In Direst Peril | Page 6

two or three men like Brunow, who lie without temptation, and who do not feel disgraced when detected.
For once I could not help believing him, and his story stuck in my mind in a very disagreeable way, for Miss Rossano fairly haunted me, and anything which was associated with her had an importance in my eyes. It was a hard thing to think that such a living tragedy should be so close to a creature so young and bright and happy. I praised Brunow in my own mind for his sensible resolution to keep the secret of her father's existence from her, but I was constantly thinking whether there might not be some possibility of setting the prisoner free. If I had been a rich man I could see quite enough chance of adventure to tempt me to the enterprise. I hated the Austrian rule with all my heart and soul, as at that time the Austrian rule deserved that every freeborn Englishman should hate it. The thought of Italian independence set my blood on fire, and I would as soon have fought for that cause as for any in the world.
I don't care to talk much about my own character, but I have often laughed to hear myself spoken of as a man whose life has been guided by romantic considerations. If I know anything about myself at all it is that I am severely practical. I could not even think of so far-away an enterprise as the attempted rescue of the count, a thing which, at the time, I was altogether unlikely and unable to attempt, without taking account of all the pros and cons, so, far as I could see them. In my own mind I laid special stress on the friendly attendant mentioned in the count's brief and pathetic letter. I felt sure that if I only had money enough to make that fellow feel safe about his future, I could have got the prisoner away. For in my own practical, hard-headed way I had got at the maps of the country and had studied the roads and had read up every line I could find.
If I try to explain what kept me a whole four weeks from accepting Miss Rossano's invitation to call upon her at the house of her aunt, Lady Rollinson, I am not at all sure that I shall succeed; I can say quite truly that there was not a waking hour in all that time in which she did not occupy my mind. Every morning I resolved that I would make the promised call, and every day dwindled into midnight without my having done it. I need not say that I was by this time aware of the condition of my heart. I ridiculed myself without avail, and tried to despise myself as a feather-headed fellow who had become a woman's captive at a glance. It was certainly not her wealth and my poverty which kept me away from her, for I never gave that matter a single thought--nor should I at any time in my life have regarded money as an inducement to marriage, or the want of it as a bar. It was no exalted idea of her birth as compared with mine, for I am one of the Fyffes of Dumbartonshire, and there is as good blood in my veins as flows from the heart of any Italian that ever wore a head. The plain fact, so far as I can make myself plain, is that I had already determined to win Miss Rossano for myself if I could, and that I felt that she deserved to be approached with delicacy and reserve. I knew all the while that I might be wasting chances, and I endured a good deal of trouble on that account. But four whole weeks went by before I ventured to obey her invitation to call, and by that time I was sore afraid that she had forgotten all about me.
It was Lady Rollinson herself who received me; a fat and comfortable lady of something more than fifty, as I should judge, though it is a perilous thing for a man to be meddling with guesses at a lady's age. She looked as if she could enjoy a good dinner, and as if she liked to have things soft and cosey about her; but in spite of that, she wore a countenance of pronounced kindliness, and received me, so to speak, with open arms. Her son, Jack, had inspired her with all manner of absurd beliefs about me, and she praised me to my face about my courage until I felt inclined to prove it by running away from an old woman. I assured her of what was actually the fact, that Jack's rescue