“If you like, you may go at once; not that I can accompany you, for I am off for a distant visit; but her rooms are at the end of this corridor, and you enter by the conservatory. Meanwhile I must bandage this arm in somewhat better fashion than you have done.”
While he was engaged in dressing my wound, he rambled on about the reckless habits that made such rencontres possible. “We are in the middle of the seventeenth century here, with all its barbarisms,” said he. “These young fellows were vexed at seeing the notice you attracted; and that was to their thinking cause enough to send you off with a damaged lung or a maimed limb. It's all well, however, as long as Graf Hunyadi does not hear of it. But if he should, he'll turn them out, every man of them, for this treatment of an Englishman.”
“Then we must take care, sir, that he does not hear of it,” said I, half fiercely, and as though addressing my speech especially to himself.
“Not from me, certainly,” said he. “My doctor's instincts always save me from such indiscretions.”
“Is our Countess young, doctor?” asked I, half jocularly.
“Young and pretty, though one might say, too, she has been younger and prettier. If you dine below stairs today, drink no wine, and get back to your sofa as soon as you can after dinner.” With this caution he left me.
A heavy packet of letters had arrived from Fiume, containing, I surmised, some instructions for which I had written; but seeing that the address was in the cashier's handwriting, I felt no impatience to break the seal.
I dressed myself with unusual care, though the pain of my arm made the process a very slow one; and at last set out to pay my visit. I passed along the corridor, through the conservatory, and found myself at a door, at which I knocked twice. At last I turned the handle, and entered a small but handsomely furnished drawing-room, about which books and newspapers lay scattered; and a small embroidery-frame near the fire showed where she, who was engaged with that task, had lately been seated. As I bent down in some curiosity to examine a really clever copy of an altar-piece of Albert Durer, a door gently opened, and I heard the rustle of a silk dress. I had not got time to look round when, with a cry, she rushed towards me, and clasped me in her arms. It was Madame Cleremont!
“My own dear, dear Digby!” she cried, as she kissed me over face and forehead, smoothing back my hair to look at me, and then falling again on my neck. “I knew it could be no other when I heard of you, darling; and when they told me of your singing, I could have sworn it was yourself.”
I tried to disengage myself from her embrace, and summoned what I could of sternness to repel her caresses. She dropped at my feet, and, clasping my hands, implored me, in accents broken with passion, to forgive her. To see her who had once been all that a mother could have been to me in tenderness and care, who watched the long hours of the night beside my sick-bed,—to see her there before me, abject, self-accused, and yet entreating forgiveness, was more than I could bear. My nerves, besides, had been already too tensely strung; and I burst into a passion of tears that totally overcame me. She sat with her arm round me, and wept.