“‘What are you saying, Andrea?’ she cried.
“I bent down over her, and whispered the answer in her ear:
“‘That Count Paul would be very pleased to step into the shoes of Ugo Klun.’
“‘You mean that he loves me?’ she exclaimed, starting back with the cry on her lips.
“‘I am as certain of it, child, as of the ice on yonder lake.’
“Excellency, for some minutes she stood looking at me like a frightened deer. Then suddenly she laid her head upon my shoulder, the blush coming and going quickly upon her face, and said:
“‘Andrea, Andrea, I am not worthy; take me back to Zlarin.’”
CHAPTER XIII
“IF THE MAN LIVES”
“Signor, I did not take Christine back to Zlarin, as you may well imagine. Rather, I laughed away her scruples, telling her that she was worthy of any man’s love, and that it was her plain duty to remain at the château. For the matter of that, though it was not hidden from me that the Count loved her, none the less did I deem any change in her condition impossible for months—nay, for years to come. Paul Zaloski was not one to marry the first that he picked off the roadside, without mature deliberation and a long-confirmed resolve. It was even possible that no thought of marriage would enter his head. The honour of a woman is a cheap commodity in Bosnia. Things which would shame Western eyes are there without significance. If the Count chose to offer love to the child, and to seek no sanction of the Church, the world, I said, would applaud him. Nor was it to be expected that the last of the Zaloskis should link his name and his fortune with one whose story was like a fable from a book and whose birthright was poverty. The very suggestion would have been scouted in the market-place—the idea scoffed at as the idea of a fool.
“As this was my thought, so was it the thought of others. Scarce had I comforted the child, making merry over her suggestion that I should take her back to Zlarin, when the priest met me in the garden of the house, and asked me to his room, there to drink a glass of prune brandy with him. I went the readier because he had shewn me some friendship from the first, and I had found him to be a large-minded man, very able to read the future; and when we had settled ourselves near to his big fire of logs, and he had placed a bottle of the liqueur, with cigars, at my elbow, we began to talk of many things, but chiefly of Christine and of her prospects.