f the Contessa di Rossano; but that would be little
use to her, for the Austrian government confiscated all her father's
estates, and she never saw a penny from them, and I don't suppose she
ever will. But her father went to Italy before she was born, and now it
turns out that in place of being killed there, as every one thought at
the time, he was taken prisoner by the Austrians. He's alive still, it
seems, and a hopeless prisoner. Poor Violet only learned the truth last
night, and she has done nothing but cry ever since."

I said I had heard the story from Brunow, but that I understood he had
bound himself to strict secrecy about it.

"He might as well have held his tongue," cried her ladyship, "for all
the good talking can do. But I've known George Brunow all his life,
Captain Fyffe, and of course the idea of his keeping a secret is absurd.
Mr. Brunow would talk a dog's hind-leg off, and you can't believe a
quarter of the things he says. Only in this case he got a letter from
the count, and some busybody persuaded him to surrender it, and brought
it to poor Violet, and she has compared the handwriting with some
letters of her father's which came to her from her poor dear mother, and
she's quite convinced that it's the same, though twenty years is a long
time, and a man's writing changes very often in less than that."

I heard a rustle in the room, and, turning, I saw Miss Rossano standing
within a yard or two of us. How much of our conversation she had heard
I could not tell, but I was certain from her look that she knew its
purport.

"Good-morning, Captain Fyffe," she said, holding out her hand. I rose
and took it in my own, and found that it burned like fire. Her eyelids
were red and heavy, but her cheeks were almost colorless. She told me
long afterwards that the pity she saw in my looks almost broke her down,
and, indeed, I remember well how I felt when I saw her beautiful mouth
trembling with the pain and sorrow which lay at her heart. She kept her
self-possession, however, but by a sort of feminine instinct, I suppose,
she sat down with her face away from the light, and when she spoke again
no one who had not known the condition of affairs would have guessed,
from the firm and even tones of her voice, that she suffered as she did.
I think very highly of courage, whether in a man or in a woman, and I
have no words to say how I admired her self-control.

"My aunt has been telling you of my dreadful news," she