bore the number the waiter had already given us. I tapped
at the door, and Lady Rollinson admitted us. The count sat in a
plush-covered arm-chair and his daughter leaned above him with a hand on
either shoulder. The scene looked purely domestic, and if a stranger had
seen it he would have discovered nothing unusual in it. At the moment at
which I entered the count's hand strayed to his shoulder, and for a mere
instant touched the hand which rested there. His daughter's hand closed
upon it and held it, and she looked up with her beautiful face bright
with feeling.

"Be seated, gentlemen," said the count, and we obeyed him. "I have tried
to thank you often, but I have never succeeded. I shall succeed less
than ever now, but I thank you."

Lady Rollinson sat in one corner of the room with some trifle of woman's
work in her hand, pretending to be busy over it. She looked up at Miss
Rossano once or twice, and it was plain to see that she had been crying.
As for the girl herself, her eyes shone, her beautiful lips were apart,
her color came and went, and it would have been evident to the dullest
sight that she was deeply moved; but she showed no sign of having shed
tears, and looked altogether brave and exultant. It was a beautiful
thing to notice the caressing and protecting air with which she leaned
above the count; and it was strange to read the likeness which existed
between her bright young face and his worn lineaments.

We had paused more than once upon our journey, and he was in all
respects trimmed and dressed as became a gentleman. As he sat there with
his face alight and his whole manner animated, there was no trace of
the jail-bird period about him. I remembered the man I had first seen
at Pollia--the man with the colorless face, the sunken eyes, the matted
hair and beard--and was puzzled to identify him with the polished
gentleman who sat before me. And yet, in spite of the disguise, the
jail-bird was back again in as little time as it would take to snap your
thumb and finger. The cloud lowered upon him in a second, and he sat
biting his nails with an air altogether lost and furtive. I think his
daughter first read the change in him from my own look, for after one
swift glance at me she bent over him and gazed into his face. He seemed
unconscious of her presence or of ours.

"You were saying, dear--" she said, and there halted.

He looked up with an undecided half-return to his former brightness.

"I was sa