Naturally enough, Mrs. Haxton and Dick looked for the person whose singular behavior was under discussion. Though they had no difficulty in finding him, it was impossible that they themselves could be seen with any degree of clearness. The railing and the deep shade of the veranda shielded them effectually. The Italian, a man of middle height, with a finely-molded face and soldierly aspect, a man whose bearing went far to prove that Stump's general estimate of a great nation was apt to be wrong, was certainly very much taken up with the appearance of the two figures leaning over the balcony. But Royson had scarce time to note his main characteristics when he heard Mrs. Haxton utter a queer gasping sob. It seemed to him that she had only just succeeded in smothering a scream. Her cheeks suddenly became ashen gray, and her tightly compressed lips were bloodless. All her beauty fled, as the tints of a rose die under certain varieties of chemical light. Her eyes dilated in an alarming way, and lines not visible previously now puckered the corners of her mouth.
Owing to the Babel of tongues in the street, neither Irene nor Captain Stump knew how terribly the mere sight of the staring Italian had affected Mrs. Haxton. It came to Royson with a flash of inspiration that this man must be Alfieri, that the woman had recognized him, and that she feared him with a mortal dread.
He sprang upright and went to her.
"What is it?" he asked, neither raising nor lowering his voice sufficiently to attract attention. "Are you ill? Shall I call Miss Fenshawe?"
She lifted an appealing hand, and tremblingly essayed to drop her veil. Her languid insolence had vanished with her good looks. For the moment, she was a broken and despairing woman.
"No, no," she murmured, and the anguish in her voice would have aroused sympathy in a nature far less impressionable than Royson's. "If you could help me, and all of us, try and find Baron von Kerber, and tell him—tell him—I sent you with the message that there is one here whom he must not meet. Oh, what shall I say to make him understand?"
"May I tell him that Alfieri is in Massowah?"
Dick almost regretted the words when he witnessed their tremendous effect. She was on the very brink of hysteria, and the suddenness of her collapse was painful.
"You—you, too, know Alfieri?" she gasped, looking at him in a very agony of terror.
"I am sorry if I have added to your alarm. I did not mean to do that, Alfieri is unknown to me, but I heard his name at Marseilles, when he attacked the Baron."