"But what? Is there anything else I am to hear?"
"There is this—that I am to go with you," the younger man put in, almost apologetically. "I received my orders from the Council this morning. I hope you do not disapprove?"
He looked at her almost beseechingly; the expression upon her face, however, betrayed neither pleasure nor annoyance. Do what he would, he could not prevent a sigh from escaping him as he became aware of it. All day he had been hoping that she would be pleased when she heard that he was to co-operate with her; now, however, his heart sank like lead. It was just the sort of enterprise he liked. It was daring, reckless to a degree; they would carry their lives in their hands, as they had so often done before; indeed, the mere fact that he was to share the dangers with her had been the greatest pleasure he had known for months past.
"If you are to accompany us," she said, scarcely looking at him, "you had better hold yourself in readiness. It will be safer if we travel apart during the time we are in Italy, and afterwards other arrangements can be made so that we——"
"We will leave you and return to the shore," interrupted the man called Luigi, who did not altogether approve the turn affairs were taking. "I have carried out my instructions, and so far as I am concerned, individually, the matter is at an end."
Five minutes later they had left the yacht, and the Countess de Venetza was apologizing to the Duke of Rotherhithe for the intrusion of her lawyer people on his yacht.
"It is really too hard," she said pathetically; "they give me no peace. When my husband died and I inherited his estates, he had no thought of the trouble and anxiety the management of them would cause me. My lawyers are perpetually grumbling because they cannot obtain interviews with me. I often think that they look upon me as a sort of Will-o'-the-Wisp, flickering about Europe, and impossible to catch. Why they could not have transacted the business with my father instead of bothering me with it, I cannot imagine. However, you will forgive me, will you not?"
The Duke, who by the way, was extremely susceptible, looked unutterable things. He had first met the Countess in Algiers a year before, and had fallen desperately in love with her before he had known her twenty-four hours. The mere fact that she did not encourage his attentions only served to attract him the more. They met at Cairo six months later—and now, when he discovered that it was in his power to do her a service by conveying her from Constantinople to Naples, he was only too glad to avail himself of the opportunity.
"It is a shame, indeed, that they should worry you so," he said sympathetically, looking as he spoke into his fair friend's eyes in a manner that would have carried consternation into the hearts of not a few mothers in England. "They worry me at home in much the same way. As I say to them, what's the use of employing lawyers and Estate Agents, and all those sort of people, if they cannot do their work without your assistance? You might just as well do it yourself in the first instance, and save their salaries. But then, you see, I am not so clever as you are, Countess, and that makes all the difference."
"What makes you think I am so clever, pray?" she enquired, looking up at him with innocent eyes.