and the men are here! But, until now, we have ruined everything by too much precipitation, and against that we must now be on our guard!"

Of the volubility and energy with which he delivered himself of all this, and much more, I cannot convey even the slightest idea. I can give no notion of his fertility in unnecessary vowels, and I should be afraid to say how many syllables he made of the word precipitation, or how he would have spelled it in English if he had tried.

"It is for you, sir," he thundered, stopping in his headlong walk to shake a long forefinger in my face—"it is for you to teach us to be calm!"

I asked him to take his first lesson there and then, and to begin it by being seated.

"Ah," said he, "that is to be practical—that is to be English. To be practical and to be English is to be successful. You shall advise us—you shall lead us to victory!"

In his discovery of the excellence of my practical method he had forgotten all about it, and was pounding up and down the room at as great a rate as ever, when I took him by the shoulders and forced him into a chair.

"Let us talk business," I said, severely; "if this means anything at all, it means action."

"Action," he responded, "decisive and immediate!"

"Action," I retorted, "well matured and sane!"

"Ah! yes, yes," cried Ruffiano; "again, dear sir, you correct me. That is why I am here. But do not think because I have no patience—do not think because I am an old—an old—" He searched in his mind for a simile, and burst out with "gas-balloon" with a laugh of childish amusement at his own impetuosity. "Do not you think because I am an old gas-balloon that there are not among us no wiser and cooler heads than mine! We are at a white-heat now, but there are men among us who can keep their wits even in a furnace like this. I, dear sir"—he would have been on his feet again but that I checked him—"I am of the inner council. We meet to-night, and, hot as I am, I fear my own heat and that of others. If you wish well to Italy, be one of us. And be sure, sir, that the rescuer of our one most dearest and most prized shall be received with honor."

I promised; and he undertook to call upon me at nine o'clock that evening. And thus, within a day of my return to London, I found myself pledged to Italy; and a few hours later made one of a caucus of conspirators, poor and needy and inconsiderable enough to look at, but holding in their hands, after all, one or two of the strings which, being pulled at the ripe hour of time, changed the scene for more than one land in Europe.



CHAPTER IX

And now it seems to me as if I might go on writing to the end of what remains of my lifetime, and never come to a finish. But I have to take hold of myself, as it were, with resolution, and to refrain from speaking of a hundred thousand things which interest me in memory.

The story I am bidden to tell is of how and why I came to rob Miss Rossano of forty thousand pounds, and yet not to suffer one whit in her esteem or in my own. It is an easy thing to say to a man, "You took part in such and such an adventure; you know all about it; take your pen in your hand and write a history of it." The trouble is in the selection; and I have found myself so gravely puzzled as to what I shall leave out that I see nothing for it but to set down formally before myself, for my own guidance, the names of the people who are most closely and intimately concerned in what I have to tell; and having done that, I must resolve to restrict my narrative to the history of their sayings and doings. Such a countless crowd of people surge up into memory that this is more difficult than any one would fancy. All my old comrades in deliberation, my friends in council, my companions in the war of later on are with me at times as I sit and think over the incidents of this story. The odd part of it is that a thousand things I had forgotten come back as clearly as if they had happened yesterday, and I should feel a greater pleasure in dwelling upon them than upon the main incidents to which I am bound to confine myself. Roaring nights by the camp-fire, when a chance-found skin of wine made the time glorious; jolly little touches of mirth and camaraderie here and there; heats of battle, splendors of victory, miseries of retreat—all come back upon me, and the faces of many dead comrades people the air.

But to come to my resolution. There is Brunow, who was the fatal cause of it all; and the Baroness Bonnar, who made her cat's-paw of him; and Ruffiano, whom the two betrayed between them; and then there are left the count, and Miss Rossano, and the faithful Hinge. Then there is the ghost of poor Constance Pleyel, who came like a wraith out of the past and vanished again into the darkness; then there is myself for the centre of the story, whether I like it or not. Here are now my dramatis persono before me. The stage of my mind is crowded with auxiliaries, but I dare scarcely glance at them.

And who was Constance Pleyel? In a sense she was the motive and main-spring of my life, for it was she who embarked me on that career of adventure which has made me what I am.

When I was a very young man indeed I fell in love with Constance Pleyel. I am not the first man whose life has been set awry by his love for an unworthy woman, nor shall I be the last. I would very willingly keep silent about that episode in my life, but the story has to be told. It shall be told with due reticence; for if I cannot respect poor Constance any more, I can at least respect the feelings which made her sacred in my eyes for a year and more in the days of my boyhood.

Months had gone by, and the spring of the year was near at hand. The count had come back to a condition of health and of mental strength which was no less than astonishing. I have never ceased to think it wonderful that a man who had been so long buried from the world, from all its interests, and from all knowledge of its affairs, should have been able so readily to take up the lost threads of life. The most remarkable thing about him, even if on the whole it were the least surprising, was the survival of the patriotic impulse in his mind. It seemed as if nothing could quench that, and as if all his suffering had served only to lend new fuel to that sacred flame. By this time he was deep in all our councils, the most active, and at once the wariest and most ardent of our leaders. I was pledged to the cause of Italy heart and soul, and was, I think, as thoroughly and % passionately devoted to her service as if the call of blood had sounded in me. I identified myself with the hopes of Miss Rossano and her father, and I was in all things their loyal servant and coadjutor.

I suppose I have made it clear by this time that I had never any very great esteem or affection for Bru-now. He was in the thick of affairs, and knew as much of our intentions and of our actual movements as any man among us. It is no credit to me that I was willing to suspect him, and that I distrusted him from the beginning. I never thought him likely to be guilty of deliberate treason, but I always feared 'his rash and boastful tongue, and I confess that I did something here and there to inspire my comrades with the sense of my own mistrust. I have not the slightest doubt that he knew of this. I certainly never took any pains to disguise it from him, and I dare say that in what followed he partly justified his own action in his own mind by my dislike of him and his own dislike of me.

Brunow was a queerish sort of study, and I honestly believe that half the harm he did sprang out of the only little bit of good I was ever able to discover in him. He would do almost anything to secure anybody's favorable opinion, and neither his judgment nor his conscience—if he had either one or the other—stood in the way of this amiable weakness. He was more amenable to flattery than a child, and was moved by it as easily to good as to evil. The misfortune was that those who would have cared to influence him in the right direction disdained to tickle his foible, while those who fooled him to his own ruin flattered him to the top of his bent.

I can't help thinking that for a long time the poor feather-head attached a considerable value to my opinion, and that he was anxious in his own way to conciliate my friendship. He knew what I thought about him, and yet he sought my acquaintance, and did what he could to propitiate me and to secure my good-will; but at last an open breach declared itself between us. It came about in this wise:

I was sitting in my chambers one afternoon when the count called upon me. We had had a rather stormy discussion at our last meeting, and I had had to take sides against him. He was on fire for immediate action, and I had felt it my duty to plead for delay. We had parted rather hotly, and he made it his first business to apologize to me for something into which his enthusiasm had hurried him. This being over, we sat in silence for some time, and I saw at last that something was weighing on his mind.

"I was ungenerous and wrong last night," he said at last, "and I feel it all the more because I am here to ask you now for a special favor."

"My dear count," I said, "we have the same hopes, and we disagree sometimes about the proper means of reaching them. I think there is no possibility of a quarrel between us. However much we disagree, we feel no rancor."

"Rancor!" cried the count. "Good God! my dear Fyffe, how should there be rancor in my mind to you."

He held out his hand, and I shook it heartily. The truest and easiest way of getting to like a man is to do him a service; that makes you wish him well forever afterwards. I should have honored and esteemed the Count Rossano if he had not been his daughter's father. As it was, I had an affection for him which it would not be easy for me to overstate.

"I have so few friends," said the count, when our reconciliation was complete, "and I am so much in need of advice, that I venture to trouble you, my dear Fyffe, in a matter of great delicacy."

I told him, I forget precisely in what terms, that I was entirely at his service; and after another hesitating pause he blurted out the truth.

"I have received an offer for my daughter's hand. The proposal comes to me from the Honorable Mr. Brunow. I owe him the same debt I owe to you, and I own that I should be reluctant to hurt his feelings by a refusal. His offer came to me last night, and took me by surprise. I should have been less troubled in dealing with it if he had not assured me that, with my consent, he is fairly certain of my daughter's. I should be wrong," he added—"I should be altogether wrong if I claimed any authority over her. I have not the right to such a voice in her affairs as I should have if she had been bred under my own care. But Brunow, in spite of the debt I owe him, is not the man I should have chosen for her. You have known him for many years. I am gravely troubled, my dear Fyffe. Tell me what I should do."

I am not exaggerating when I say that if the count had stabbed-me he would hardly have hurt or amazed me more. I had heard Brunow's butterfly protestations about his affection for Miss Rossano, and my eyes had certainly not been less open to his defects of character because he was a rival to my own hopes; but I had never regarded him as being altogether serious. I knew that he was irretrievably in debt, and I had never really feared until that moment that his opposition would take real form. A lover is always jealous, and I had envied my rival his faculty of small talk, his cheery, easy temper, and those touches of gallant attention of which practice and nature had made him master. I had been very angry sometimes at his success in pleasing. But a certain contempt had always mingled with my anger, and I had never really been afraid of him. Yet in the count's declaration of Brunow's belief that Miss Rossano was not indifferent to him I could see more than a touch of reason. She was always gay in his presence, always ready to laugh at his genial and charming nonsense—would come out of her gravest humor at any moment to meet his badinage half way.

I was thinking of all these things, and suffering sorely, when the count's voice recalled me to myself.

"I admit, I know, I feel the delicacy of the situation."

"I am the last man in the world," I said, "to be consulted on this question."

"Surely not that!" cried the count.

"The last man in the world," I repeated. "I can have no voice in the matter one way or the other."

I felt, even as I spoke, that my words and tones alike were too brusque and imperative, but I was wounded to the heart, and alarmed alike for Miss Rossano and myself. Brunow was certainly not the man to make her happy, whatever fancy he might have inspired in her mind, and yet it was no business of mine to say so. I was his rival, and my opinion of him was naturally biassed. For the moment I hated him, but I had self-control enough left to feel that that fact bound me all the more to silence.

"You cannot advise me?" said the count.

"I have no right to advise you," I responded.

He rose with a strange look at me, and began to walk up and down the room with his fingers at his lips. I have wounded myself in reading what I have already written about his prison look. I had learned to know him as so high-minded, so brave and so honorable a gentleman that it pains me even to think of the jail-bird aspect which came upon him at times. His walk up and down my room became something very like a prowl, and he fell to casting furtive glances at me, biting his finger ends, and murmuring inarticulately below his breath.

"You have some reason for this," he said, suddenly. "You do not refuse to help me in such a matter for nothing."

"I have the best of all reasons," I answered. "I cannot advise, because I have no right to advise."

"I give you the right by asking for advice," he said, turning round upon me. "Is it kind to refuse me in this? I am a stranger to the world—a child, and less than a child. I owe to this man and to you everything I am and all I have. But—may I tell you?—I mistrust him. I do not care to leave my daughter's happiness in his charge."

I made a successful struggle to control myself, and I answered him quietly:

"You must know, sir, that in England young people arrange these matters very much for themselves. I have no doubt that Miss Rossano will attach full weight to your judgment and counsel. I am very sorry, but I have no right to advise you even at your own request."

"I had hoped for another answer," he responded. "I had even ventured to think—Ah, well, my dear Fyffe, I cannot help myself, and if you will not help me—"

"I would, sir, if I could," I answered.

And at this he sat down, gnawing at his finger-nails, and more broken and furtive in manner than I had seen him since the first week of his escape from prison.

"I owe Brunow a great deal," he said at length, as if he addressed himself rather than me; "but what I owe to one I owe to the other, and I had hoped things would have gone differently. It was natural, perhaps—I suppose it was natural—that she should think of one of you."

It was impossible to escape his meaning, and I saw clearly that if I had spoken first I should have found an ally in him. I do not remember ever to have felt so miserable and so hopeless; but I sat down and filled my pipe and smoked in silence, thinking that perhaps I had thrown a chance away, and that perhaps I had never had one.

While I sat thus, looking out of the window and watching with a curiously awakened interest the traffic in the street below, I felt the count's hand on my shoulder.

"Tell me, my dear Fyffe," he said, shaking me gently, "am I utterly mistaken? I had thought—I had hoped—"

"What had you thought, sir?" I asked, without turning my face towards him.

"I had thought," he began with hesitation, and then paused—"I had thought that you would have put that question to me, rather than Brunow. Was I wrong?"

"Brunow has put the question, sir," I answered, "and he has a right to be answered. You can guess now, I fancy, why I can give you no advice."

"That is enough," said the count. "Pray understand me, my dear Fyffe. This is a matter of delicacy in which I am perhaps acting very strangely, but I have thought that you cared for my child. I had hoped that it was so, and I had hoped that she might care for you. I had not thought of Mr. Brunow in this way; and if I intrust my daughter's happiness to his charge, I am afraid."

"I did not know," I told him, "that I had betrayed myself. If you have found out the truth about me, I can't be blamed for having told you. I should have spoken to you weeks ago, but you see how I live." He cast his eyes about the room and nodded. "I am as poor as a church-mouse, and I see no way to better my position."

"I had some hopes," said the count, "that you might tell me this. It was that which led me to come here and ask you to advise me."

A wild and improbable hope sprang into my mind, but it died as soon as it was born. Perhaps I was absurd enough to fancy the count had seen something in his daughter's manner which led him to believe that she cared for me, and perhaps he had taken advantage of Brunow's proposal to awake me to a sense of my own wasted opportunities. I put that fancy by, for intimate as I had grown to be with Miss Rossano. I had never discerned the faintest hint in her manner of anything but friendship. If my fancy had not been already dead, the count's next words would have killed it outright.

"I have nothing," he said, "to guide me to my daughter's feelings, but I am certain of my own. Mr. Brunow's declaration took me by surprise, but I had been expecting yours, and should have received it with pleasure."

"I did my best to form an honest judgment and to act like an honorable man. Mr. Brunow," I said, "has known Miss Rossano much longer than I have. I must not disguise the fact that he has more than once spoken to me of his attachment to her. He mentioned that months ago, but in such a way that I hardly supposed him to be in earnest. He has spoken first, and he has a right to an answer. If when he has received his answer I still have a right to speak, I may do so."

"That," said the count, "is not the conclusion at which I hoped you would arrive. I think I can offer an alternative. If I ask you to look at this matter like a man of the world, you will have a right to laugh at my presumption. I was a man of the world once, but that was long ago. I have lost so much that what is left to me is hidden in a cloud of self-distrust; yet I think I am right in this, and you yourself shall be the judge."

He paused there for some time, and I could tell by his inward look, and by the occasional motion of his lips, that he was choosing words in which to make his meaning clear to me. He looked up at last, with his gray face illuminated by the mere ghost of a smile, and reaching both hands across the table towards me, leaned upon them firmly.

"My penetration, blunted as it is, has not been altogether at fault," he said; "I have hit the truth in your case. That is so?" I nodded, gloomily enough, I dare say, to signify assent. "What I propose, my dear Fyffe, is this: I cannot read my daughter's mind at all, and so far as I can tell she may have no such preference as leads to marriage for either of you. She is half English by birth, and wholly English by education. If she would marry at all she will follow her own inclination, after the fashion of young ladies in this country. Even if I had had the authority which a life-long watch over her would have given me, I should never have dreamed of using it. But this is the plain English of the matter. I would gladly trust my child with you, and I should be sorry to trust her with Mr. Brunow. That sounds ungrateful to him, for I owe him an enormous service; but there are duties which transcend gratitude, and this is one of them. I have surprised your sentiments, and have extorted a confession from you. I ask you now to authorize me to lay before my daughter your case and Mr. Brunow's side by side. I will tell her, if you prefer it, precisely what passed between us. If she should accept neither of you, my own hope and yours will have had at least a chance of fulfilment. You have no objection to making that proposal?"

I answered truly that I was profoundly grateful for it, and that I had never had so much honor done me.

The count departed well pleased, and I was left to await his news in such anxiety as any man who has not awaited a similar verdict might picture for himself. I did not stir from my rooms for several days, and at almost every minute of that time I was either at the very height of hope or the very bottom of despair.

The news came in a startling and unexpected way at last. About four o'clock on the afternoon of the third day a rapid step came up the stair, and somebody knocked with an angry and passionate insistence at the outer door of my chambers. Hinge, startled by the unusual exigence of the summons, ran to answer it. I learned from him who my visitor was, for as he opened the door he sang out:

"Good Lord, Mr. Brunow, what on earth's the matter?"

"Stand on one side!" cried Brunow, in a loud and angry voice; and scarcely a second later he entered the room I sat in, and, banging the door noisily behind him, faced me, still grasping in his right hand the walking-cane with which he had offered such a startling announcement of his presence.

"You damned traitor!" said Brunow; "you infernal traitor!"

He had hardly spoken, indeed he had hardly turned his white and wrathful face towards me, when I understood precisely what had happened. Of course an absolute certainty was out of the question, but I felt the next thing to it; and what with the exulting thought that it was possible and the fear that it might not be true, I was so taken aback that I had no answer for this unusual greeting.

"You blackguard!" Brunow stammered, his stick quivering in his hand.

"Come, come," I answered, rising, and keeping a careful eye on him, for he looked as if he were fit for any sort of mischief, "this is curious language. Will you be good enough to tell me how you justify it?"

"You know well enough how I justify it!" cried Brunow. "Your dirty under-plot has succeeded. You have that for your comfort, but you may take this to flavor it. I took you for an honest man until a quarter of an hour ago, and now I know that you are as dirty and as despicable a hypocrite and backbiter as any in the world!"

"That is a lie, my dear Brunow, whoever says it!" I responded. "You will be good enough to tell me at once on what grounds you bring such a charge against me."

"Oh," cried Brunow, "I'm not going to debase myself with quarrelling with a man like you! You have my opinion of you, and you know how you have earned it. That's enough for me. Good-afternoon."

He turned, but I was at the door before him.

"That may be enough for you, my dear Brunow, but it isn't enough for me. You don't leave this room with my good-will until you have given me some justification for your conduct."

"I'll give you none!" he cried. "You're a liar and a hypocrite, and I've done with you forever! That ought to be enough for you! Stand by and let me go, or—" he raised his stick with a threatening gesture, but at that I could afford to smile. I knew Brunow a great deal too well to think him likely to assault me after having put me on my guard by a threat.

"I wonder," he said, with his lips quivering and his teeth tight clinched behind them—"I wonder that I don't thrash you within an inch of your life."

"I wouldn't waste much wonder on that question if I were you, Brunow," I answered. "You will be able to find an easy explanation. Tell me on what grounds you come to me with these angry accusations."

"You pretend you don't know?" he sneered. "You can't guess, you soul of honor!"

"I pretend nothing," I told him; "but no man uses such language to me without justifying it. A gentleman having under any fancied sense of wrong used such language will hasten to find reasons for it."

"You may keep me here," said Brunow, throwing himself savagely into an arm-chair. "I won't bluster with you, but I decline to explain or justify a word I've said, and you can take what course you please."

"Very well," I answered, turning the key in the lock and then putting it in my pocket, "we shall both have an opportunity of exercising the great gift of patience."

"Look here," he cried, suddenly leaping from his chair and shaking his forefinger in ray face, "do you pretend to deny that months and months ago I told you what my feelings were with respect to Miss Rossano?"

"You told me," I answered, "that you admired her, and that she had a very pretty little income of her own. You coupled those two facts together in such a way as to make me think you were ready to contract a mercenary marriage."

"That's how you choose to put it," he retorted. "I could have supposed, without your help, that you'd find some such means of justifying yourself. Your affection has nothing mercenary in it, of course. In that respect you're above suspicion. A mountebank soldier with a wooden sword to sell that nobody chooses to buy. A strolling pauper without a penny to his name."

I don't quite like to think of what might have happened if this strain of invective had not been interrupted at that moment. I know now, and I almost knew then, what ground Brunow had for his anger and resentment. But the words he used were almost too much for my endurance, and I was glad that a ring sounded at the hall bell, and that Hinge, who, I have no doubt at all, was listening outside, answered immediately. I heard a muffled voice outside, and then Hinge knocked at the inner door; and having in vain tried the handle, said:

"The Conte di Rossano, if you please."



CHAPTER X

I drew the key from my pocket, unlocked the door, and admitted the count, who stood for an instant on the threshold, looking from me to Brunow and from Brunow to me with an aspect of some considerable amazement. Hinge was gaping in the passage, and it was evident that he was more interested in the proceedings than he knew himself to have the right to be; for, encountering my eye, he withdrew his own instantly, and plunged with great precipitation out of sight.

"Come in, sir," I said to the count; and he entered, closing the door behind him, and still looking from Brunow to myself and back again with an aspect of complete surprise strongly mingled with displeasure.

"I had not expected to find Mr. Brunow here." This told me, or seemed to tell me at once, that Brunow had but recently left the count, and my conjecture turned out in a moment to be true.

"I have repeated to Captain Fyffe, sir," said Brunow, "what I told you less than half an hour ago."

"Then," said the count, "you have repeated to Captain Fyffe what I emphatically denied to you. That, sir, is a refusal of my plighted word."

His meagre figure was drawn to its full height, he threw his head back, and his deep-sunken eyes flashed with indignation.

"I have told this fellow," cried Brunow, "that he has betrayed my confidence—the most sacred confidence one man can repose in another—a confidence I extended to him, believing him to be a man of honor and my friend."

"And I, sir, have instructed you," returned the count, "that your accusation is altogether baseless. There, if you cede so much to the authority of my years, the matter may be allowed to rest. If you have further business with Captain Fyffe, I will find another opportunity of calling upon him."

"I have no further business with Captain Fyffe," said Bruno, "now nor at any time."

So saying, he looked about him for his hat, caught it up, bowed angrily to the count, and without a word or a glance for me walked out of the room, slamming the outer door so noisily that the whole house shook with the concussion.

"Mr. Brunow," said the count, when we were thus left alone, "is an ill-conditioned person. I owe it to you to explain precisely what has happened. But first, my dear Fyffe, give me your hand, and let me offer you my felicitations."

I took the hand he offered and held it a moment, hardly realizing where I stood.

"Your suit is accepted; and if you will do us the honor to dine with us this evening, I am charged by Lady Rollinson to say that she will be charmed to meet you at her table. There, my dear fellow," he concluded, hastily withdrawing his hand, "you are stronger than you fancy yourself to be."

He stood, half laughing, as he straightened the fingers of his right hand with his left, and then shook them in memory of my grip.

I had not a word to say for myself, and I felt as foolish and awkward as a school-boy.

"And now," said the count, laying a hand on each of my shoulders and pressing me gently towards an arm-chair, "I will tell you what has happened between Mr. Brunow and myself."

"Never mind about Brunow just at present, sir," I cried, recovering my wits a little; "I have other things to think of which are of greater moment."

"Well, yes," he answered, with a very sweet yet mournful smile, "I can believe so. Brunow will keep."

"I am to understand, sir," I asked, "that Miss Rossano accepts the offer of my hand?"

"Precisely," said the count, nodding with his affectionate and melancholy smile.

"She knows my circumstances?"

"I will not say she knows them absolutely," he replied, "but I think she has a fairly accurate knowledge of them."

"I have an income of three hundred pounds a year."

"So much as that?" he asked, with a dry, quaint look. It was so wise, so friendly, so childlike, so gay, so unlike the dull and dreadful aspect his face had worn when I had first known it that it affected me strongly, "My dear Fyffe," he said, reaching his friendly hand out towards me once more, "why should we talk about money? If you can put Brunow out of your mind I can put money out of mine. My daughter loves me, and the man who saved me loves my daughter; and Violet—well, she shall speak for herself."

I was so entirely happy that I could afford to take pity on my unsuccessful rival. When I thought how I should have felt if our cases had been reversed—if he had won and I had been rejected—I was willing to forgive him anything. I hoped that in course of time he would come to see how baseless his suspicions were, but in my joy I could nurse no anger against him. But I was eager to meet my promised wife, and he did not fill my thoughts for more than a passing moment.

The count volunteered to accompany me to Lady Rollinson's house.

"You are bidden to dinner," he said, "but I dare say they will excuse an afternoon visit as well. The circumstances are unusual."

His face was full of a quiet and happy humor, which even in the midst of my own whirling emotions struck me as being remarkable. What a native courage must have existed within this man that all the miseries he had undergone had left so much of his manhood to him! What a tranquil and heroic soul he must have borne to have survived that hideous time at all. I know of myself that I should have beaten my brains out against the wall of that loathsome jail many years ago had his lot fallen to me, or I should have sunk to the stupor of an idiot.

We walked together arm in arm, as our manner was, and we talked of scores of things as we went along, though there was always one thought uppermost in the minds of both of us. The count seemed almost as happy as I was, and the knowledge that he welcomed me so warmly was like honey to my heart. For all this I was in an absurd flutter all the way; and when we reached the house I had come to such a condition of mind that whether I were in a delirium of joy or a delirium of misery I was in no wise sure. The delirium was certain; but I found that afternoon how true a thing it is that extremes meet. Great joy and great sorrow are not very wide apart in the havoc they work on the nerves.

I have been trying to recall everything that happened that day; but I find that I have no memory of anything at all between our talking very brightly and affectionately in the street, and my finding myself alone in Lady Rollinson's drawing-room. There was a bright fire burning there, for the spring days were chilly. There was a clock ticking delicately on the mantel-piece, and my mind fastened on to the sound as if there were possibility of checking and steadying my whirling thoughts by thinking of it—pretty much as a man would clutch a straw in a whirlpool. The rustle of a dress sounded in the corridor outside, and a step paused at the door. My heart beat furiously, and then as the door opened it seemed as if it stopped for a second. Miss Rossano entered (it is the last time I shall call her by that name), and for a moment we stood face to face in silence, like a pair of foolish statues. She was more self-possessed than I, for she advanced and offered me her hand, and I took it clumsily, as if I had no idea what to do with it.

I had loved her from the very first moment I had seen her sweet and noble face, and every hour had seemed to make me love her more. And yet I had never breathed a word to her, and here we were plighted to each other in this strange and sudden fashion, with no preliminaries of courtship, with no question asked by me or answered by her, and hardly at the moment an understanding of how a thing so curious had come to pass.

I have not forgotten anything that was said or done that happy hour, but it is still all too sacred to be written down for any eye but hers or mine to read. It is enough to say that I learned she loved me. Her love has ceased to be to me the puzzle it once was, for one grows used to everything, and I have been both her husband and her lover now for so many years that it would be strange indeed if any sense of strangeness were left in it. But when I first found out that she had fallen in love with me just as quickly as I with her, I could not get over the wonder of it, or the feeling of added unworthiness with which the knowledge burdened me. But, in truth, the very things which make a man feel so clumsy and coarse in the presence of the woman he loves are the things that take a woman's fancy, just as her sweetness and delicacy are the things that take his. I never was a bit of a handsome fellow, but I was a big man, flowing over with health and vigor, with a big voice and a broad chest and shoulders, and, until I fell in love, I never set a great deal of value on good looks in a man. But there was I, a great hulking fellow who had passed all the best part of his life in the giving and receiving of hard knocks, a fellow who could not for the life of him help feeling that he carried the flavor of the camp about with him. What was there, in the name of Heaven, I used to ask myself in those first days of courtship, for a delicate and high-minded girl of refined breeding to fall in love with? But that, my lads and lasses all, is the provision of great nature which makes delicacy love strength and strength love gentleness, which makes fear look pretty to a soldier's eyes, and makes courage look noble and admirable to a charming creature who is afraid of a mouse. So now that I am older and more experienced, I have no wonder that my wife did not choose to fall in love with some namby-pamby fellow of the drawing-rooms rather than with me, though I have now, as I have had always, the sense to know that she is worth ten thousand of me.

I came back to something like sanity in the first ten minutes, and we sat there with no lack of things to talk about, a trouble from which I believe lovers do occasionally suffer. I am not going to pretend that the count and Italy occupied all our minds, but they had their full share of our thoughts, and we both knew that there was no question of marriage just at present. With the history of her broken-hearted mother before me I was in no mood to ask her to be my widow, and there was a growing certainty that there was fighting in front of us, and that it was likely to begin pretty soon.

If Lady Rollinson, Violet, the count, and myself had been dining alone that evening, I should probably have been allowed, under the circumstances, to dispense with evening-dress, and so there would have been no necessity for my going home again before dinner. The count, however, had already advised me of expected guests, and however fascinating the society in which I found myself, I had to break away from it for an hour.

The spring dusk was already thick as I passed along Bond Street, and there was a slight fog abroad; but at the time of which I am writing the West End shops kept open hours later than they do now, and there was no sign of cessation of business. There were a good many foot-passengers abroad, and in front of a brilliantly lighted jeweller's-shop I found myself brought to a stand-still by a little block in the traffic. A carriage stood immediately in front of the shop, and I was about to step round it into the horse road when I saw that a lady was bowing to me from it, and discovered that the lady was no other than the Baroness Bonnar. I raised my hat in answer to her salutation, and as I did so Brunow emerged from the crowd and handed a small packet to her. She took it from him with a smile, and gave the word to the coachman. I had seen that she had a companion with her, a lady whose back was turned to me; but I had taken no notice of the fact, and, indeed, had not given it a thought. But as the coachman wheeled round his horses the lady's face came for a moment into the full light of the brilliantly illuminated window, and I, standing wedged there in the momentary block of pedestrians, met her glance point-blank. She gave not the faintest sign of recognition, though she must have seen that I stared and stared as though I had beheld a ghost; but leaning back in the luxurious cushions of the carriage, drew down her veil and arranged a fur rug about her knees. I stood stock-still, and was rather roughly hustled before I so much as remembered where I was. When I looked round Brunow had disappeared. He had probably seen me, and having found time to cool, had wisely decided against a renewal in the public street of our quarrel of that afternoon. I walked on like a man in a dream, for Constance Pleyel was the last woman in the world I had thought to see, and the very last woman to be found in the society of Brunow and the Baroness Bonnar. So far as I knew, Brunow had certainly little enough to do with her, and their meeting might have been one of the purest chance; but that she was associated in some way with the baroness was evident enough from her presence in that lady's carriage. It is a bitter thing to have to go back on the past in this way, but I cannot tell my story without it. If there are worthless women in the world, there are some who are very nearly angels, and I feel as if I were almost dishonoring the sex in telling the truth about poor Constance, for I had been very honestly in love with her when I was a lad, and it seems even now, after the lapse of all these years, as if I were defiling the place which had once been a sanctuary. But when I had recovered from the shock of my surprise and began to understand what I had seen, it crossed me in a very vivid fashion that the mistrusting dislike with which I had always regarded the baroness had received strong confirmation in an unexpected way; for Constance Pleyel was not and had not been for years one with whom any self-respecting woman would wish to be intimate. The thought of the Baroness Bonnar, fresh from contact with her, coming into Violet's presence was anything but agreeable. I am not much of a prude, and was never disposed to hound a woman down for an error in love; but the plain English of the matter was that no woman who would care to know Constance Pleyel had a right to exchange a word with Violet. My mind was a good deal exercised about this matter as I walked swiftly homeward. I thought about it while I was dressing, and as I drove back to Lady Rollinson's that strange rencontre filled my thoughts to the exclusion of everything else. You may judge of my surprise when the baroness appeared as the very last of the invited guests. Considering the elaborate toilet she had made she had shown wonderful despatch, and though I have no pretensions to be versed in these mysteries, I should have been inclined to think that such a display as she made could only have been achieved with an hour or two's labor. In spite of haste, if she had been really pressed for time, her make-up was as perfect as ever, and what with her flashing white shoulders and flashing white teeth, her sparkling diamonds and sparkling eyes, and the artistic flush of artificial color on lier cheeks, she looked quite dazzling.

Dinner was announced at the very instant of her arrival, and the count himself took her in to dinner. That, in the light of my latest knowledge of the lady, was the cruellest thing to remember, but the little traitress was all smiles and pompousness, and smiled and chatted as if no thought of mischief had ever entered her heart. Lady Rollinson had confided Violet to my care, and I sat at table between her and the baroness. She talked across me to my companion until my nerves grew rigid with the strain of the repression I was compelled to lay upon myself, and the dinner, which ought to have been a little foretaste of heaven to a newly-accepted lover, was a long-drawn discomfort. There were two gentlemen at the table besides the count and myself, but they were both Italians, and had no notion of the English custom of sitting over their wine after dinner. The count was a total abstainer, for his long-enforced abstention had taught him a curious delicacy of palate, so that all wines were actually distasteful to him. When the ladies had retired we smoked a cigarette, drank a cup of black coffee, and made our way to the drawing-room, where Lady Rollinson had promised us something unusual in the way of music. It was my right to have monopolized Violet's society, or if not actually to have monopolized it, to have taken a full share of it. I found opportunity to whisper to her that I had an especial reason for speaking to the baroness, and while the music was going on I planted myself at that lady's side. She received me with more than her usual foreign affability, and chattered so rapidly that one or two of the guests, who I suppose really cared for the performance then going on, cast glances of open disapproval in her direction. The little woman was quite at home, however, and continued to talk with great animation. I made two or three attempts to interject what I had to say, but she stopped me each time, and started off on a new theme before I could get more than a word in edgewise. I know that she must have seen from my looks that I was not in the least degree disposed to the flippant mood to which she herself pretended, and at last she either was, or feigned to be, tired of my failure to respond to her.

"You are bete to-night, mon beau capitaine," she said at last, and with a humorously disdainful gesture of her fan she made a motion to rise.

"Not yet, baroness," I said, taking the fan in my hand. "I have something serious to say to you."

"I am not in the mind for anything serious tonight," she answered, "and this is not the place for anything serious."

"I am in the mood," I said, "and the place will do well enough."

She flashed her eyes at me with a sudden anger.

"Is that an impertinence or a gaucherie?" she asked. A second later her charming girlish smile lit up her face again, and rising from her seat she dropped a little mock rustic courtesy. "If M. le Capitaine Fyffe will honor me at my own humble residence, I am never abroad till one." With that she shot me a curiously veiled glance and turned away, holding up her hand as if to ask me to listen to the last strains of the music which her own vehement chatter had already spoiled for everybody who cared to listen to it. She had evidently a purpose in holding me off, and I of course could form a reasonable guess as to what the nature of that purpose was. I devoted myself to Violet for the rest of the evening, and contrived so well to forget the baroness that by the time at which I was compelled to take my leave I was restored to the state of mind natural to an ardent lover who had only that day been lifted from something very like despair to the fulfilment of his hope.

When the baroness took leave I helped her to adjust her costly fur mantle. Violet was standing by, and the baroness was talking to her with a pretence of animation which I know was intended to prevent me from giving her a reminder of what had already passed between us. As she turned to go she gave me a moment's chance. I had been waiting for it, and I seized it instantly.

"To-morrow, then, at twelve," I said.

She turned, with her eyes wide open and angered, as if I had presumed in speaking to her and had offered her an insult. But she changed her mind in the merest fraction of time, and answered, smilingly:

"To-morrow, then, at twelve."

Then she looked at me with the odd veiled glance I had seen before—a glance which expressed both dislike and fear, and held at the same time a keener and more piercing observation than anybody at first sight would have been likely to charge the butterfly-like woman with.

I have spoken quite openly, and as if what I have had to say had been the most commonplace matter in the world. Violet had heard me, but when we went back to the drawing-room together she asked no questions. She has told me since that she wondered a little what appointment I could have with the Baroness Bonnar, but she gave me here the first of a hundred thousand proofs of that noble freedom from the pinch of small curiosity which helps to make her different from and superior to her sex.

I kept my appointment next day, and found the baroness at home. She had a dainty little house of her own, and I suppose that at this time she kept better style, was furnished with completer credentials, was admitted to know better people, and was more liberally supplied with funds than at any other period of her curiously vagabond existence. She was to me at this time the Baroness Bonnar pure and simple, a foreign lady of wealth and position who moved in good society, had agreeable and influential friends, and obvious command of money. She was to me, in short, what she was to the rest of the world, and I had no earthly reason to doubt any of her pretences. But I had come with a definite object, and I approached it at once. She was not at all disposed to banter to-day, but met me with perfect candor.

"My time is a little limited, Captain Fyffe," she began. "Will you do me the honor to let me know at once to what I owe your visit?"

"I passed you last night in Bond Street," I returned. She nodded briefly, with her lips tight set and her eyes glittering a little dangerously, I thought. "Would you oblige me by telling me the name of your companion?"

"Would you oblige me," she retorted, "by telling me the reasons for which you ask it?"

She was so very quick and resolute that I saw at once she had been prepared for the occasion.

"I had rather not give my reason just at present, baroness," I said. "I have, as a matter of fact, no reason for asking the lady's name for my own satisfaction, because I know it with much more certainty than you do."

"Oh!" she said, very quietly. "Then why do you ask?"

"Let me change my question," I responded. "Let me ask you if you have known Miss Constance Pleyel long?"

"Do you know, my good Captain Fyffe," said the little woman, toying idly with the vinaigrette and sniffing at its contents now and then, "you have a manner which is abominably resolute. You are speaking to me as if you were a rustic juge d'instruction, and I a prisoner in the dock."

"I beg your pardon, baroness; I was conscious of no such manner. Will you oblige me by telling me if you have known this lady long?"

"I do not recognize your right to question me," said the baroness; "but since you are audacious enough to come here and to question me about that lady after what I heard last night—" she paused there of set purpose, and repeating the words "after what I heard last night" with emphasis, paused again.

"After what you heard last night," I repeated, unable to attach any meaning whatever to her words.

"You decline to understand me?" she said, with a threatening nod of her pretty little head. "Very well. But if," still with marked emphasis, "after what I heard last night you are sufficiently audacious to come here and ask me questions about Constance Pleyel, I can tell you that I have known that lady long enough to know the history of her life and how far you are responsible for the sorrows she has known."

"I responsible?" I cried.

"Do you deny it?" she retorted.

I had risen to my feet unconsciously, and she arose to face me.

"I deny it absolutely!" I answered. "The suggestion is an outrage!"

For sole answer she touched a little silver gong which stood upon the table. A servant appeared in answer to the sound, and the baroness, without turning her head towards him, said, "Send my compliments to Miss Pleyel, and let her know Captain Fyffe has called."

I stood rooted in astonishment.



CHAPTER XI

The baroness walked to the window as the servant retired, throwing upon me as she went by a look of mingled triumph and disdain. I had no word to say for myself, and I awaited the progress of events with wonder. The baroness looked out upon the street, with her tiny foot tapping at the carpet, until the servant returned.

"Well?" said she, imperatively turning on him.

The man looked confused and stammered.

"Well?" she repeated, with an angry impatience.

"I beg your pardon, Madame la Baronne, but I am to say—"

"You are to say?" she echoed, scornfully, seeing that he paused and stammered anew. "Say what you are to say."

"Perhaps it would be better," the man said, "if I spoke to madame alone."

"Say what you have to say," his mistress commanded. "I presume you have an answer from Miss Pleyel?"

The man who was a young and by no means ill-looking fellow, was evidently in considerable distress. "It is not my fault, Madame la Baronne," he said, with an appealing glance at me, "but Miss Pleyel's message is that she declines to meet Captain Fyffe under any circumstances."

"That will do," said his mistress. "You can go."

The man retired once more. I could see that the baroness was disappointed, but she made the best of the circumstances.

"I am not surprised," she said, with as fine an expression of scorn as she could command.

"Nor am I," I responded. "It is natural that Miss Pleyel should not wish to meet one who knew her fifteen years ago."

"It is like a man and a soldier," she said, "to presume upon the natural delicacy of a lady under such circumstances. She shrinks from you and fears you. She dare not encounter you even in the presence of so dear a friend as I am. But I do not shrink from you, Captain Fyffe, and I am not afraid of you. I tell you once more that I think your coming here is, all things considered, as pretty a piece of audacity as I can remember."

"Madame," I answered, "I came here with a purpose. When I have fulfilled that purpose I will relieve you of my presence."

"Go on," she interjected, contemptuously.

"The position is both difficult and delicate, but my duty is plain, and I see no way of escape from it."

"Your duty to yourself," said the baroness, "is plain enough. Such a man as I see you now to be will make it his duty, at any cost, to defend himself."

"To defend himself from what, madame?" I asked, surprised at her boldness.

"From the plain truth," she answered, with an expression of anger and disdain which, if not real, was an excellent bit of acting in its way. "The brave Captain Fyffe is ambitious, and has made up his mind to marry money; but Miss Rossano, whom I have the honor to know, might shrink from Captain Fyffe if she knew him to be not merely a penniless adventurer, but a perjured and heartless villain.'

"Madame," I replied, "I will not be so poor a diplomatist as to lose my temper over these charges. There are hundreds of people still alive in my native place to whom Miss Pleyel's miserable history is known, and such a charge as you are making could only excite derision if it were openly brought against me."

"You came here with a purpose," she said, coldly. "I shall be obliged if you will fulfil your purpose, and—"

"When I have fulfilled my purpose I will go. I will be as brief as I can. When I was a lad of twenty I was desperately in love with Miss Constance Pleyel, or thought I was, which at that time of life is pretty much the same thing."

"It will serve at any time of life," said the baroness. She listened with an air of aversion and impatience, which made a painful task more painful to perform.

"My father was a half-pay officer," I went on, "very poor and very proud. Miss Pleyel's father was a tradesman, an Austrian Jew, rich, vulgar, and ostentatious."

"Rich, certainly," the baroness responded. "I can congratulate you on one point, Captain Fyffe; you have not yet, so far as I can learn, suffered sentiment to blind you to the charms of wealth."

I passed the sneer. When a man is resolutely bent upon a journey he does not stop to fight the flies that tease him.

"We moved in different circles. I spoke to Miss Pleyel perhaps a dozen times, but in the hot enthusiasm of youthful love I wrote to her often."

"I have seen your letters," said the baroness, with a short, contemptuous laugh. "They might have deceived any woman."

I allowed myself to be diverted for a moment.

"She keeps them? It is a sign of grace in her that she cares, after so many years, to remember an honest, boyish passion."

"A sign of grace?" cried the baroness, passionately. "Oh, I lose patience with this cool infamy!"

Now all this time has gone by I can recall this scene as if it were a bit of stage play; and now that I can read every motive and understand every movement, I am inclined to think the baroness's part in it the finest piece of stage work I have ever seen.

"If you will permit me, madame, I will try to put the case in such a way that there shall be no mistake as to what I mean to say. I saw Miss Pleyel rarely, and never once in private. I wrote to her often; I wrote reams of boyish nonsense, which was all meant in fiery earnest then. Then news came. Miss Pleyel ran away from her father's house with Colonel Hill-yard, a man of wealth, a married man with a large family, and, in spite of that fact, a notorious roue. They lived abroad for six months, and Miss Pleyel ran away from Colonel Hillyard with a Russian officer, with whom she went to St. Petersburg, where she caught a grand duke, who was so far fascinated as to contract a morganatic marriage with her. Since that time Miss Pleyel's adventures have been before the world. Her name has been lost under a score of aliases, but there is no pretence between you and me, and no dispute as to her identity."

"Captain Fyffe," said the baroness, "I do not yet think so poorly of you as to believe that you have invented this abominable story, but I can tell you that it is, from beginning to end, a tissue of falsehoods."

"Pardon me, madame," I responded, "there is no man living who knows that wretched history half so well as I do."

"Oh, you men, you men!" cried the baroness, sweeping her little white hands towards the ceiling, and wringing them above her head with a tragic gesture. She turned upon me suddenly, with an admirable burst of passion and feeling. "Captain Fyffe, I am a woman of the world; I am experimentee—unhappily for me, too, too bitterly experienced. Believe me, I already have the very poorest opinion of your sex. I beseech you not to lower it further."

"The most casual inquiry," I answered, "if you should care to make it, will confirm every word I have so far spoken. And now I need detain you little longer. It is a terrible thing to say to a lady, but it must be said. It is all the more terrible to say, because I had at one time a sentimental worship for that poor creature who has proved herself so often to be unworthy of any honest man's regard. No lady who knows the reputation of Miss Constance Pleyel, or who, being warned of her reputation, declines to test the truth of the warning and remains her friend, can be permitted to associate, to my knowledge, with anybody for whom I entertain the slightest regard or esteem."

"Do I understand you to threaten me, Captain Fyffe?" asked the baroness. "You must permit me for a moment to instruct you. My position in society is secure enough to enable me to defend any protegee of mine against any insinuation which Captain Fyffe may make."

"I make no insinuation," I returned. "I lay plain facts before you. I will send you by messenger, within an hour, the names and addresses of a score of people who know the facts of the case. You shall, if you choose, employ an agent, whose charges I will defray, and whose report I will never ask to see."

"Thank you, sir," she answered. "I do not spy upon the people to whom I profess to give my friendship."

That was perhaps as heroic a lie as even a lady of the baroness's profession ever uttered; but at that time I was not master of the facts of the case, and the little woman spoke with so much dignity and nature that she imposed upon me. I was really half ashamed of having suggested to her a course which only a minute before seemed quite natural.

"Madame," I said, "the position is a peculiar one, and it cannot be encountered by ordinary means. I accept without reserve the declaration you offer of your belief in Miss Pleyel's innocence. But then, you see, unhappily, I know the whole story, and I am forced, however unwillingly, to offer you an ultimatum."

"Pray let me hear it," she answered, in a tone of sarcasm.

"It is briefly this," I said. "It is impossible that the Baroness Bonnar should retain her association with Miss Pleyel and with Lady Rollinson at the same time."

"You guarantee that?" asked the baroness. "May I ask what means you propose to adopt?"

"If I am compelled," I answered, "but only in case I am compelled, I shall take the one possible, straightforward course, and shall tell to Lady Rollinson the story I have told to you."

The baroness tried another tack.

"I have often heard it said," she began, bitterly, "that it is only women who have no mercy upon women. Do you tell me, Captain Fyffe, that you can have the heart to hound this poor creature down, even if all you charge against her were true, if all her life until now had been one huge mistake? Is she to have no chance of amendment? Do not suppose," she cried, "that your story convinces me for a moment! I am looking at your side alone, that is all."

"Pardon me," I felt constrained to answer, "I see no sign of any wish for amendment. The only defence yet offered lies in a gross and groundless accusation against myself. When I came here I had no idea that Miss Pleyel meant to be dangerous to me. I learn from you the course on which she has decided."

"She!" cried the baroness. "She has decided upon nothing. Perhaps I have been led too readily to leap at a conclusion. She has made no accusation against you, poor thing; but I confess that I thought she was striving to defend you. She was terribly agitated by the chance sight she caught of you in the street last night. She has been weeping ever since. She gave me your letters with some broken words, which perhaps I may have misconstrued. If I have done you wrong, I beg your pardon. If I have done you wrong, I beg your forgiveness with all my heart. But surely, Captain Fyffe, you do not in cold blood propose to one woman that she shall throw another on the world, that she should cast her, however frail she may have been, into new temptations. You must let me tell you," she hurried on, raising her hand against me to arrest any interruption I might have been disposed to make—"you must let me tell you that I exercise some little forbearance in taking this tone at all. No slander has ever touched my reputation, and I do not intend that it shall smirch it now. I have but to say I have been deceived to establish myself in the sight of all who know me. Tell me, sir, if you have ever heard a whisper against my honor. Did ever man or woman breathe a word in your hearing with respect to me which might not have been spoken of a sister of your own?"

The plain truth was that I knew nobody but Bru-now who had any acquaintance with the little lady's antecedents. He had certainly spoken of her often in terms which I should have been very sorry to have heard applied to a sister of mine if I had been so fortunate as to own one. But, then, Brunow was a man about town, and a braggart at the same time, and I had attached no more importance to his talk than to the irresponsible babble of a baby. It was not my business to repeat Brunow's stupid follies, and I kept silent. She, however, was not disposed to let me off that way, but pressed me for an answer.

"Madame," I was forced to say, "I am not so impertinent as to call your reputation into question for an instant. I will not be so insolent as to sit in judgment upon so delicate a question for a moment. I have said all I had to say, and can see no reason for recalling any part of it." I bowed, and made a movement to retire, but she flashed between me and the door, and faced me with supplicating hands.

"Think again, Captain Fyffe," she besought me; "think again. Poor Constance is not the heartless wretch you fancy her. She is alone in the world; she is friendless, penniless. There is nobody to lend her a helping hand, nobody to believe in her wish to lead a better life but only poor little me. And of what avail is my belief in her, of what avail is my wish to lift her from the mire if you should go from me and trumpet her past abroad. I knew her, Captain Fyffe, when she was richer and happier than she is now, when she was received by society in St. Petersburg, when she was courted, admired, adored. I am sorry for her in my soul. It would wring my heart to let her go. And notice, Captain Fyffe, I am not trying to thrust her on the world, I am not trying to introduce her to any friend of mine. When you saw us in the street yesterday she drove out for the first time in my company in London. Ah, Captain Fyffe, we cannot do much good in this miserable world if we try ever so hard. I have never tried very hard. I have been a frivolous, butterfly, useless creature; but at my time of life, you see, one begins to have serious fancies. And it was mine to find this poor creature an asylum, where she might hide her head from shame, and be free of all temptation. You are a stern man, Captain Fyffe, you have shown me that, but do not be all justice and no mercy." She actually cried and clung to me as she spoke, and even now it seems difficult to believe that there was no genuine feeling at the bottom of it all, though I know perfectly well that there was no ground for the merest scrap of it.

The situation was horribly embarrassing, and yet if I had been the most yielding fool alive there was no escape. It was simply impossible that I, with my eyes open, should permit any woman who openly associated with Constance Pleyel to associate with Violet.

"I have no wish," I answered, "to speak one word to Miss Pleyel's disadvantage, and I have no right, to dictate terms to you; but if you should insist on continuing your acquaintance with Miss Pleyel and with Lady Rollinson, it will be my bounden duty to tell her ladyship what I know, and leave her to act for herself."

"Ah, well," she cried, in a voice of despair, "I do not even know that I can blame you; but am I to be sure that I can buy your silence?"

"That you can buy my silence?" I repeated.

"Yes," she answered, despondently, looking up at me with tear-stained eyes. "I mean—will you say nothing if I promise to visit Lady Rollinson no more and to meet Miss Rossano no more? I am asking nothing for myself, Captain Fyffe, remember, and I would not stoop to make terms at all if it were not for this unhappy woman's sake. Will you promise me this?"

I thought the matter over for a minute, and I promised. As it turned out, I never did an unwiser thing; but I had no means of knowing how unwise it was, and I was affected by her tears and protestations. If Baroness Bonnar had not had the skill to bedevil cleverer men than myself, and men twenty times as experienced, she would never have risen to the position of eminence she occupied.

We parted on the understanding that she was to pay no more visits to Lady Rollinson's house, but was to do her loyal best to avoid Violet and her chaperon. I went away half inclined to think myself a brute for having exacted that undertaking from her. Of course, if I had been the man of the world I thought myself, I should never have gone to see her, never have shown my hand, but should have awaited the development of events after having told Lady Rollinson what I knew, and having left her to safeguard her own interests and mine.

The whole business had been cruelly unpleasant, and I left the baroness's house thinking that on the whole I was very well out of it. I was sorry for the little lady herself, and did really and seriously give her credit for good intentions, which proves either that she was an exceptionally fine actress, or that I was an exceptional greenhorn.

I had scarcely left the house when I heard my name called in a loud whisper, and, turning, saw the gaunt figure of Ruffiano within half a dozen yards of me. He was astonishingly shabby still, but he rejoiced in clean linen, and had been recently shaven, so that he looked far more presentable than usual.

His eyes were blazing, and the whole of his long bony frame was hitching and jolting with suppressed excitement.

"I have news!" he said; "such news! Which way go you? The man is here."

I turned in the direction indicated, and saw a foreign-looking fellow in a huge beard, a slouched hat, and a melodramatic cloak, looking for all the world like a conspirator in an Adelphi or Olympic drama at that date. It was raining slightly, but the man stood with folded arms in the middle of the pavement at the street corner, like a statue of patience, with the keen February wind buffeting his long cloak picturesquely about him, and blowing his wild hair and beard in all directions. At a signal from Ruffiano he crossed over to us, and the droll old Quixote, with superabundant gesture, began to question him in Italian, the man answering, of course, in the same tongue. When they had talked together for four or five minutes Ruffiano turned upon me with his hands spread wide, and his face beaming with triumph.

"You see," he said.

"You forget, my dear count," I told him, "that I don't understand a word of what you have been saying."

The count reviled himself, and plunged into apologies so fluent as to be only half intelligible.

"This gentleman," he said, indicating the shaggy melodramatist, "has but now arrived by the morning train from Paris. The hour is here at last. Louis Philippe has run away, and by this hour we suspect he is in England. You know what that means for us?"

I knew what it meant very well, but I was not disposed to believe the story without examination. I found that the messenger spoke no word of any language but his own, and resolved on carrying him at once to Count Rossano. To that end I called a hackney-coach, not greatly caring, I confess it, to be seen in broad daylight in London streets with such an astonishing pair of guys as poor old Ruffiano and his friend.

The count was at home, and, receiving us at once, heard the story with an excitement equal to that of the narrator. When it was ended he turned on me with the very phrase Ruffiano had used: "The hour is here!"

"You can trust this man?" I asked.

"Absolutely," he responded.

I confessed that I should prefer to await a confirmation of his story by the newspapers, but the count interrupted me with a wave of the hand.

"You will see," he said, "that the newspapers will confirm the story to-morrow, and in the meantime we shall have saved a day. France is awake, and the awaking of France is the dawn of liberty for Italy. We must hold a meeting to-night. You will wait?" he asked me. "I have a hundred things to talk of, but I must first despatch Count Ruffiano to our friends."

"Yes," cried Ruffiano, with a more than common emphasis on the superfluous vowels he used, "we must meet to-night. The hour is here. In a week from now we shall have the usurper by the throat. Wait but a day, and you shall hear such news from Milano! They are ready there, and there will be no holding them back this time."

The count silenced him, and gave him rapid instructions in Italian. I could follow most of what he said in this case, for I was familiar with every name he mentioned. He was calling out the astutest and most influential of the Italian refugees then in London. The revolutionary Italian party, like all the revolutionary parties known to history, was split up into sections. There were moderates and immoderates among them, men to whom the name of Carlo Alberto was an oriflamme, and others to whom it was the very signal of scorn and loathing. The count was calling the extremists of both schools together, and Ruffiano expostulated.

"This is a time," said the count, addressing me, "at which we must sink all divisions. We shall find ample time to quarrel when the work is done. In the meantime the work lies before us, and no good Italian can hang back from it."

"We shall do nothing but quarrel," Ruffiano protested. "We shall be at daggers drawn among ourselves."

"Leave that to me," said the count, "and do you do my bidding."

After this there was no more question, and Quixote set off, taking his brigand of a companion with him. The count paced the room in a sort of silent fury for a while, but he was easily tired, and after two or three minutes of this violent exercise he dropped, pale and panting, into an arm-chair, and wiped the thick beads of perspiration from his forehead.

"There is no doubt about the news," he said then; "and even if it were not true to-day, it would be true to-morrow or the day after."

I pointed out to him that its very likelihood should make us resolve that our evidence was perfect before we acted on it.

"Yes, yes," he cried, with an angry impatience; "but we must be ready for action, and I propose no more. There is just one thing in respect to which I have not yet taken you into confidence. I have had an opportunity offered me of the purchase of a stock of arms. They were made in Birmingham, at the order of one of the South American republics which fell into bankruptcy just as the order was fulfilled. They are to be had at a very low price, and I am inclined to buy them. I ask your judgment on this matter on two grounds, Captain Fyffe. To begin with, it is twenty years since I knew the world, and the fashion of arms has so changed during that time that I am a judge no longer. I shall want you to decide on the quality of the weapons." I nodded assent to this, and he went on. "The second reason is much more personal to yourself. The cause is poor, but my daughter, in the course of a few days, will have in her own hands a large sum of money inherited from her mother, and increased by interest through her long minority. In round figures she will receive something like forty thousand pounds. She proposes to offer that sum to her father's country. You ought to know of that."

I did not see what concern this was of mine, and I said so. Violet's fortune, so far as I was concerned, was entirely at her own disposal. I felt this so strongly that I did not dare to express myself quite unreservedly, lest I might seem guilty of a pretence of too great disinterestedness. But I added that if the money were my own, I could think of no better way of spending it, and the count was satisfied.

He was in the very act of describing to me the weapons he proposed to buy when a servant entered with a card.

"This is my man," said the count, and bade the servant show the visitor in.



CHAPTER XII

"Mr. Alpheas P. Quorn" was the name printed on the card of the visitor just announced, and I had scarcely cast my eye upon it when the man came in. He was a prodigiously fat man, with a pigeon breast, and a neck so short that his tufted chin was set low down between his high shoulders. He was dressed in actual burlesque of the fashion then prevailing; but, spruce as he was, he nursed undisguisedly a huge quid of tobacco in one clean-shaven cheek, and his hands, which were covered with rings of no great apparent value, were very dirty, and the nails uncared for. He bowed with a great flourish of politeness, spat copiously in the fire, and bade the count good-day in a thin and shrill-pitched voice, so out of keeping with his monstrous size that I had to cough and turn away to disguise a laugh.

"My respects, count," said Mr. Quorn, "my respects and compliments. I presoom, sir, you have heard the noos from the European Continent."

"I am in pretty constant receipt of news," the count responded, with a swift glance in my direction; "but I do not know that it is yet common property."

"Wal," said Mr. Quorn, "I'm inclined to think it is. But my folks are pretty considerably damn smart, and so, I guess, are yours." He paused, looked hard at me, and turned his quid reflectively. "This gentleman—?" he said, interrogatively.

"This gentleman," the count responded, "is in full possession of my confidence. This is Mr. Quorn, Captain Fyffe. I was telling Captain Fyffe at the moment of your arrival," he continued, "the nature of our business. I shall rely upon his judgment of the goods you have for sale."

"That's all right," said Mr. Quorn. "I've got the real thing to sell, and I want a man as knows the real thing to see it before it's bought. Then you're satisfied and I'm satisfied. If I ain't mistaken now, Captain Fyffe's the man that hooked you out of that blasted Austrian dungeon."

"It is to Captain Fyffe," the count answered, "that I owe my liberty."

"Then you owe him a lot," retorted Mr. Quorn. "There's nothing sweeter on the face of the earth, and I presoom, sir, that you know it. I am a foe to slavery, gentlemen, everywhere and always. In the sacred cause of freedom I have been tarred and feathered and rode upon a rail. In comparison with twenty years in Austrian hands that ain't a lot, but it was more than I bargained for, and as much as I wanted. In the sacred cause of freedom, gentlemen, I'm willing to sacrifice even a pecuniary consideration. I could do a trade with Austria that would increase my profits by fifty per cent. But I'm all for freedom, and you get first offer."

"What is your news from the Continent, Mr. Quorn?" inquired the count.

Mr. Quorn looked about him for a convenient spot, selected the fireplace, spat again, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and winked with a slow deliberation.

"What's yourn?" he asked. The count smiled and shook his head. "Wal," said Mr. Quorn, "I'll tell you what I'll do with you. I'll letter it with you. L."

"O," said the count, still smiling.

"U," said Mr. Quorn.

"I," said the count.

"It appears to me," said Mr. Quorn, "we're on the same trail. The exalted individual we've got in mind, count, has done something. What's he done now?" He rolled his big head between his fat shoulders as he put the question, and chewed away at the great plug of tobacco in his cheek as if he were paid to do it, and as if he were paid by piecework.

"Yes," said the count, "he has done something, but that is a little vague."

"Wal, yes," Mr. Quorn allowed, seating himself and setting both elbows on the table, "I allow it's vague, but it won't be vague to-morrow morning."

"You allude," said the count, "to the rumor that Louis Philippe has—"

"Yes, sir," retorted Mr. Quorn, with a very bright twinkle of both eyes, "that is the rumor I allood to. That ain't vague, captain, is it? We both know all about it," he went on, "and I reckon it ought to grease this contract just a little and make it run smooth. Your time's here, if ever it will be, and I propose we strike a bargain."

"When can you supply the goods?" asked the count.

"Where?" asked Mr. Quorn, as if he were chopping something with a hatchet.

"Ah," said the count, "that has to be considered."

"Yes," the visitor assented, "that has to be considered. I'm for having everything above-board. It ain't easy to handle the contrabands of war at a time like this, when every heraldic bird and beast in Europe is on his hind-legs and looking nine ways for Sundays. If Captain Fyffe likes to come down with me to Blackwall I can show him something. On my side I'm all ready, and when I know where the goods are to be landed I'll undertake to fulfil my part of the contract. I'll leave you to yours. Money down on delivery is the only terms. I want to know the money's there, and you want to know the goods are there. The name of the Count Ro-Say-No would be a sufficient guarantee for anybody in the world but a cuss like me. I'm business. In matters of business, gentlemen, delicacy and consideration for high-flown feelings don't enter into my composition, not for a cent's worth. If I was trading with Queen Victoria I should want to know where the money was coming from. Forty thousand sterling is a lot of money, and I expect you, as a man of the world, to excuse my curiosity."

The count rose from his seat and rang the bell by the fireplace. A servant answered it, and he said, simply:

"Ask Miss Rossano to be kind enough to see me here."

The servant retired, and Mr. Quorn filled in the time of waiting by walking about the room with his hands under his coat-tails, making a cursory inspection of the furniture and the engravings on the walls, and walking from time to time to the fireplace to expectorate. When Violet entered, the count placed a seat for her, but she remained standing, with an interrogative look from Mr. Quorn to me which seemed to ask an explanation of that gentleman's presence.

"My dear," said the count, "we have often spoken together of the necessity for the purchase of arms for The Cause."

"Yes," she said.

"This gentleman," the count indicated our visitor, "has arms to sell. We have had news this morning which makes it necessary that we should move at once."

Her face turned pale for a moment and her lips trembled, but she spoke an affirmatory word only, and waited.

"Mr. Quorn," said the count, "has fifty thousand stand of arms to dispose of."

"I suppose this is all right," interrupted Mr. Quorn, "but I may be allowed to say that I have been in a business of this sort more than once in my time, and I never knew any good come out of the introduction of a petticoat."

Violet looked at him, and I saw her lips twitch with an impulse towards laughter; but Mr. Quorn obviously misunderstood the emotions he had inspired.

"Do not suppose from that, madame," he said, with great solemnity, "that I have not the reverence for your sex which rules every well-regulated masculine boozom, but this, if it means anything at all, means secrecy, and that is not your sex's strong point."

"That is a matter, Mr. Quorn," returned the count, "with which, as I think, you need not concern yourself."

"That's all right," returned Mr. Quorn. "I merely mentioned it. It's no affair of mine."

"Mr. Quorn," said the count, "has fifty thousand stand of arms to sell. With them he has three million percussion-caps and three million cartridges. His price for the whole is—" he paused there and waited, looking towards the visitor.

"Forty thousand pounds sterling," said Mr. Quorn.

I interrupted the conversation at this point, asking when the cartridges in question had been made. That was more than Mr. Quorn could say; but I insisted upon an examination of their quality before any bargain with respect to their purchase could be begun. No sportsman shoots with last year's cartridges, and a man whose life depends upon his ammunition should be at least as careful as a sportsman.

"Now," said Mr. Quorn, "I like this—this is business. This comes of talking to an expert."

But all the same I could see that he was not over-pleased by my interference at this point.

"We will leave that to your judgment, my dear Fyffe," said the count. "But in the meantime Mr. Quorn desires to be satisfied of our ability to purchase. You have consulted your lawyer, dear, and you know at what time you will have control of your money—"

"On the twelfth of next month," said Violet. "I have a letter to that effect. If this gentleman desires to see it I shall have great pleasure in showing it to him."

"Thank you, miss," said Mr. Quorn. "I should feel satisfied if I could see the document."

Violet left the room with a furtive smile on her lips, and in a minute or so returned with the letter, which she handed to Mr. Quorn. He drew from his coat-pocket a spectacle-case, and took from it a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. He breathed on these, and polished them with his handkerchief, and then read the letter.

"Richardson & Bowdler," he said, tapping the paper with one bejewelled, dirty finger, "Acre Building, Cheapside. No objection, I presoom, to my calling on these gentlemen and ascertaining if this document is genuine?"

"Sir," said the count, stiffly, "the whole matter is open to your investigation. You will take any course which seems to you to be justified by your own interests."

"That's above-board," said Mr. Quorn, calmly pocketing the letter and returning his glasses to their case. "I'll take a run down to these folks at once, and things being satisfactory there, I'll be at Captain Fyffe's service any minute. If you've nothing better to do this afternoon, captain, I'll run you down to Blackwall and show you what is to be seen."

It was arranged that he should call for me between three and four o'clock, and on that understanding he took his leave, retiring with many flourishes and an assurance, specially addressed to Violet, that he was flush on the cause of freedom anywhere and everywhere, the hull globe over, and dead against them blasted Austrians anyhow.

"You must remember, my child," said the count, when we three were left alone, "that you are spending a great sum of money in this enterprise, that it may all be wasted, and that even if by your help The Cause should win you can never hope to see one pound of your money back again."

Violet had seated herself beside him at Mr. Quorn's departure, and now, when he began to speak, she slid one arm about his neck and nestled closely to him, with her ripe young cheek touching his grizzled and lined old face.

"I have thought of all that, father," she answered. "I shouldn't care much in any case what became of the money, for I shall have plenty left. But if it were the last penny, you and Italy would be welcome to it."

"I know that, my dearest," the count answered; "but all the same I could wish it were my own. You have not yet heard to-day's news?"

"No," she said, drawing a little away from him, in order that she might look into his face. "What is it?"

"France is up!" he responded. "Louis Philippe has flown away, and is either on the road here or here already."

"And that means?" she said.

"'Instant action," returned the count. "Action without one hour's unnecessary delay."

"Tell me," she said, "exactly what it means."

"We have called a meeting for to-night," said the count, "and until that is held I can tell you nothing final. But you have a right to know my own design. We can really do nothing practical until we are armed. But I shall propose to quit England to-morrow. I shall leave Captain Fyffe to the negotiations with Quorn, and shall arrange for communications across the frontier, which will enable me to judge of the best place and the wisest hour for an attack. I shall go alone, because I wish to excite as little notice as possible."

"You must not go alone," she said, and made a movement towards him with her hands half extended. It was just such a movement as you will see a mother make towards a child that has not quite learned to walk and is in danger of falling. I could see the maternal instinct beaming in her face. The beautiful girl beside this grizzled and prematurely aged man was motherly all over, and it was a lovely and a touching thing to see. The count saw her meaning in a second, and drew back from her with a melancholy and affectionate smile, holding out both hands against her.

"I must go alone," he said.

"No, no!" cried Violet, taking both his outstretched hands in hers, and bending over him with a look of infinite protection. "My poor dear, have you not suffered enough, and run dangers enough already? I could not bear to be away from you." He was about to speak, but she closed his lips gently with the palm of her hand. "I have not been your daughter long," she said, with a little catch in her voice which took me at the throat and made my heart ache with tenderness and pity for her. "I can give you up, dear, when the time comes, but not an hour before."

"Should I not be happy, Fyffe?" asked the count, turning to me with tears in his eyes. "No, no, dearest, you will wait in England. I shall leave you in safety, for I will take nothing with me—no, not a thought, if I can help it, which would make me a coward for Italy."

"I can give you up when the time comes," she repeated, simply, "but not now. I will not ask you to take me into any danger. I don't think," she went on, striving to make something of a jest of it, and to hide the deeper feeling which controlled her so strongly—"I don't think that I am fond of danger or that I should like it at all; but there is no real reason why I should not be with you just at first."

"Aye, yes," cried the count, "there is every reason. I do not know where I may have to go. I do not know how I am to live—to travel—with what associates I must combine. My dear child, you must know the truth; my love must venture to speak it. You would be a drag upon every step, and with you I should not dare to face a single peril. I must go alone; I know the hardship, but that is the task of women. They wait at home and suffer, while the man goes out to enjoy adventure and excitement. It was your mother's fortune, my child, and you inherit it. She was all English, and yet she endured it for my sake. You are at least half of Italy, and Italy has need of both of us. If Italy needs my life, she is welcome to it. If she had need of yours, I would say not a word to hold you back. But your place is at home. Is it not so, Fyffe?"

I was a selfish advocate enough, but he had reason on his side, and I should have been blind indeed not to have seen it.

"It will be wiser—wiser far," I urged, "to stay at home. To speak plainly, you could not fail, in any sudden emergency, to hamper your father's steps. He would be nervous about you, and anxious for your safety."

"But there is no need for that," she cried, with a tender impatience. "I am not afraid. If I were a man you should not talk to me so."

"No," said the count, rising and folding his arms about her. "If you were a man, my dearest, you should have your way."

"Oh," she said, with a downward gesture of her clinched hands, "I hate these thoughts about women. Why should we not have courage? Why shouldn't we share danger with those we care about? I am not afraid of danger. But I could keep you away from it when there was no reason for it."

"Violet," said her father, gently, "I am not inclined to be rash; not now. I have had twenty years of warning, remember."

"Remember, poor dear!" she cried, with both arms round his neck and her face hidden on his shoulder, "I have never forgotten for a moment since I knew that you were alive. But don't let me be so useless. Let me do something. Let me be near you. Don't leave me behind."

"You do much already," said the count, soothing her as he spoke with one loving hand upon her flushed and tear-stained cheek. "You surrender your father and your plighted husband, and a great slice of your fortune. Ah, dearest, you do enough!"

"I do nothing," she declared. "Oh, I wish I were a man!"

"So do not I," said the count. "I should quarrel with any wish the fulfilment of which robbed me of my daughter."

She moved away from him gently, and dried her eyes. Her father watched her solicitously, and by-and-by she walked to the window of the room and said, in a tone of commonplace: "You cannot prevent me from following you."

"I can forbid it," he said, in a tone of pain.

"And I can follow all the same," she answered. He looked at her with a glance in which I read both surprise and grief, and for a minute he found no answer. When she moved to look at him he had turned away, and did not see how timid and beseeching her eyes were, for all the rebellion in her words.

"My child," he said, "I am at a grave disadvantage. It pleased God to part us, and to deny us even the knowledge of each other's existence. I am still a stranger."

"No, no, no!" she cried. She turned and ran to him, and it was plain that an appeal couched in such terms was more than she could bear. "You are my father," she sobbed, "my dear, dear father! All the dearer," she went on, in words made half inarticulate by her tears, and all the more expressive and affecting—"all the dearer because we never knew each other through all those dreadful years! I love you, dear, and I am not undutiful, and I will do whatever you ask me; but I want to be with you, I want to be with you. I have had you for such a little time. I want you—I want you always!"

"You must spare me to Italy," said her father, kissing her hands and stroking them within his own.

"Italy! What would Italy be to me if you were not a part of it?" The Southern blood broke out there plain to see, and in her flashing eyes and vivid face and the free gesture with which she spoke she was Italian all over. "Do you think a girl can love a country or a name as she loves her father? Do you think she cares about your houses and intrigues, your Piedmonts and Savoys, your Cavours and Metterniches? I would give everything I have to Italy, but I would give it all to Austria just as soon if you were on her side!"

The count stood as if stricken dumb. I do not believe that this human natural aspect of the case had ever occurred to him as being within the broadest limits of possibility. Italy had come to mean everything in the world to him. The word meant love, revenge, ambition, the very daily bread and water of his heart and soul. The fate of Italy overrode, in his mind, every personal consideration—not only for himself, but, unconsciously, for every living creature. It was natural that it should be so. It would have been strange, perhaps, had it been otherwise. I could see that his daughter's outburst sounded in his ears almost like a blasphemy. He stood wonder-struck and silent.

"If you," he said at last, with a face as white as a ghost's, and raising a shaking hand towards her—"if you, my daughter, the living remembrance of my wife—if she herself were back here from her repose in heaven—if all that ever were or could be dear to me stood on the one side, and my country's freedom on the other, I would lose you all—I would sacrifice you with my own hand for that great cause as willingly as I would sacrifice myself."

"Of course you would," she answered, with an amazement almost equal to his own. "What was the use of proclaiming a truth so self-evident as that? You are a man and a patriot, and you love your country"—her voice rang and her bosom heaved—"and you have given all the best years of your life in suffering for her; and that is why I love and honor you. But that is what a man could never understand. You love your cause, and we women love you for loving it; and love it because you love it, and we would die for it just as soon as you would. Oh, you heroic, noble, beautiful—goose!" She rushed at him, and kissed him with a passionate impetuosity. "And you think it's all Italy. It isn't Italy; it's you! You're my father, and you're a hero, and a—and a—martyr, and the noblest man that ever lived; and I love you, and I'm proud of you, and—Italy! You're my Italy, dear!"