"Italy! oh, if I were a man I
would fight for Italy! Ah, those hateful Austrians! And what a man is
Cavour! and what a man Garibaldi! Oh, they will fight! They will win!"

"There is plenty of time yet. Liberty, my dear Miss Rossano, will
restore your father to health, and he will not lose his share of the
glory." We English always excuse a foreigner who shows a tendency to
bombast in conversation; and allowing for her partial knowledge of the
language, and for the oratorical turn her people have, I saw nothing
overstrained in the little woman's raptures. I had even a modified
belief in their reality; and even to this day I cannot blame myself for
having been deceived by her. She had an astonishing capacity in her own
line, and though she had achieved no great success on the stage, she was
the most perfect actress off it I have ever known.

She showed no disposition to prolong her visit, but withdrew after a
stay of a quarter of an hour or so, with many expressions of good-will
and ardent hope for the count's early recovery. If she might have the
honor, she would call again upon Miss Rossano.

"Pardon me," she said; "beside you I am an old woman, and I can take
a liberty. I like you for your interest in poor Italy and for your
father's sake, who has been a martyr in such a cause. You will let me
see you sometimes. People who know me better than you do will tell you
that I am a butterfly, and without a heart. But that is not true. I do
not show my heart often, and never unless I mean it."

She was gone without waiting for a response, and Miss Rossano, turning
to me with a blush and a smile, asked me if I did not consider her
visitor quite a charming little person. It would have been ungracious
on no evidence at all to have stated my real mind, and I compromised by
saying nothing. My silence on that topic went unobserved; and until I
took my leave we talked about the count and the prospects of The Cause.
It makes me smile now to remember how savagely in earnest I grew to be
about that matter of Italian independence when once I had discovered
that Miss Rossano was seriously interested in it. That, if I had only
thought about it, was the way to her heart; but anxious as I was to
secure her good opinion, I was guilty of no pretences. The mere fact
that she desired it would have been enough to make me desire it also,
even if I had had no wishes that way to begin with.

"Captain Fyffe," said Miss Rossano, suddenly, in the m