that he was hand in glove with the conspirators against Austrian rule.
The Austrian's were just as much a fixture in Italy as they are at this
day; the Italians were just as hotly bent as they are now on getting
rid of them, and Sir Arthur, who was an old diplomat, was afraid of
the prospective son-in-law's political ideas. He tried at first to
make marriage a question of surrender of the cause, but the count was
ultra-romantic, ultra-patriotic, ultra-Italian all over in point of
fact. Not even for love's sake would he throw over his country, and,
oddly enough, it was this bit of romanticism which clinched the lady's
affection."

"And why oddly?" I asked him.

"My dear fellow," said Brunow, "why should I characterize or analyze a
woman's whims. The story is the main point. Miss Rawlings married the
count. Within three months of their marriage the count went back to
Italy to assist in the stirring up of some confounded Italian hot-pot
or other, and was never heard of again. Seven or eight months after, the
girl you met to-night was born. Her mother died a few months later. The
count's estates were confiscated by the Austrian government, and the
little orphan was bred by her grandparents. They are dead now, and Miss
Rossano is chaperoned by her aunt, Lady Rollinson, and lives with her.
When she is two-and-twenty she will come in for her dead mother's money,
some forty or maybe fifty thousand pounds. In the meantime she inherits
some two thousand a year from her grandfather. There are better things
in the marriage market, but--"

There he stopped and sipped at his tumbler, and I sat thinking for
a while. Barring that one little point in the story at which Brunow
introduced himself, I was disposed to give the history entire credence.
But that Brunow should have seen the mournful hero of the tale within
the last six weeks was altogether too like Brunow to be believed without
some confirmation. One rarely tells even the most practised romancer
outright and in so many words that he is not telling the truth, but I
fenced for a time.

"And the count's alive, you say?"

"Alive? I saw him barely six weeks ago. I'll tell you all about it."
He leaned forward in his chair, and I would have sworn that he was
inventing as he went on. "I was at a little place called Itzia, in the
Tyrol, when by pure chance I stumbled on a fellow I had known in Paris
and Vienna--a fellow named Reschia, Lieutenant Reschia. He was on
General Radetsky