gravely troubled, my dear
Fyffe. Tell me what I should do."
I am not exaggerating when I say that if the count had stabbed-me he
would hardly have hurt or amazed me more. I had heard Brunow's butterfly
protestations about his affection for Miss Rossano, and my eyes had
certainly not been less open to his defects of character because he
was a rival to my own hopes; but I had never regarded him as being
altogether serious. I knew that he was irretrievably in debt, and I had
never really feared until that moment that his opposition would take
real form. A lover is always jealous, and I had envied my rival his
faculty of small talk, his cheery, easy temper, and those touches of
gallant attention of which practice and nature had made him master. I
had been very angry sometimes at his success in pleasing. But a certain
contempt had always mingled with my anger, and I had never really been
afraid of him. Yet in the count's declaration of Brunow's belief that
Miss Rossano was not indifferent to him I could see more than a touch of
reason. She was always gay in his presence, always ready to laugh at his
genial and charming nonsense--would come out of her gravest humor at any
moment to meet his badinage half way.
I was thinking of all these things, and suffering sorely, when the
count's voice recalled me to myself.
"I admit, I know, I feel the delicacy of the situation."
"I am the last man in the world," I said, "to be consulted on this
question."
"Surely not that!" cried the count.
"The last man in the world," I repeated. "I can have no voice in the
matter one way or the other."
I felt, even as I spoke, that my words and tones alike were too brusque
and imperative, but I was wounded to the heart, and alarmed alike for
Miss Rossano and myself. Brunow was certainly not the man to make her
happy, whatever fancy he might have inspired in her mind, and yet it was
no business of mine to say so. I was his rival, and my opinion of
him was naturally biassed. For the moment I hated him, but I had
self-control enough left to feel that that fact bound me all the more to
silence.
"You cannot advise me?" said the count.
"I have no right to advise you," I responded.
He rose with a strange look at me, and began to walk up and down the
room with his fingers at his lips. I have wounded myself in reading what
I have already written about his prison look. I had learned to know him
as so high-minded, so brave and so honorable
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