“Ah, well,” she cried, in a voice of despair, “I do not even know that I can blame you; but am I to be sure that I can buy your silence?”
“That you can buy my silence?” I repeated.
“Yes,” she answered, despondently, looking up at me with tear-stained eyes. “I mean—will you say nothing if I promise to visit Lady Rollinson no more and to meet Miss Rossano no more? I am asking nothing for myself, Captain Fyffe, remember, and I would not stoop to make terms at all if it were not for this unhappy woman's sake. Will you promise me this?”
I thought the matter over for a minute, and I promised. As it turned out, I never did an unwiser thing; but I had no means of knowing how unwise it was, and I was affected by her tears and protestations. If Baroness Bonnar had not had the skill to bedevil cleverer men than myself, and men twenty times as experienced, she would never have risen to the position of eminence she occupied.
We parted on the understanding that she was to pay no more visits to Lady Rollinson's house, but was to do her loyal best to avoid Violet and her chaperon. I went away half inclined to think myself a brute for having exacted that undertaking from her. Of course, if I had been the man of the world I thought myself, I should never have gone to see her, never have shown my hand, but should have awaited the development of events after having told Lady Rollinson what I knew, and having left her to safeguard her own interests and mine.
The whole business had been cruelly unpleasant, and I left the baroness's house thinking that on the whole I was very well out of it. I was sorry for the little lady herself, and did really and seriously give her credit for good intentions, which proves either that she was an exceptionally fine actress, or that I was an exceptional greenhorn.
I had scarcely left the house when I heard my name called in a loud whisper, and, turning, saw the gaunt figure of Ruffiano within half a dozen yards of me. He was astonishingly shabby still, but he rejoiced in clean linen, and had been recently shaven, so that he looked far more presentable than usual.
His eyes were blazing, and the whole of his long bony frame was hitching and jolting with suppressed excitement.
“I have news!” he said; “such news! Which way go you? The man is here.”
I turned in the direction indicated, and saw a foreign-looking fellow in a huge beard, a slouched hat, and a melodramatic cloak, looking for all the world like a conspirator in an Adelphi or Olympic drama at that date. It was raining slightly, but the man stood with folded arms in the middle of the pavement at the street corner, like a statue of patience, with the keen February wind buffeting his long cloak picturesquely about him, and blowing his wild hair and beard in all directions. At a signal from Ruffiano he crossed over to us, and the droll old Quixote, with superabundant gesture, began to question him in Italian, the man answering, of course, in the same tongue. When they had talked together for four or five minutes Ruffiano turned upon me with his hands spread wide, and his face beaming with triumph.