k before him.

"I will follow you," he said; and passing the gate he allowed the
servant to precede him into the house. "Now for what I must say!" he
thought, as he was conducted towards the dining-room.

The servant had been ordered to let the Count know the moment that
Captain Dieppe returned. How obey these orders more to the letter than
by ushering the Captain himself directly into the Count's presence? He
threw open the door, announcing--

"Captain Dieppe!" and then withdrawing with dexterous quickness.

Captain Dieppe had expected nothing good. The reality was worse than
his imagining The Count sat on a sofa, and by him, with her arms round
his neck, was the lady whom Dieppe had escorted across the ford on the
road from Sasellano. The Captain stood still just within the doorway,
frowning heavily. Sadly he remembered the Countess's letter. Alas, it
was plain enough that she had not come in time!

Just at this moment the servant, having seen nothing of Countess Lucia
on the road, decided, as a last resort, to search the garden for her
Ladyship.

CHAPTER XI

THE LUCK OF THE CAPTAIN

It is easy to say that the Captain should not have been so shocked, and
that it would have been becoming in him to remember his own
transgression committed in the little hut in the hollow of the hill.
But human nature is not, as a rule at least, so constituted that the
immediate or chief effect of the sight of another's wrong-doing is to
recall our own. The scene before him outraged all the Captain's ideas
of how his neighbours ought to conduct themselves, and (perhaps a more
serious thing) swept away all memory of the caution contained in the
Countess's letter.

The Count rose with a smile, still holding the Countess by the hand.

"My dear friend," he cried, "we 're delighted to see you. But what?
You 've been in the wars!"

Dieppe made no answer. His stare attracted his host's attention.

"Ah," he pursued, with a laugh, "you wonder to see us like this? We
are treating you too much _en famille_! But indeed you ought to be
glad to see it. We owe it almost all to you. No, she would n't be
here but for you, my friend. Would you, dear?"

"No, I--I don't suppose I should."

Did they refer to Dieppe's assisting her across the ford? If he had
but known--

"Come," urged the Count, "give me your hand, and let my wife and me--"

"What?" cried the Captain, loudly, in unmistakable surprise.

The Count look