he wings of hope. What hope was there? What hope of
happiness either for himself or for the lady whom he loved? If he
yielded to his love, he wronged her--her and his own honour. If he
resisted, he must renounce her--aye, and leave her, not to a loving
husband, but to one who deceived her most grossly and most cruelly, in
a way which made her own venial errors seem as nothing in the Captain's
partial, pitying eyes. In the distress of these thoughts he forgot his
victories: how he had disposed of Paul de Roustache, how he had
defeated M. Guillaume, how his precious papers were safe, and even how
the Countess was freed from all her fears. It was her misery he
thought of now, not her fears. For she loved him. And in his inmost
heart he knew that he must leave her.

Yes; in the recesses of his heart he knew what true love for her and a
true regard for his own honour alike demanded. But he did not mean
that, because he saw this and was resolved to act on it, the Count
should escape castigation. Before he went, before he left behind him
what was dearest in life, and again took his way alone, unfriended,
solitary (penniless too, if he had happened to remember this), he would
speak his mind to the Count, first in stinging reproaches, later in the
appeal that friendship may make to honour; and at the last he would
demand from the Count, as the recompense for his own services, an utter
renunciation and abandonment of the lady who had dropped the locket by
the ford, of her whom the driver had carried to the door of the house
which the Countess of Fieramondi honoured with her gracious presence.
In drawing a contrast between the Countess and this shameless woman the
last remembrance of the Countess's peccadilloes faded from his
indignant mind. He quickened his pace a little, as a man does when he
has reached a final decision. He crossed the bridge, ascended the hill
on which the Castle stood, and came opposite to the little gate which
the Count himself had opened to him on that first happy--or
unhappy--night on which he had become an inmate of the house.

Even as he came to it, it opened, and the Count's servant ran out. In
a moment he saw Dieppe and called to him loudly and gladly.

"Sir, sir, my master is most anxious about you. He feared for your
safety."

"I 'm safe enough," answered Dieppe, in a gloomy tone.

"He begs your immediate presence, sir. He is in the dining-room."

Dieppe braced himself to the tas