ng,
lest her strength should fail at the critical moment. Temistocle
volunteered the information that her father had gone to the baron's
apartment, and had not been seen since. She heard in silence, and bade
the servant leave her as soon as he had ministered to her wants. Then
she wrote a short letter to her father, telling him that she had left
him, since he had no place for her in his heart, and that she had gone
to the one man who seemed ready both to love and to protect her. This
missive she folded, sealed, and laid in a prominent place upon the
table addressed to the count.

She made a small bundle,--very neatly, for she is clever with her
fingers,--and put on a dark travelling dress, in the folds of which
she sewed such jewels as were small and valuable and her own. She
would take nothing that her father had given her. In all this she
displayed perfect coolness and foresight.

The castle became intensely quiet as the evening advanced. She sat
watching the clock. At five minutes before midnight she took her
bundle and her little shoes in her hand, blew out her candle, and
softly left the room.

CHAPTER XX

I need not tell you how I passed all the time from; Nino's leaving me
until he came back in the evening, just as I could see from my window
that the full moon was touching the tower of the castle. I sat looking
out, expecting him, and I was the most anxious professor that ever
found himself in a ridiculous position. Temistocle had come, and you
know what had passed between us, and how we had arranged the plan of
the night. Most heartily did I wish myself in the little amphitheatre
of my lecture-room at the University, instead of being pledged to this
wild plot of my boy's invention. But there was no drawing back. I had
been myself to the little stable next door, where I had kept my
donkey, and visited him daily since my arrival, and I had made sure
that I could have him at a moment's notice by putting on the cumbrous
saddle. Moreover, I had secretly made a bundle of my effects, and had
succeeded in taking it unobserved to the stall, and I tied it to the
pommel. I also told my landlady that I was going away in the morning
with the young gentleman who had visited me, and who, I said, was the
engineer who was going to make a new road to the Serra. This was not
quite true; but lies that hurt no one are not lies at all, as you all
know, and the curiosity of the old woman was satisfied. I also paid
for my