unt, Miss Rossano, and Lady
Rollinson had safely reached her ladyship's carriage, which had been
telegraphed for before our leaving Dover. I had interfered to prevent
the taking out of the horses, and had seen the carriage start for home
amid a roar of "vivas" and "bravas" and "hurrahs." The last I had seen
of Brunow was in the middle of a crowd, with whom he was exchanging
polyglot congratulations in the height of good spirits and enjoyment.

Hinge had not been three minutes in my room before he had made himself
master of the place. He installed himself without engagement or
invitation as my body-servant, and I found him in my bedroom hunting the
wardrobe and chest of drawers for a change of clothes.

"You'll find me 'andier when I gets to know my way about, sir," he
said. "I was the colonel's batman for three years, and I can valley a
gentleman as well here as there, sir. You'll feel more like London when
you've got into these, sir."

He pointed to the garments laid out symmetrically on the bed, and,
motioning to me to be seated, knelt down before me and began to unlace
my boots.

I was still in the act of dressing when a knock sounded at the
outer door; Hinge marched off to answer it, returning with a large
visiting-card edged with a line of mourning. He presented this to me,
and I read the words "Count Ruffiano," printed very badly in blunt
script type.

I told Hinge to ask the visitor his business, and I learned that he came
direct from Miss Rossano with a message. I excused myself for a minute,
and hastily finished dressing.

The Count Ruffiano, a head and shoulders taller than myself, stood in
the middle of the room and bowed with surprising courtliness when I
entered. He was six feet seven or eight in stature, had an eagle beak, a
huge gray mustache, and a head of stiff, upstanding hair, close cropped
and mottled in jet black and snow white. His cheeks and chin had been
strange to the razor for a week; his linen was limp and discolored;
and his clothes, which were of foreign cut, had once been shapely and
fashionable, but were now seedy beyond belief. The hat he held in one
hand was a monument of shabbiness; but his habitual stoop had the air of
having been acquired by a constant courtly condescension. He was as lean
as his own walking-cane, and his air of condescending gentility put
a strange emphasis on his shabby clothes, and made them ten times as
noticeable as they would have been without it. And yet