nd you are unhappy," he added.

The Count smiled in a sad but friendly fashion.

"Is n't it the same thing?" he asked. "And at any rate as to me you
are right."

Dieppe wrung his hand. The Count, apparently much moved, turned and
walked slowly away, leaving Dieppe to his meditations.

"He loves her." That was the form they took. Whatever the meaning of
the quarrel, the Count loved his wife; it was to her the poem was
written, hers was the heart which it sought to soften. Yet she had not
looked hard-hearted. No, she had looked adorable, frankly adorable; a
lady for whose sake any man, even so wise and experienced a man as
Captain Dieppe, might well commit many a folly, and have many a
heartache; a lady for whom--

"Rascal that I am!" cried the Captain, interrupting himself and
springing up. He raised his hand in the air and declared aloud with
emphasis: "On my honour, I will think no more of her. I will think, I
say, no more of her."

On the last word came a low laugh from the other side of the barricade.
The Captain started, looked round, listened, smiled, frowned, pulled
his moustache. Then, with extraordinary suddenness, resolution, and
fierceness, he turned and walked quickly away. "Honour, honour!" he
was saying to himself; and the path of honour seemed to lie in flight.
Unhappily, though, the Captain was more accustomed to advance.

CHAPTER III

THE LADY IN THE GARDEN

It is possible that Captain Dieppe, full of contentment with the
quarters to which fortune had guided him, under-rated the merits and
attractions of the inn in the village across the river. Fare and
accommodation indeed were plain and rough at the Aquila Nera, but the
company round its fireside would have raised his interest. On one side
of the hearth sat the young fisherman, he in whom Dieppe had discovered
a police-spy on the track of the secrets in that breast-pocket of the
Captain's. Oh, these discoveries of the Captain's! For M. Paul de
Roustache was not a police-spy, and, moreover, had never seen the
gallant Captain in his life, and took no interest in him--a state of
things most unlikely to occur to the Captain's mind. Had Paul, then,
fished for fishing's sake? It by no means followed, if only the
Captain could have remembered that there were other people in the world
besides himself--and one or two others even in the Count of
Fieramondi's house. "I 'll get at her if I can; but if she 's
obstinate, I 'll go t