II
The servant picked up a lantern and signed to Tony to follow her. They climbed a squalid stairway of stone, felt their way along a corridor, and entered a tall vaulted room feebly lit by an oil-lamp hung from the painted ceiling. Tony discerned traces of former splendour in his surroundings, but he had no time to examine them, for a figure started up at his approach and in the dim light he recognized the girl who was the cause of all his troubles.
She sprang toward him with outstretched hands, but as he advanced her face changed and she shrank back abashed.
“This is a misunderstanding—a dreadful misunderstanding,” she cried out in her pretty broken English. “Oh, how does it happen that you are here?”
“Through no choice of my own, madam, I assure you!” retorted Tony, not over-pleased by his reception.
“But why—how—how did you make this unfortunate mistake?”
“Why, madam, if you’ll excuse my candour, I think the mistake was yours—”
“Mine?”
—“in sending me a letter—”
“You—a letter?”