“‘Excellency, it pleased Heaven that Beppo should be born in Lombardy, and then to remove my respected parents to Genoa, at which city they were so kindly treated that my mother, in common gratitude, was bound to increase its population. It was all she could do, poor woman. You see she did her best.’
“The count smiled, and said no more. The door opened, I followed him; your daughter can tell you the rest.”
“And you risked your life in that den of miscreants! Noble friend!”
“Risked my life,—no; but I risked the count’s. There was one moment when my hand was on my trigger, and my soul very near the sin of justifiable homicide. But my tale is done. The count is now on the river, and will soon be on the salt seas, though not bound to Norway, as I had first intended. I could not inflict that frigid voyage on his sister. So the men have orders to cruise about for six days, keeping aloof from shore, and they will then land the count and the marchesa, by boat, on the French coast. That delay will give time for the prince to arrive at Vienna before the count could follow him.”
“Would he have that audacity?”
“Do him more justice! Audacity, faith! he does not want for that. But I dreaded not his appearance at Vienna with such evidence against him. I dreaded his encountering the prince on the road, and forcing a duel, before his character was so blasted that the prince could refuse it; and the count is a dead shot of course,—all such men are!”
“He will return, and you—”
“I! Oh, never fear; he has had enough of me. And now, my dear friend,—now that Violante is safe once more under your own roof; now that my honoured mother must long ere this have been satisfied by Leonard, who left us to go to her, that our success has been achieved without danger, and, what she will value almost as much, without scandal; now that your foe is powerless as a reed floating on the water towards its own rot, and the Prince Von ———-is perhaps about to enter his carriage on the road to Dover, charged with the mission of restoring to Italy her worthiest son,—let me dismiss you to your own happy slumbers, and allow me to wrap myself in my cloak, and snatch a short sleep on the sofa, till yonder gray dawn has mellowed into riper day. My eyes are heavy, and if you stay here three minutes longer, I shall be out of reach of hearing, in the land of dreams. Buona notte!”
“But there is a bed prepared for you.”
Harley shook his head in dissent, and composed himself at length on the sofa.