His heart beat a little faster as he went in. The Vice-Consul was a man of a portly presence, something like an English merchant of the higher class, with grizzled hair, and an aspect of great respectability and authority. He was fully conscious of his dignity as the representative of the British Government, and of Her Majesty herself, amid an alien and inferior race. He did not think much of Italy or the Italian people, and he felt it was his mission in life to keep them down. He was seated in great state upon a large chair, which swung round with him when he moved. His table, his papers, the manner in which he appeared over them, with the air of a judge on the bench, was very imposing to a stranger, especially when that stranger was in difficulty and came to ask help. He made Harry a very formal bow, and pointed to a seat near, which had something of the air of a seat for the prisoner at the bar. “What can I do for you?” he said, with a dignified inclination of his head; after the first glance his look softened. He was used to see a great many people, and it was a compliment to Harry’s appearance that it interested the Vice-Consul. He almost smiled upon him, with a benignity in which he did not very often indulge. Then it was that Harry’s real difficulties began; but how thankful he was that it was a true story he was telling, and not a fictitious account of himself! “I came to tell you, Sir,” he said, “of something that occurred last night--a scrape--that is to say a row I got into. I suppose I must call it a row.” “It is a great pity when strangers get into rows in a foreign town, Mr.----Oliver. I think you said Oliver?” What a fool I was thought Harry!--as he did after every new production of that name; but his last chance of reclaiming his own was now over. “What you say is quite true,” he said, “and I should not have been such a fool but for urgent cause. I knocked down a fellow who was annoying a lady. He deserved a great deal more than I gave him; if he had been an Italian I might have hesitated, but he was an Englishman. So I just knocked him down.” “Very wrong, very wrong,” said the Vice-Consul, “and a curious way of showing your preference for your fellow-countrymen. But you had better tell me all about it. When did this occur, and where?” Harry described the place as well as he could. “There was a lot of them,” he said. “The Italians--if they were Italians--gave way when I spoke to them. I’ll do them that justice. The English fellow, I did not say anything to him. I was not going to argue with a brute like that. I just quietly knocked him down. It was a young lady and a woman with her. You see, if I had stood there talking, the others might have been up to us, and have given her more annoyance. I daresay it did not hurt the fellow much; and if he’s a man he’ll take it quietly, for he deserved it; but I thought it was perhaps best to let you know.”