In Direst Peril

a great part of my life in action; and though the later part of it has been quieter and more peaceful than the earlier, and though I have enjoyed opportunitie

that, for in a life of strange adventure I have encountered nothing so strange. But, for my own part, the utmost I can do is to tell the thing as it happened as n

have sought opportunities of doing these things far and near, but they have been denied to me. I trust that I have always been on the right side. I know that, except in one case, I have always been on the weaker side; but until my marriage I was what is generally called a soldier of fortune. I am known to this day as Captain Fyffe, though I never held her most sacred Majesty's commission. That I shoul

at the Duchess's invitation, to Belcaster House, and it was there I met my fate. There was a great crush on the stairs, and the rooms were crowded. I never once succeeded in getting as much as a glimpse of our hostess during the whole time of my stay at the house, but before half an hour had gone by I was content to miss that honor. Brunow and I, tight wedged in the crowd, were laughing and talking on the staircase, when I caught sight of a lady a step or two above me. She was signalling with her fan to a friend behind me, and I thought then, and I think still, that her smiling face was the most beautiful thing I had ever beheld. Her hair, which is pure silver now, and no less lovely, was as dark as night, but her face was full of pure color, the brow pale, the cheeks rosy, and the red of the lips unusually bright and full for an Englishwo

yffe.-My husband h

rlier, in circumstan

xpect to find any r

ages written

and I seem to hear them again as I write them down, just as I can see her exquisite face and noble figure instinct with youth, though when

ked for a minute. I couldn't help listen

asked. And Brunow answering that he and I were ol

iss Rossano,

to him," she said. "I have a gr

uch a riot in my head-and in my heart, too-and I was mortally afraid of blurting out something which should tell her how I felt. And if you will look at it rightly, a gentleman-and when I say a gentleman I mean nothing more or less than a man of good birth and right feeling-has no right to think, even in his own heart, too admiringly of a young lady at their first meeting. At the very moment when I saw my wife I thought her, I knew her, indeed, to be the most faultlessly beautiful woman I had ever seen, and I was as certain as I am now that her soul was as flawless as her face. My heart was right, but I was too precipitate in my feelings, and if I had dared I would have knelt before her. All this,

charming voice, "and I am delighted to meet you. Yo

praises in and out of season. I knew that if Miss Rossano had gained any opinion of me from Jack Rollinson it would not be a bad one. Indeed, my only fear was that Jack had probably praised me so far beyond my merits that nobody who had seen the portrait would have the slightest chance of recognizing the orig

ated me almost like an old friend. She was swept off by the crowd at last; but in going she bade me call upon her at her aunt's hous

-air life of a soldier on active service. We threw the windows wide open, and sat down beside them with a tumbler of cool liquor apiece, Brunow with his cigar, and I with my pipe-which I was glad to get back to after a regimen of those beastly South American cigarettes-and we made ourselves comfortable. My mind was so full of my beautiful

e history. She is one-and-twenty years of age, and her father is

ect that this was strange,

bout the matter. The world has given the Conte di Rossano up for dead years and years a

e not told h

w enough of him to grieve for him. He is not so much as a memory in her mind. And since they can nev

nt their coming t

you, Fyffe, I tell you this in the strictest con

news of the town crier. I knew him well enough to know also that if it were not true, but merely one of his countless romances, it would be forgotten in the morn

em their daughter Violet, and in Rome they met the Conte di Rossano, who by all accounts was then a young, rich, handsome fellow, and the hope of the N

cried. "I shall live to see th

like Romeo, but the young lady at first would not listen to him. He followed the party to England, stuck to his cause like a man, and finally won it. The only objection anybody had to urge against him was that he was hand in glove with the conspirators against Austrian rule. The Austrian's were just as much a fixture in Italy as they are at this day; the Italians were just as hotly bent as they are now on getting ri

oddly?" I

was never heard of again. Seven or eight months after, the girl you met to-night was born. Her mother died a few months later. The count's estates were confiscated by the Austrian government, and the little orphan was bred by her grandparents. They are dead now, and Miss Rossano is chaperoned

to give the history entire credence. But that Brunow should have seen the mournful hero of the tale within the last six weeks was altogether too like Brunow to be belie

unt's alive

er; but a man's glad to meet anybody in a place like Itzia; and when he asked me to dine with him at the fortress, I was jolly glad to go. 'We've got an old file here,' he told me, 'the Italians would give anything to get hold of if they only knew where he was. I believe they'd tear the place down with their nails to get at him.' It was after dinner, and he was ridiculously confidential. He pledged me to secrecy o

ry-"the count must have been a man of unusual importance to the political

en made to believe these twenty years that the count was playing fast and loose with both parties. His jailers made out that he

made no effort

you'd think twice before trying that. Besides-hang it all, man!-I was R

ly, but I was not

tory is tr

ow utterly irresponsible he was, but nothing made him so angry as to be d

apers. He searched this through, muttering in a wounded tone meanwhile. "True? If the story's true? I'll sh

his forehead with a sudden air of recollection, turned again to the escritoire, drew from it a cr

tendant whose pity has been moved by the contemplation of a life of great misery. Should they reach the hands of the English stranger for whom they are intended, he is besought,

living-unless she had been married again-I should have thought it my duty to let her know the truth.

ght, but I had plenty to think ab