“If you must know, then,” said he, “it is the English Countess who is staying here, and whom I have been attending for the last week. How she came to hear of this affair I cannot tell you, for I know it is a secret to the rest of the house; but she made me promise to come and see you, and if there was nothing in your wound to forbid it, to bring you over to her dressing-room, and present you to her. And now let me look at the injury.” I took off my coat, and, baring my arm, displayed a very ugly thrust, which, entering above the wrist, came out between the two bones of the arm. “Now I call this the worst of the two,” said he, examining it “Does it give you much pain?” “Some uneasiness; nothing more. When may I see the Countess?” asked I; for an intense curiosity to meet her had now possessed me. “If you like, you may go at once; not that I can accompany you, for I am off for a distant visit; but her rooms are at the end of this corridor, and you enter by the conservatory. Meanwhile I must bandage this arm in somewhat better fashion than you have done.” While he was engaged in dressing my wound, he rambled on about the reckless habits that made such _rencontres_ possible. “We are in the middle of the seventeenth century here, with all its barbarisms,” said he. “These young fellows were vexed at seeing the notice you attracted; and that was to their thinking cause enough to send you off with a damaged lung or a maimed limb. It's all well, however, as long as Graf Hunyadi does not hear of it. But if he should, he'll turn them out, every man of them, for this treatment of an Englishman.” “Then we must take care, sir, that he does not hear of it,” said I, half fiercely, and as though addressing my speech especially to himself. “Not from me, certainly,” said he. “My doctor's instincts always save me from such indiscretions.” “Is our Countess young, doctor?” asked I, half jocularly. “Young and pretty, though one might say, too, she has been younger and prettier. If you dine below stairs today, drink no wine, and get back to your sofa as soon as you can after dinner.” With this caution he left me. A heavy packet of letters had arrived from Fiume, containing, I surmised, some instructions for which I had written; but seeing that the address was in the cashier's handwriting, I felt no impatience to break the seal.