“You are getting restless already,” she interrupted gravely, “and you have not been here two days!”
They were interrupted by Sidney's clear whistle, and a moment later Molly came tripping down the path.
“Come along in,” she said; “the old gentleman is going. I was just stealing away to join you when Sidney whistled.”
When Signor Bruno reached his home that evening, he threw his hat upon the table with some considerable force. His aged landlady, having left the lamp burning, had retired to bed. He sank into an armchair, and contemplated the square toes of his own boots for some moments. Then he scratched his head thoughtfully.
“Sacré nom d'un chien!” he muttered; “where have I seen that face before?”
Signor Bruno spoke French when soliloquising, which was perhaps somewhat peculiar for an Italian. However proficient a man may be in the mastery of foreign tongues, he usually dreams and talks to himself in the language he learnt at his mother's knee. He may count fluently in a strange tongue, but he invariably works out all mental arithmetic in his own. Likewise he prays—if he pray at all—in one tongue only. On the other hand, it appears very easy to swear in an acquired language. Probably our forefathers borrowed each other's expletives when things went so lamentably wrong over the Tower of Babel. Still muttering to himself, Signor Bruno presently retired to rest with the remembrance of a young face, peculiarly and unpleasantly strong, haunting his dreams.
Shortly after Signor Bruno's departure, Christian happened to be left alone in the drawing room with Hilda. He promptly produced from his pocket the leaf he had cut from a book earlier in the evening. Unfolding the paper, he handed it to her, and said:—
“Do you recognise that?”
She looked at it, and answered without hesitation—
“Signor Bruno!”