“His valet!” Shelley thrust in explosively.
“I told you so,” grunted the man of law, and stared with the surprise of recognition, as the syndic, ruffling with anger, turned on the strangers with sarcasm: “Friends of the English milord, no doubt!”
The counsellor laid a hasty hand on his sleeve:
“Stop!” he said. “I think I have had the honor of meeting these gentlemen in Geneva. Allow me to present you, monsieur, to Prince Mavrocordato, minister of foreign affairs of Wallachia, and”—he turned to the latter’s younger companion—“his secretary, Count Pietro Gamba, of Ravenna.”
The sour-faced official drew back. These were names whose owners had been public guests of the canton. This Englishman, evil and outcast as he might be, he had no legal hold upon. He could scarcely frame a grudging apology, for the resentment of self-righteousness that was on his tongue, and stalked off up the terrace in sullen chagrin not consoled by the chuckles of the attorney beside him.
Gordon saw them go, his hands trembling. He replied mechanically to the grateful farewells of the two strangers as they entered the coach, and watched it roll swiftly down the darkening shore road, a quivering blur before his eyes. A fierce struggle was within him, the peace which the tranquil poise of Shelley’s creed had lent him, warring against a clamant rage.
Not only in England was he maligned. Here, on the edge of this mountain barrier, defamation had followed him. The pair riding in his own carriage knew who he was; the older had spoken his name and title. And they had not elected to stay beyond necessity. Yet for their momentary presence, indeed, he should be grateful. But for this trick of coincidence he should now be haled before a bungling Genevan tribunal, his name and person a mark for the sparring of pettifogging Swiss officials!
These thoughts were clashing through his mind as he turned and walked slowly down to the bank where Shelley’s Swiss servant had moored the stranger’s rescued boat, bailed out and with sail stretched to dry. The sunset, as he stood, flamed redly across the lake, its ray glinting from the rim of a bright object whose broken chain had caught beneath the boat’s gunwale. He leaned and drew it out.
It was an oval miniature backed with silver—the portrait of a young girl, a face frail and delicately hued, with fine line of chin and slender neck, with wistful eyes the deep color of the Adriatic, hair a gush of tawny gold, skin like warm Arum lilies, and a string of pearls about her neck. Evidently it had belonged to one of the two men with whom the craft had capsized. It was too late now to overtake the coach; he would send it after them that evening.
He turned the miniature over. On the back was engraved a name: “Teresa Gamba.” Gamba? It had been one of the names spoken by the attorney, that of the young count for whose rescue he had swum so hard.