Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 25, 2025
The fifth day I arranged to devote to sight-seeing and amusements in Pesca's company. Our hotel had been too full to accommodate us both on the same floor. My room was on the second story, and Pesca's was above me, on the third. On the morning of the fifth day I went upstairs to see if the Professor was ready to go out.
It is nothing that they added to my anxieties and embittered my disappointments the steady march of events has inexorably passed them by. For the same reason I have said nothing here of the consolation that I found in Pesca's brotherly affection for me, when I saw him again after the sudden cessation of my residence at Limmeridge House.
A man of the Count's character would never risk the terrible consequences of turning spy without looking to his personal security quite as carefully as he looked to his golden reward. The shaven face, which I had pointed out at the Opera, might have been covered by a beard in Pesca's time his dark brown hair might be a wig his name was evidently a false one.
I kept my eye still on the Count. I saw him move for the first time when Pesca moved, so as not to lose sight of the little man in the lower position in which he now stood. I was curious to see what would happen if Pesca's attention under these circumstances was withdrawn from him, and I accordingly asked the Professor if he recognised any of his pupils that evening among the ladies in the boxes.
At the same time I heard Pesca's voice saying eagerly, in low tones, and in his own language "I remember the name, but I don't know the man. You saw at the Opera he was so changed that I could not recognise him. I will forward the report I can do no more." "No more need be done," answered the second voice.
This was the moment I chose, when his full face was in view, for directing Pesca's attention to him. "Do you know that man?" I asked. "Which man, my friend?" "The tall, fat man, standing there, with his face towards us." Pesca raised himself on tiptoe, and looked at the Count. "No," said the Professor. "The big fat man is a stranger to me. Is he famous? Why do you point him out?"
She did full justice to Pesca's excellent qualities of heart; but she could not accept him implicitly, as my mother accepted him, for my sake. Her insular notions of propriety rose in perpetual revolt against Pesca's constitutional contempt for appearances; and she was always more or less undisguisedly astonished at her mother's familiarity with the eccentric little foreigner.
The moment those words reached me I stopped and took my place with the crowd going in. Some dim foreshadowing of the truth had crossed my mind when I heard Pesca's voice through the open door, and when I saw the stranger's face as he passed me on the stairs of the hotel. Now the truth itself was revealed to me revealed in the chance words that had just reached my ears.
Pesca's quaint announcement of the means by which he had procured me my present employment; the farewell evening I had passed with my mother and sister; even my mysterious adventure on the way home from Hampstead had all become like events which might have occurred at some former epoch of my existence.
These instructions were followed by the name and address of Pesca's employer in Portland Place and there the note, or memorandum, ended. The prospect which this offer of an engagement held out was certainly an attractive one.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking