In Direst Peril | Page 7

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.