“He died about a year and a half ago. I nursed him through his last illness, and caught the fever of which he died. I had a little money—my savings—to live on for a while; but all is gone now, and I don’t know which way to turn, or whither to look for another situation. It was with the hope of finding some friends that I came to London; I might as well be in the Great Desert.”
“I have no doubt your story is perfectly true; but I don’t see what I can do for you,” Captain Desfrayne said, with some pity. “However, I will consider, and, if you like to come and see me to-morrow, perhaps I—— What is your name?”
“Leonardo Gilardoni, sir.”
The hungry, eager eyes watched as Captain Desfrayne took a note-book from his pocket and scribbled down the name, adding a brief memorandum besides.
The sound of these men’s voices speaking just beneath her window had failed to attract the attention of the beautiful creature in the balcony. But now, when a sudden silence succeeded, she looked over from an undefined feeling of half-unconscious interest or curiosity.
As she glanced carelessly down at the two figures, the expression on her face utterly changed. The great eyes, the hue of black velvet, opened widely, as if from terror, or an astonishment too stupendous to be controlled. For a moment she seemed unable to withdraw her gaze, fascinated, apparently.
The little white hands were fiercely clenched; and if glances could kill, those two men would have rapidly traversed the valley of the shadow of death.
Fortunately, glances, however baleful, fall harmless as summer lightning; and the interlocutors remained happily ignorant of the absorbed attention wherewith they were favored.
In a moment or two she rose, and, standing just within the room, clutching the curtain with a half-convulsive grip, peered down malevolently into the street.
“What can have brought these two men here together?” she muttered. “Do they come to seek me? I did not know they were conscious of one another’s existence. What are they doing? Why are they here? Accursed be the day I ever saw the face of either!”