If I try to explain what kept me a whole four weeks from accepting Miss Rossano's invitation to call upon her at the house of her aunt, Lady Rollinson, I am not at all sure that I shall succeed; I can say quite truly that there was not a waking hour in all that time in which she did not occupy my mind. Every morning I resolved that I would make the promised call, and every day dwindled into midnight without my having done it. I need not say that I was by this time aware of the condition of my heart. I ridiculed myself without avail, and tried to despise myself as a feather-headed fellow who had become a woman's captive at a glance. It was certainly not her wealth and my poverty which kept me away from her, for I never gave that matter a single thought—nor should I at any time in my life have regarded money as an inducement to marriage, or the want of it as a bar. It was no exalted idea of her birth as compared with mine, for I am one of the Fyffes of Dumbartonshire, and there is as good blood in my veins as flows from the heart of any Italian that ever wore a head. The plain fact, so far as I can make myself plain, is that I had already determined to win Miss Rossano for myself if I could, and that I felt that she deserved to be approached with delicacy and reserve. I knew all the while that I might be wasting chances, and I endured a good deal of trouble on that account. But four whole weeks went by before I ventured to obey her invitation to call, and by that time I was sore afraid that she had forgotten all about me.
It was Lady Rollinson herself who received me; a fat and comfortable lady of something more than fifty, as I should judge, though it is a perilous thing for a man to be meddling with guesses at a lady's age. She looked as if she could enjoy a good dinner, and as if she liked to have things soft and cosey about her; but in spite of that, she wore a countenance of pronounced kindliness, and received me, so to speak, with open arms. Her son, Jack, had inspired her with all manner of absurd beliefs about me, and she praised me to my face about my courage until I felt inclined to prove it by running away from an old woman. I assured her of what was actually the fact, that Jack's rescue was a very ordinary business, and accompanied by very little danger to myself; but this set her praising my modesty (which has never been my strong point), and I thought it best to turn the conversation. I ventured to hope that Miss Rossano was well.
“I am very sorry to tell you,” said Lady Rollinson, “that Miss Rossano is very unwell indeed. She has been greatly upset this morning. We have had the strangest news, and I don't know whether we ought to believe it or not. I don't think I have ever been so flustered in my life; and as for Violet, poor dear, it's no wonder that she's disturbed by it, for she's one of the tenderest-hearted girls in the world, and the idea that she has been happy all the time is quite enough to kill anybody, I am sure.”
Lady Rollinson rambled in this wise, and if I had had nothing to go on beforehand I should not have been able to make head or tail of her discourse; but Brunow's story flashed into my mind in a second, and I was sure that in some fashion it had reached Miss Rossano's ears. She gave me no time to offer a question, even if I had been disposed to do it, but started off again at once, and put all chance of doubt to rest.
“Poor Violet doesn't remember her father, for he has been supposed to be dead this twenty years; but he was the Conte di Rossano, a very handsome and charming young Italian gentleman, and I remember his courting Violet's mother as if it were only yesterday. The poor dear girl has the right to call herself the Contessa di Rossano; but that would be little use to her, for the Austrian government confiscated all her father's estates, and she never saw a penny from them, and I don't suppose she ever will. But her father went to Italy before she was born, and now it turns out that in place of being killed there, as every one thought at the time, he was taken prisoner by the Austrians. He's alive still, it seems, and a hopeless prisoner. Poor Violet only learned the truth last night, and she has done nothing but cry ever since.”
I said I had heard the story from Brunow, but that I understood he had bound himself to strict secrecy about it.
“He might as well have held his tongue,” cried her ladyship, “for all the good talking can do. But I've known George Brunow all his life, Captain Fyffe, and of course the idea of his keeping a secret is absurd. Mr. Brunow would talk a dog's hind-leg off, and you can't believe a quarter of the things he says. Only in this case he got a letter from the count, and some busybody persuaded him to surrender it, and brought it to poor Violet, and she has compared the handwriting with some letters of her father's which came to her from her poor dear mother, and she's quite convinced that it's the same, though twenty years is a long time, and a man's writing changes very often in less than that.”
I heard a rustle in the room, and, turning, I saw Miss Rossano standing within a yard or two of us. How much of our conversation she had heard I could not tell, but I was certain from her look that she knew its purport.
“Good-morning, Captain Fyffe,” she said, holding out her hand. I rose and took it in my own, and found that it burned like fire. Her eyelids were red and heavy, but her cheeks were almost colorless. She told me long afterwards that the pity she saw in my looks almost broke her down, and, indeed, I remember well how I felt when I saw her beautiful mouth trembling with the pain and sorrow which lay at her heart. She kept her self-possession, however, but by a sort of feminine instinct, I suppose, she sat down with her face away from the light, and when she spoke again no one who had not known the condition of affairs would have guessed, from the firm and even tones of her voice, that she suffered as she did. I think very highly of courage, whether in a man or in a woman, and I have no words to say how I admired her self-control.
“My aunt has been telling you of my dreadful news,” she began, and I answered with a mere nod. Her next words almost took my breath away. “I am glad that you have called, and if you had not done so, I should have taken the liberty to send for you. You are a man of courage and experience, Captain Fyffe, and I wish to ask your advice and help.”
I answered that I should be glad to render any service in my power, but I was afraid to show how eager I was to be of use to her, and I thought that my answer sounded grudging and reluctant.
“Thank you,” she said, simply. I could see her great eyes shining from the dusk in which she sat, and they seemed never to leave my face for a moment. “I heard you say just now that Mr. Brunow had told you the story. Did he show you this?”
She drew a scrap of paper from the bosom of her dress, and I took it from her hand. I told her I had seen it before, and returned it to her.
“Without this,” she went on, “I should have had no faith in Mr. Brunow's statement; but I have compared it with old letters of my father's, and I have no doubt that it was written by his hand. Now, Captain Fyffe”—she did her hardest to be business-like and commonplace in manner through all this interview, and my honor and esteem rose higher every moment—“now, Captain Fyffe, I want to ask you if in your judgment there is anything which can be done. I come to you—I tell you frankly—because you have already done my family one incalculable service. It is a poor way of offering thanks to burden you with a new trouble.”
“If I have done anything to save you from grief or trouble, Miss Rossano,” I replied, “I can ask for no better reward than to be allowed to repeat my service.”
If she had been anybody but the woman she was she might have accepted my words, which I knew were spoken with coldness and restraint, as a mere surface compliment of no value. But I never knew her yet mistaken' in respect of that one virtue of sincerity. It is especially her own, and it is the touchstone by which a true heart tests all others.
“Thank you,” she answered,