urs."

Two or three tears rolled over from his bright, sunken eyes, ran down
the deep-channelled line in his cheeks, which misery and solitude had
bitten there, and rested in his white mustache. He gripped our hands
hard, and, turning away from us, sat down again.

We said good-night in hushed voices, as if we were speaking in a church
or a sick-chamber, and came away.

Even at this, distance of time I am ashamed of my own sensations;
but when I got away to my own room my whole feeling was one of
disappointment and dissatisfaction. I had meant to do everything by
myself--to have had no rival, to have brought back Miss Rossano's father
unaided, and to have taken whatever gratitude was due for that service
entirely to myself. As it turned out, I had done nothing. The original
discovery of the count's whereabouts was entirely due to Brunow. Without
him the expedition would have been fruitless, and but for the pure
accident of Hinge's presence we should both have been helpless.

My bedroom window overlooked the sea, and I sat at it for three or four
hours, smoking and staring across the motionless waste of water before
the truth about myself occurred to me. When it came it brought as little
comfort as the truth is apt to bring. I saw that my whole purpose had
been to do something that should make me look noble and exceptional in
Miss Rossano's eyes, and that the recovery of a living man from that
infernal dungeon meant almost nothing in contrast with my own selfish
wishes.

It took a long time to swallow that pill, and it took a longer time yet
to digest it; but it had a wholesome effect upon me, and I was all the
better for it in the end.

When I got down into the public breakfast-room I found Brunow there in
the act of making inquiry of a waiter as to the hour of the arrival of
the London papers. I attached no particular importance to the fact at
the moment, but a few minutes later I passed him in the corridor and
found him repeating the same inquiry to another waiter; and a little
later, when we were seated at table together, he propounded the same
question to a third.

"You're in a hurry for news," I said.

"I want to see what they've made of it," he answered, smilingly. "The
local man down here seems to be a smartish sort of fellow, and I was
careful to see that he had the facts all right before he went away."

"What local man? What facts?" I asked.

"My dear fellow," said Brunow, smiling and waving his tab