At this juncture the two eavesdroppers moved discreetly away, and Blythe, leaving her fellow-conspirator far behind, flew to her mother’s side, crying:

“O Mumsey! She’s simply winding him round her finger, and there’s nothing he won’t be ready to do for us now!” 52

52

“Yes, dear; I’m delighted to hear it,” Mrs. Halliday replied, with what Blythe was wont to call her “benignant and amused” expression. “And after a while you will tell me what you are talking about!”

But Blythe, nothing daunted, only appealed to Mr. Grey, who had just caught up with her.

“You agree with me, Mr. Grey; don’t you?” she insisted.

“Perfectly, and in every particular. Mrs. Halliday, your daughter and I have been eavesdropping, and we have come to confess.”

Whereupon Blythe dropped upon the foot of her mother’s chair, Mr. Grey established himself in the chair adjoining, and they gave their somewhat bewildered auditor the benefit of a few facts.

“I really believe,” the Englishman remarked, in conclusion,—“I really believe that haughty old dago can help us if anybody can. And when your engaging young protégée has completed her conquest,—to-morrow, it may be, or the day 53 after, for she’s making quick work of it,—we’ll see what can be done with him.”

53

And, after all, what could have been more natural than the attraction which, from that time forth, manifested itself between the Count and his small countrywoman? If the little girl, in making her very marked advances, had been governed by the unwavering instinct which always guided her choice of companions, the old man, for his part, could not but find refreshment, after his long, solitary voyage, in the pretty Tuscan prattle of the child. Most Italians love children, and the Count Giovanni Battista Allamiraviglia appeared to be no exception to his race.

The two would sit together by the hour, absorbed, neither in the lovely sights of this wonderful Mediterranean voyage, nor in the movements of those about them, but simply and solely in one another.

“She’s telling her own story better than we could do,” Mr. Grey used to say.

It was now no unusual thing to see the child established on the old gentleman’s knee, 

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