"Really, monsieur, I am ashamed to have doubted for an instant the luck of such a man! As I went into the courtyard, the Count's groom galloped in, who had been sent back to fetch a pocket-handkerchief which mademoiselle had forgotten! If it had only been an umbrella! In fact, monsieur, they wanted to get rid of the man; we shall hear nothing of either of them before to-morrow morning, you may take my word for it. I know the style of thing! I explained this to the man after a fashion, and he will let me have his horse. He says that neither man nor devil shall drive him out into this storm again." "You must remain in my service, François," said Giraldi, laying his hand on the impudent fellow's shoulder. "And now--don't spare the horse." "Monsieur may depend upon me!" answered François, putting the letter in safety. "_Au revoir_, monsieur!" François hastened away, and Giraldi went to the deep bow-window which overlooked the courtyard, and watched while he mounted the handsome beast, whose bridle the groom was holding, and, waving his hand towards the window, galloped out of the yard. Giraldi went back to the table and broke off a piece of bread, which he washed down with the glass of wine that François had poured out for him. Then he began slowly to walk up and down the great room with his arms folded across his chest. How could he have allowed himself to be so carried away by his passion just now? What had happened for which he might not have been prepared--for which, in fact, he had not been long prepared? The weather was to blame for the disturbance of his nerves--weather only fit for northern barbarians and those in league with them! It could only have been some unfriendly demon which in the morning twilight had driven the little steamer, that was to have brought him over to the island from Sundin, against a rudderless drifting wreck, and so had forced it to turn back; an unfriendly demon who forbade the rude sailors to take his money and to venture the passage in an open boat, till at last, at half-past eleven, the steamer was repaired, and then took an hour to do the distance--half a nautical mile! Fiend against fiend! Gregorio Giraldi was the stronger. If the telegram had really reached the General at Berlin in proper time--if he left Berlin by the eleven o'clock train, he could not be at Sundin before three o'clock, or at Warnow before six. An hour! Kingdoms had been lost and won in an hour; and everything, everything else was on his side: Ottomar irretrievably entangled in the net which he had cast over him, and already at deadly feud with Wallbach, whose giddy sister was now in love with the Count, to say nothing else! the proud Elsa betrothed to a man of low degree, paying for her love with her inheritance!--the course clear from all obstacles, and at its goal the rich treasures, the great estates, which now fell to Valerie by law, and which she must leave absolutely to her own son, who had risen from the dead--that is