our cold shores. May sunshine
settle on you all!" He paused, and looked up at the closed windows
wistfully.

"The signorina sleeps there," said Giacomo, in a husky voice, "just over
the room in which you slept."

"I knew it," muttered Harley. "An instinct told me of it. Open the gate;
I must go home. My excuses to your lord, and to all."

He turned a deaf ear to Giacomo's entreaties to stay till at least the
signorina was up,--the signorina whom he had saved. Without trusting
himself to speak further, he quitted the demesne, and walked with swift
strides towards London.

CHAPTER X.

Harley had not long reached his hotel, and was still seated before his
untasted breakfast, when Mr. Randal Leslie was announced. Randal, who
was in the firm belief that Violante was now on the wide seas with
Peschiera, entered, looking the very personation of anxiety and fatigue.
For like the great Cardinal Richelieu, Randal had learned the art how
to make good use of his own delicate and somewhat sickly aspect. The
cardinal, when intent on some sanguinary scheme requiring unusual
vitality and vigour, contrived to make himself look a harmless sufferer
at death's door. And Randal, whose nervous energies could at that moment
have whirled him from one end of this huge metropolis to the other, with
a speed that would have outstripped a prize pedestrian, now sank into
a chair with a jaded weariness that no mother could have seen without
compassion. He seemed since the last night to have galloped towards the
last stage of consumption.

"Have you discovered no trace, my Lord? Speak, speak!"

"Speak! certainly. I am too happy to relieve your mind, Mr. Leslie. What
fools we were! Ha, ha!"

"Fools--how?" faltered Randal.

"Of course; the young lady was at her father's house all the time."

"Eh? what?"

"And is there now."

"It is not possible!" said Randal, in the hollow, dreamy tone of a
somnambulist. "At her father's house, at Norwood! Are you sure?"

"Sure."

Randal made a desperate and successful effort at self-control. "Heaven
be praised!" he cried. "And just as I had begun to suspect the count,
the marchesa; for I find that neither of them slept at home last night;
and Levy told me that the count had written to him, requesting the
baron to discharge his bills, as he should be for some time absent from
England."

"Indeed! Well, that is nothing to us,--very much to Baron Levy, if he
executes his commission, and discharge