d
congratulation.

"I am myself Hungarian," I heard her say, "but I have lived in Austria
half my life. There is no need to tell _you_ anything about that
terrible government, but--mon Dieu! the things I have seen and known!
I am a stranger, Mees Rossano, and the hour is sacred; but you will
forgive this intrusion, will you not? because I could not help it."

She spoke with so much vivacity and feeling that I felt a little sorry
for my contemptuous thoughts of her. She had said her say, and she
behaved with more reticence and more apparent delicacy than I should
have been disposed to give her credit for. She said something to the
count in a low and rapid voice, and he answered by the offer of his
hand, and a mere broken murmur of response. I made out that she had
asked to be honored by taking the hand of one ennobled by so much
suffering, and the quiet and unobtrusive fashion in which she slipped
from the room after offering this tribute raised her anew in my opinion.
It would have been a just thing, had one known all, to have crushed that
dangerous and wicked little viper exactly as if she had really been a
snake, instead of a woman with a snake's nature.

She went her way, however, having begun her work of mischief under my
eyes.

Another night or two of such emotion would have been fatal to our
rescued prisoner; and, indeed, he gave us all a fright before we got
him home that evening. All the enthusiasts had cleared away, and I was
leading the poor gentleman towards a cab which had been already summoned
and was now waiting in the street, when, without warning, he swooned
away. I felt his arm slipping rapidly from mine, and caught him just in
time to save him from a heavy fall. I carried him back to the vestry,
and there we loosened his collar and laid him on the couch, and dashed
water in his face, while Brunow ran for brandy. He recovered in a while,
but was even then too weak to walk, so that I carried him in my arms to
the street, and set him down in the cab. My wife has often told me, in
talking over those old times, that she looked on me at that moment as a
man possessed of Herculean strength; but, in truth, the poor fellow was
so attenuated that his weight was scarcely greater than a child's.

I could hardly do less than call at Lady Rollinson's house next day
to inquire after the sufferer's condition; and yet I went with great
reluctance. I was so eager to be there, I was so willing to spend every
hour i