"And the first one--this Guillaume?"
"When I got back he was gone," said the Captain. "But I bear marks of a scratch which he gave me, you perceive."
He looked at the Count. The Count appeared excellently well satisfied with the story. He looked at the ladies; they were smiling and nodding approval.
"Deuce take it," thought the Captain, "I seem to have hit on the right lies by chance!"
"All ends most happily," cried the Count. "Happily for you, my dear friend, and most happily for me. And here is Lucia with us again too!
In truth it "s a most auspicious evening. I propose that we allow Lucia time to change her travelling-dress, and Dieppe a few moments to wash off the stains of battle, and then we "ll celebrate the joyous occasion with a little supper."
The Count"s proposal met with no opposition--least of all from Dieppe, who suddenly remembered that he was famished.
The next morning, the garden of the Castle presented a pleasing sight.
Workmen were busily engaged in pulling down the barricade, while the Count and Countess sat on a seat hard by. Sometimes they watched the operations, sometimes the Count read in a confidential and tender voice from a little sheaf of papers which he held in his hand. When he ceased reading, the Countess would murmur, "Beautiful!" and the Count shake his head in a poet"s affectation of dissatisfaction with his verse. Then they would fall to watching the work of demolition again.
At last the Count remarked:
"But where are Lucia and our friend Dieppe?"
"Walking together down there by the stream," answered the Countess.
And, after a pause, she turned to him, and, in a very demure fashion, hazarded a suggestion. "Do you know, Andrea, I think Lucia and Captain Dieppe are inclined to take to one another very much?"
"It "s an uncommonly sudden attachment," laughed the Count.
"Yes," agreed his wife, biting her lip. "It "s certainly sudden. But consider in what an interesting way their acquaintance began! Do you know anything about him?"
"I know he "s a gentleman, and a clever fellow," returned the Count.
"And from time to time he makes some money, I believe."
"Lucia"s got some money," mused the Countess.
Down by the stream they walked, side by side, showing indeed (as the Countess remarked) every sign of taking to one another very much.
"You really think we shall hear no more of Paul de Roustache?" asked Lucia.
"I "m sure of it; and I think M. Guillaume will let me alone too.
Indeed there remains only one question."
"What"s that?" asked Lucia.
"How you are going to treat me," said the Captain. "Think what I have suffered already!"
"I could n"t help that," she cried. "My word was absolutely pledged to Emilia. "Whatever happens," I said to her, "I promise I won"t tell anybody that I "m not the Countess." If I had n"t promised that, she could n"t have gone to Rome at all, you know. She "d have died sooner than let Andrea think she had left the Castle."
"You remember what you said to her. Do you remember what you said to me?"
"When?"
"When we talked in the hut in the hollow of the hill. You said you would be all that you could be to me."
"Did I say as much as that? And when I was Countess of Fieramondi!
Oh!"
"Yes, and you let me do something--even when you were Countess of Fieramondi, too!"
"That was not playing the part well."
The Captain looked just a little doubtful, and Lucia laughed.
"Anyhow," said he, "you "re not Countess of Fieramondi now."
She looked up at him.
"You "re a very devout young lady," he continued, "who goes all the way to Rome to consult the Bishop of Mesopotamia. Now, that"--the Captain took both her hands in his--"is exactly the sort of wife for me."
"Monsieur le Capitaine, I have always thought you a courageous man, and now I am sure of it. You have seen--and aided--all my deceit; and now you want to marry me!"
"A man can"t know his wife too well," observed the Captain. "Come, let me go and communicate my wishes to Count Andrea."
"What? Why, you only met me for the first time last night!"
"Oh, but I can explain--"
"That you had previously fallen in love with the Countess of Fieramondi? For your own sake and ours too--"
"That"s very true," admitted the Captain. "I must wait a little, I suppose."
"You must wait to tell Andrea that you love me, but--"
"Precisely!" cried the Captain. "There is no reason in the world why I should wait to tell you."
And then and there he told her again in happiness the story which had seemed so tragic when it was wrung from him in the shepherd"s hut.
"Undoubtedly, I am a very fortunate fellow," he cried, with his arm round Lucia"s waist. "I come to this village by chance. By chance I am welcomed here instead of having to go to the inn. By chance I am the means of rescuing a charming lady from a sad embarra.s.sment. I am enabled to send a rascal to the right-about. I succeed in preserving my papers. I inflict a most complete and ludicrous defeat on that crafty old fellow, Guillaume Sevier! And, by heaven! when I do what seems the unluckiest thing of all, when, against my will, I fall in love with my dear friend"s wife, when my honour is opposed to my happiness, when I am reduced to the saddest plight--why, I say, by heaven, she turns out not to be his wife at all! Lucia, am I not born under a lucky star?"
"I think I should be very foolish not to--to do my best to share your luck," said she.
"I am the happiest fellow in the world," he declared. "And that," he added, as though it were a rare and precious coincidence, "with my conscience quite at peace."
Perhaps it is rare, and perhaps the Captain"s conscience had no right to be quite at peace. For certainly he had not told all the truth to his dear friend, the Count of Fieramondi. Yet since no more was heard of Paul de Roustache, and the Countess"s journey remained an unbroken secret, these questions of casuistry need not be raised. After all, is it for a man to ruin the tranquillity of a home for the selfish pleasure of a conscience quite at peace?
But as to the consciences of those two very ingenious young ladies, the Countess of Fieramondi, and her cousin, Countess Lucia, the problem is more difficult. The Countess never confessed, and Lucia never betrayed, the secret. Yet they were both devout! Indeed, the problem seems insoluble.
Stay, though! Perhaps the counsel and aid of the Bishop of Mesopotamia (_in partibus_) were invoked again. His lordship"s position, that you must commit your sin before you can be absolved from the guilt of it, not only appears most logical in itself, but was, in the circ.u.mstances of the case, not discouraging.