"You never told me a lie," he growled out.
"Never," she said, boldly, as she faced him scornfully. He knew his own temper in his child, and was satisfied. The soldier's habit of self-control was strong in him, and the sardonic humour of his nature served as a garment to the thoughts he harboured.
"It appears," he said, "that I am to spend the remainder of an honourable life in fighting with a pack of hounds. I nearly killed your old acquaintance, the Signor Professore Cardegna, this afternoon." Hedwig staggered back, and turned pale.
"What! Is he wounded?" she gasped out, pressing her hand to his side.
"Ha! That touches you almost as closely as Benoni's insult," he said, savagely. "I am glad of it. I repent me, and wish that I had killed him. We met on the road, and he had the impertinence to ask me for your hand,—I am sick of these daily proposals of marriage; and then I inquired if he meant to insult me."
Hedwig leaned heavily on the table in an agony of suspense.
"The fellow answered that if I were insulted he was ready to fight then and there, in the road, with my pistols. He is no coward, your lover,—I will say that. The end of it was that I came home and he did not."
Hedwig sank into the chair that her father had left, and hid her face.
"Oh, you have killed him!" she moaned.
"No," said the count shortly; "I did not touch a hair of his head. But he rode away toward Trevi." Hedwig breathed again. "Are you satisfied?" he asked, with a hard smile, enjoying the terror he had excited.