nce 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