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Updated: May 7, 2025
I reached the Austrian capital after an entirely adventureless journey, and felt that my enterprise was begun. I called at the Embassy, and had my papers finally put in order. I called on the Viennese agents of Miss Rossano's bankers, and found that no less a sum than one thousand pounds had been placed to my credit.
I set before him the fact that, if the venture succeeded and he gave me his aid in it, he would find wealthy friends and protectors. I told him that I was not myself a rich man, but I showed him Miss Rossano's letter and the draft I had for a thousand pounds. "Better send that money out of the country, sir," he said, quietly.
I was so eager to be there, I was so willing to spend every hour in Miss Rossano's company, that I was afraid of being intrusive, and my very anxiety to be near her kept me away from her in this foolish fashion many a time.
If I try to explain what kept me a whole four weeks from accepting Miss Rossano's invitation to call upon her at the house of her aunt, Lady Rollinson, I am not at all sure that I shall succeed; I can say quite truly that there was not a waking hour in all that time in which she did not occupy my mind.
I had meant to do everything by myself to have had no rival, to have brought back Miss Rossano's father unaided, and to have taken whatever gratitude was due for that service entirely to myself. As it turned out, I had done nothing. The original discovery of the count's whereabouts was entirely due to Brunow.
All this was absurd enough and annoying enough, but the introduction of Miss Rossano's name into the narrative looked altogether wanton and unwarranted, and, I dare say, now that I can recall the whole thing in cool blood, that I was more disturbed and angry than I need have been. Brunow took what I had to say with imperturbable good-humor, and was altogether satisfied with himself.
I saw that my whole purpose had been to do something that should make me look noble and exceptional in Miss Rossano's eyes, and that the recovery of a living man from that infernal dungeon meant almost nothing in contrast with my own selfish wishes.
All this leads me away from what I meant to say, which was simply that Miss Rossano's wordless reception of Brunow made me furiously jealous of him, and altogether dashed my happiness. She had spoken to me ergo, she could speak. She had not spoken to him ergo, the emotion of encountering him was too great for her. We had been six years married when I told her of this.
Then nothing would please Brunow but that he must hire a horse and ride off to this country-house, and spend hours in the society of the sham baroness, while our scheme for the release of Miss Rossano's father hung in the wind, without making even a sign of progress.
Lady Rollinson rambled in this wise, and if I had had nothing to go on beforehand I should not have been able to make head or tail of her discourse; but Brunow's story flashed into my mind in a second, and I was sure that in some fashion it had reached Miss Rossano's ears.
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