"'Little enough,' said she, 'but Rosa made Oscar and me promise to say nothing unless she gave us the word.'
"'So Oscar knows it as well,' I said. Oscar was the steward Rebecca had married a few years before, a Dutchman, who was nearly always at sea when I was in Genoa, so I saw very little of him.
"'Of course, Oscar knows,' said Rebecca. 'He knows a good deal of it first hand.'
"'All right, I'll speak to Rosa,' I said.
"And I did, as I was telling you. I asked her who she was.
"'You have a good right to know,' she said, looking up to where a sentry's head and bayonet were sliding to and fro above the wall. 'I have meant to tell you, but I know very little. So little!'
"I said I left the matter in her hands entirely.
"The sentry stopped above us, presented arms, grounded, looked round, and then took a peep at us over the corner. A pair of lovers! His yellow, livid face cracked a smile as I caught his eye. For another second or so we grinned at each other, and then he put on his professional mask again, as though he had drawn down a vizor, shouldered his rifle and thumped along his little gangway. Rosa waited until he had passed the further turret and then turned to me.
"'It isn't easy to say it, though, after all,' she said. 'I was a little baby at Aunt Rebecca's, then a little girl and now a big girl. Before that, there was my mother who was dead. My father, dead too, a soldier like him'—she nodded towards the head and bayonet sliding backwards and forwards—'in Abyssinia, you know.'
"'Ah!' I said. 'Yes. But why don't you know your——' Rosa interrupted me.