I quitted the castle at ten o’clock. Some English-speaking servant told the vetturino to drive slowly. Yet, an hour later, I needed his daring, because a lame horse brought me back all too slowly to show Maggie a second telegram from Hooper: “Karl lives. Doctors predict recovery.” By some miracle it reached me that night. Be sure I pounded hard on the lion’s head knocker of the Castello Rondo to convey the glad news. Other messages to hand in the morning rescued our journey to London from the misery which must have attended it otherwise. The Italian count saw us off from Como. I did not grudge him that happiness. It was his parting glimpse of his divinity--and her fortune. Slow as the mail train seemed to us in its scurry through Italy, Switzerland, and France, we passed many a weary hour in England before Karl recovered his five senses, to say nothing of the sixth. During four days he lay prone at the gate of death, his breathing slow, labored, and stertorous, the pupils of his eyes dilated unequally. But splendid surgery saved him. The injury was so serious that a prompt operation, carried out before his parents were even aware of his condition, alone pulled him back from the void. Steindal’s blow, delivered on the side rather than the back of the head, caused a depressed fracture of the skull, a tiny bit of bone being driven into the temporo-sphenoidal lobe. The resultant concussion, too, passed rapidly into a compression of the brain arising from effusion of blood. It was the breaking of the bottle which delivered Karl from instant death. Had such a heavy implement retained its solidity, the shock must necessarily have been fatal. The expert surgeon who carried out the requisite trephining gave me these details after one of his visits. Karl was yet unconscious, and this was the fourth morning after the attack! Maggie, frail ghost, waylaid us in the corridor. “Doctor,” she whispered, “may I see him?” Medical men are telegnomists in their way. He had noticed her on the previous day, soon after our arrival, in fact, and his professional eye was attracted by her ethereal beauty. “Yes,” he said. “That will do no harm. But you must promise to keep quiet.” “I promise,” she answered. He led her to the room where Karl lay, tended by hospital nurses. None hindered, so I went with them. Maggie was braver than I thought. She moved noiselessly to the head of the bed and stooped over the recumbent form. Karl was restless, almost fretful. The light was dim, yet I distinctly caught the unspoken question on Maggie’s lips as she turned and looked at the surgeon. He nodded. She bent and kissed Karl lightly on the forehead, where the bandages left a little space. Then she murmured, ever so tenderly:-- “Karl, _mera piyárá_, I am here!”