Читать книгу Out with Garibaldi: A story of the liberation of Italy - Henty George Alfred - Страница 5

ONE Saturday early in March, 1860, Frank, now sixteen years of age, on starting for the football ground, was told that the house-master wished to see him, and he at once went into his study.

“Percival, I have received a note from your mother, asking me to let you out till Monday morning. She says that she particularly wants to see you, and will be glad if you will start at once. Of course I will do so; you had better catch the next train, if you can.”

“What in the world can the mater want to see me in such a hurry for?” Frank said to himself in a rather discontented tone as he left the master’s study. “It is a frightful nuisance missing the match this afternoon! I don’t know what Hawtrey will say when I tell him that I cannot play. Ah! here he is.”

“What is up, Percival?”

“I am awfully sorry to say that I have just received a message from my mater calling me up to town at once. I have no idea what it is about; but it must be something particular, for I told her when I wrote to her last that this was going to be the toughest match of the season; still, of course I must go.”

“I see that, Percival. It is a terrible nuisance; you are certainly the third best in the house, and now I shall have to put Fincham in, I suppose, and I am afraid that will mean the loss of the match.”

“He is as strong as I am, Hawtrey.”

“Yes; he is strong enough and heavy enough, but he is desperately slow. However, I must make the best of him.”

Frank hurried upstairs, and in ten minutes came down again, dressed. He ran the greater part of the way to the station, and just caught the up train. The disappointment over the football match was forgotten now. Thinking it over, he had come to the conclusion that either his mother or grandmother must have been taken seriously ill. It could hardly be his mother, for it was she who had written; still, she might have managed to do that, even if she had met with some sort of accident, if it was not too serious. If not she, it must be the signora, as he generally called her, and as he was very fond of her, he felt that her loss would be a heavy one indeed. His anxiety increased as he neared London; and as soon as the train stopped at Euston he jumped out, seized the first hansom, and told the cabman to drive fast to Cadogan Place. He leaped out, handed his fare to the cabman, ran up the steps, and knocked at the door.

“Is every one well, Beppo?” he asked breathlessly, as the servant opened it.

“Yes, sir,” the footman replied, in his usual calm and even voice.

“Thank God for that!” he exclaimed. “Where is my mother?”

“In the dining-room, sir, with the signora.”

Frank ran upstairs. “Mother, you have given me quite a fright,” he said. “From your message I thought that some one must have been suddenly taken ill, or you would never have sent for me when you knew that we played in the final ties for the house championship to-day. I have been worrying horribly all the way up to town.”

“I forgot all about your match, Frank,” his mother said. “I have had a letter that put it out of my head entirely.”

“A letter, mother?”

“Yes, Frank; from your hero, Garibaldi.”

“What is it about, mother?” Frank exclaimed excitedly, for he had heard so much of the Italian patriot from his father, and of their doings together in South America and the siege of Rome, that his admiration for him was unbounded.

“Sit down, Frank, and I will tell you all about it. The letter was addressed to your dear father. Garibaldi, being in Caprera, probably has but little news of what is passing at Naples. He had heard of my father’s disappearance, but was apparently in ignorance of what has happened since.”

She took out the letter and read:

“‘My dear Comrade and Friend, —

“‘When I last wrote to you it was to condole with you on the disappearance of that true patriot and my good friend, Professor Forli. I hope that long ere this he has been restored to you; but if, as I fear, he has fallen into the clutches of the rascally government of Naples, I am afraid that you will never hear of him again. Several times, when you have written to me, you have told me that you were prepared to join me when I again raised the flag of Italian independence, though you held aloof when France joined us against Austria. You did rightly, for we were betrayed by the French as we were at Rome, and my birthplace, Nice, has been handed over to them. You also said that you would help us with money; and, as you know, money is one of our chief requisites. The time has come. I am convinced that the population of the Neapolitan territories are now reduced to such a state of despair by the tyranny of their government that they will be ready to hail us as deliverers.

“‘My plan is this: I am sure a thousand or so of the men who fought with me in the Alps will flock to my standard, and with these I intend to effect a landing in Sicily. If I capture Palermo and Messina I think I can rely upon being joined by no small number of men there, and by volunteers from all parts of Italy; five thousand men in all will be sufficient, I think – at any rate, that number collected, I shall cross to the mainland and march upon Naples. You may think that the adventure is a desperate one, but that is by no means my opinion; you know how easily we defeated the Neapolitan troops in 1848. I believe that we shall do so still more easily now, for certainly very many of them must share in the general hatred of the tyrant. Come, dear friend, and join us; the meeting-place is called the Villa Spinola, which is a few miles from Genoa.

“‘I do not anticipate any great interference from Cavour; he will run with the hare and hunt with the hounds, as your proverb has it. He dare not stop us; for I am convinced that such is the state of public opinion in Italy, that it might cost his master his crown were he to do so. On the other hand, he would be obliged to assume an attitude of hostility, or he would incur the anger of Austria, of the Papacy, and possibly of France; therefore I think that he will remain neutral, although professing to do all in his power to prevent our moving. I am promised some assistance in money, but I am sure that this will fall short of the needs. We must buy arms not only for ourselves, but to arm those who join us; we must charter or buy steamers to carry us to Sicily. Once there, I regard the rest as certain. Come to me with empty hands, and you will receive the heartiest welcome as my dear friend and comrade; but if you can aid us also with money, not only I, but all Italy, will be grateful to you. I know that you need no inducement, for your heart is wholly with us, and all the more so from this disappearance of madame’s father, doubtless the work of the tyrants. Need I say that our first step in every town and fortress we capture will be to release all political prisoners confined there? – and it may be that among these we will find Professor Forli. Turr will be with me, Baron Stocco of Calabria, Bixio, and Tuckory; and Madame Carroli has written to tell me that she places her three sons at my disposal in the place of their brave brother, and will, moreover, supply me with money to the utmost of her power. Come, then, dear friend, aid me with your arm and counsel, and let us again fight side by side in the cause of liberty.’”

Frank leapt to his feet. “You will let me go in my father’s place, mother, will you not? Many of those who will follow Garibaldi will be no older than myself, and probably not half so strong; none can hate the tyranny of Naples more than I do. It is the cause for which my father and grandfather fought; and we now have greater wrongs than they had to avenge.”

“That is what I thought you would say, Frank,” his mother said sadly. “‘Tis hard indeed to part with a son after having lost father and husband; but my father was an Italian patriot, my husband fought for Italy; in giving you up I give up my all; yet I will not say you nay. So fierce is the indignation in England at the horrors of the tyrants’ prisons that I doubt not many English will, when they hear of Garibaldi’s landing in Sicily, go out to join him; and if they are ready in the cause only of humanity to risk their lives, surely we cannot grudge you in the cause not only of humanity, but of the land of our birth.”

“I feel sure that father would have taken me, had he been here,” Frank said earnestly.

“I believe he would, Frank. I know that he shared to the full my father’s hatred of the despots who grind Italy under their heel; and besides the feeling that animated him, one cannot but cherish the hope that my father may still be found alive in one of those ghastly prisons. Of course my mother and I have talked the matter over. We both lament that your studies should be interrupted; but it can be for a few months only, and probably you will be able to return to Harrow when the school meets again after the long holiday – so that, in fact, you will only lose three months or so.”

“That makes no odds one way or another, mother. In any case, I am not likely to be a shining light in the way of learning.”

“No – I suppose not, Frank; and with a fine estate awaiting you, there is no occasion that you should be, though of course you will go through Oxford or Cambridge. However, we need not think of that now.”

“And will you be sending him any money, mother?”

“Certainly. Your father put by a certain sum every year in order that he might assist Garibaldi when the latter again raised the flag of freedom in Italy – a cause which was sacred in his eyes. At the time he left England, this fund amounted to £10,000; and as he never knew when the summons from Garibaldi might arrive, he transferred it to my name, so that he need not come back to England, should a rising occur before his return. So you will not go empty-handed.”

“That will be a splendid gift, mother. I suppose I shall not go back to school before I start?”

“No, Frank. Since you are to go on this expedition, the sooner you start the better. I shall write to your headmaster, and tell him that I am most reluctantly obliged to take you away from school for a few months; but that it is a matter of the greatest importance, and that I hope he will retain your name on the books and permit you to return when you come back to England.”

“If he won’t, mother, it will not matter very much. Of course I should like to go back again; but if they won’t let me, I shall only have to go to a coach for a year or two.”

“That is of little consequence,” his mother agreed; “and perhaps, after going through such an exciting time, you will not yourself care about returning to school again. You must not look upon this matter as a mere adventure, Frank; it is a very, very perilous enterprise, in which your life will be risked daily. Were we differently situated, I should not have dreamt of allowing you to go out; but we have identified ourselves with the cause of freedom in Italy. Your grandfather lost everything – his home, his country, and maybe his life; and your father, living as he did in Rome, and married to the daughter of an Italian, felt as burning a hatred for the oppression he saw everywhere round him as did the Italians themselves; perhaps more so, for being accustomed to the freedom Englishmen enjoy, these things appeared to him a good deal more monstrous than they did to those who had been used to them all their lives. He risked death a score of times in the defence of Rome; and he finally lost his life while endeavouring to discover whether my father was a prisoner in one of the tyrants’ dungeons. Thus, although in all other respects an English boy – or Italian only through your grandfather – you have been constantly hearing of Italy and its wrongs, and on that point feel as keenly and strongly as the son of an Italian patriot would do. I consider that it is a holy war in which you are about to take part – a war that, if successful, will open the doors of dungeons in which thousands, among whom may be my father, are lingering out their lives for no other cause than that they dared to think, and will free a noble people who have for centuries been under the yoke of foreigners. Therefore, as, if this country were in danger, I should not baulk your desire to enter the army, so now I say to you, join Garibaldi; and even should you be taken from me, I shall at least have the consolation of feeling that it was in a noble cause you fell, and that I sent you, knowing that my happiness as well as your life hung upon the issue. I want you to view the matter then, my boy, not in the light of an exciting adventure, but in the spirit in which the Crusaders went out to free the Holy Sepulchre, in which the Huguenots of France fought and died for their religion.”

“I will try to do so, mother,” Frank said gravely; “at any rate, if the cause was good enough for my father and grandfather to risk their lives for, it is good enough for me. But you know, mother,” he went on, in a changed voice, “you can’t put an old head on to young shoulders; and though I shall try to regard it as you say, I am afraid that I shan’t be able to help enjoying it as a splendid adventure.”

His mother smiled faintly. “I suppose that is boy nature. At any rate, I am sure that you will do your duty, and there is certainly no occasion for your doing it with a sad face; and bear in mind always, Frank, that you are going out not so much to fight, as to search every prison and fortress that may be captured, to question every prisoner whether he has heard or known any one answering the description of your grandfather, or – or – ” and her lip quivered, and her voice broke.

“Or, mother?” – and he stood surprised as Mrs. Percival burst suddenly into tears, and the signora, rising from her seat, went hastily to her, and put her arm round her neck. It was a minute or two before Mrs. Percival took her hands from her face, and went on, —

“I was going to say, Frank, or of your father.”

Frank started, as if he had been suddenly struck. “My father,” he repeated, in a low tone. “Do you think, mother – do you think it possible? I thought there was no doubt as to how he was killed.”

“I have never let myself doubt,” Mrs. Percival went on. “Whenever the thought has come into my mind during the past two years I have resolutely put it aside. It would have been an agony more than I could bear to think it possible that he could be alive and lingering in a dungeon beyond human aid. Never have I spoken on the subject, except to my mother, when she first suggested the possibility; but now that there is a chance of the prison doors being opened, I may let myself not hope – it can hardly be that – but pray that in God’s mercy I may yet see him again.” And as she again broke down altogether, Frank, with a sudden cry, threw himself on his knees beside her, and buried his face in his arms on her lap, his whole figure shaken by deep sobs.

Mrs. Percival was the first to recover her composure, and gently stroked his hair, saying: “You must not permit yourself to hope, my boy; you must shut that out from your mind as I have done, thinking of it only as a vague, a very vague and distant possibility.”

“But how, mother, could it be?” he asked presently, raising his head. “Did we not hear all about his being killed, how Beppo saw him shot, and how one of the band testified that he was dead and buried?”

“So it seemed to me, Frank, when my mother first pointed out to me that all this might be false, and that just as the government of Naples declared they were absolutely ignorant as to your grandfather’s disappearance when it appeared to us a certainty that it was due to their own act, so they would not hesitate a moment to get rid of your father, whose letters as to the state of their prisons were exciting an intense feeling against them in every free country. She said it would be easy for them to bribe or threaten his servant into telling any tale they thought fit; he or some other agent might have informed the banditti that a rich Englishman would be passing along the road at a certain time, and that the government would be ready to pay for his capture and delivery to them. The prisoner taken may have been promised a large sum to repeat the story of the Englishman having died and been buried. It was all possible, and though I was determined not to think of him as a prisoner, my mother, who knew more of these things than I did, and how matters like this were managed in Italy, thought that it was so. Still to my mind there were, and still are, reasons against hope, for surely the Neapolitan government would have preferred that the brigands should kill him, rather than that they themselves should have the trouble of keeping him in prison.”

“Possibly they would have preferred that,” Signora Forli said, speaking for the first time. “They knew that he was an Englishman, and doubtless learned that he carried loaded pistols, and may have reckoned confidently upon his resisting and being killed, and may have been disappointed because the brigands, hoping for a large ransom, carried him off wounded.”

“But even then,” Mrs. Percival said, “they could have sent up their agents to the brigands and paid them to finish their work.”

“Yes, possibly that is what they did do; but though I have never spoken to you on the subject since you told me not to, I have thought it over many and many times, and it seems to me that they would scarcely do so, for they might thus put themselves into the power of these bandits. Any one of the band might make his way to Naples, go to the British legation, and under the promise of a large sum of money and protection denounce the whole plot. It seems to me more likely that they would send an agent to the chief brigand, and pay him a sum of money to deliver the captive up to men who would meet him at a certain place. It is probable that the chief would, on some excuse or other, get rid of all his band but two or three, hand over the prisoner, and share the money only with those with him, and when the others returned, tell them that the prisoner had died and that they had buried him. Then the carabinieri would use every effort to kill those who were in the secret, and being in earnest for once, they probably did kill the chief and those with him.

“Probably the man who gave his evidence was not one of the party at all, but some prisoner charged with a minor offence, who was promised his liberty as the price of telling the story that he was taught. If Leonard had been killed and buried, as they stated, his grave must surely have been found – the earth must still have been fresh; and, indeed, nothing is more unlikely than that the brigands should have taken any extraordinary trouble to hide the body, as they could not have anticipated that any vigorous search would be made for it. For these reasons I have all along believed that Leonard did not come to his end as was supposed. He may have been killed afterwards by those into whose hands he was delivered; but even this does not seem likely, for one of them might betray the secret for a large reward. He may have died in a dungeon, as so many thousands have done; but I believe firmly that he did not, as reported, die in the brigands’ hut. I have never since spoken on the subject to your mother, Frank, for I agreed with what she said, that it would be better to think of him as dead than in a dungeon, from which, as was shown in the case of your grandfather, there was no chance of releasing him. Now, however, if Garibaldi is successful, as every prison will be searched, and every political prisoner freed, there is a prospect that, if he is still alive, he may be restored to us.”

Frank, with the natural hope of youth, at once adopted the signora’s view; but his mother, although she admitted that it might possibly be true, still insisted that she would not permit herself to hope.

“It may be that God in His mercy will send him back to me; but, though I shall pray night and day that He will do so, it will be almost without hope that my prayer will be granted, – were I to hope, it would be like losing him again if he were not found. Now let us talk of other matters. The sooner you start the better, Frank; you will not have many preparations to make. The Garibaldian outfit is a simple one – a red shirt, trousers of any colour, but generally blue, a pair of gaiters and one of thick, serviceable boots, a wide-awake, or, in fact, any sort of cap with perhaps a red feather, a well-made blanket wound up and strapped over one shoulder like a scarf, a red sash for the waist, a cloak or great-coat strapped up and worn like a knapsack, and a spare shirt and a pair of trousers are all the outfit that you require. You had better take a good rifle with you, and of course a pair of pistols. All the clothes you can buy out there, and also a sword, for no doubt Garibaldi will put you on his staff.”

“In that case I shall not want the rifle, mother.”

“No; and if you do you can buy one there. In a town like Genoa there are sure to be shops where English rifles can be bought, and you might have difficulty in passing one through the customs – luggage is rigorously examined on the frontier and at the ports. A brace of pistols, however, would be natural enough, as any English traveller might take them for protection against brigands if he intended to go at all out of beaten tracks. As to the money, I shall go to the bank on Monday, and request them to give me bills on some firm in Genoa or Turin. Garibaldi will find no difficulty in getting them cashed. I should say that your best course will be to go through Paris and as far as the railway is made, then on by diligence over Mont Cenis to Turin, and after that by railway to Genoa. In that way you will get there in three or four days, whereas it would take you a fortnight by sea.”

“Then it seems to me, mother, that there is nothing at all for me to get before I start, except a brace of pistols; but of course I must have my clothes up from Harrow.”

“I will write for them at once, Frank. It would be better that you should not go down – you would find it difficult to answer questions put to you as to why you are leaving; and of course this enterprise of Garibaldi must be kept a profound secret. One cannot be too prudent in a case like this, for if a whisper got abroad the Italian government would be compelled to stop him.”

“You will not see Beppo here when you come back,” Mrs. Percival said to Frank on Monday evening. “I gave him notice this afternoon.”

“What for, mother? Anyhow, I am not sorry, for I have never liked him.”

“I know that you have not, Frank, and I begin to think that you were right. My maid said to me this morning that, though she did not like to speak against a fellow-servant, she thought it right to tell me that when I am out of the house and before I get up of a morning he is often in the drawing-room and dining-room, in neither of which he has any business; and that when she went up yesterday evening – you know that she is a very quiet walker – she came upon him standing outside the drawing-room door when we were chatting together, and she thought, though of this she was not quite sure, that he had his ear at the keyhole. He knocked and came in the instant he saw her, as if he had only that moment arrived there; but she had caught sight of him before he saw her, and was certain that he was listening.

“Of course, she might have been mistaken; but thinking it over, it seems to me that she was probably right, for once or twice since he has been here, it has struck me that the papers in my cabinet were not in precisely the same order as I had left them. You know that I am very methodical about such matters; still, I might each time, when I took them out, have omitted to return them in exactly the same order as before, though I do not think it likely that I could have done so. However, I thought nothing of it at the time; but now that I hear that he has been spying about the rooms and listening at the door, I cannot but connect the two things together, and it may be that the man has been acting as an agent for the Neapolitan government. You know, when we were talking the matter over on Saturday, my mother suggested that it was possible that the courier had been in league with the brigands. Possibly he may also be an agent of the government; and there was so great a stir made at that time that I cannot regard it as impossible, knowing how she and I are heart and soul with the Italian patriots, that he was sent over to watch us.”

“I think it not only possible but probable,” Signora Forli put in. “I know that in Italy the police have spies in every household where they suspect the owner of holding liberal opinions; and knowing that our house was frequented by so many exiles, they may have very well placed this man here. I regret now that at the time this man came over at your mother’s request, we listened to his plausible tale and took him into our service, but I had not at that time any strong suspicions that the attack on your father was a preconcerted one, and I should hardly have mentioned the idea to your mother had it occurred to me. However, it is of no use thinking over that now; the great point is to consider how it will affect your plan.”

“In what way, signora?” Frank asked in surprise; and Mrs. Percival added, “I don’t see what you mean, mother.”

“I mean this, dear: if this man is a spy, you may be quite sure that he has had false keys made, by which he can open your cabinet, your drawers, and your writing-desk. It is quite probable that he knows Garibaldi’s handwriting, for, knowing that the general was a great friend of your father, he would almost certainly be furnished with a specimen of it; and, if that was the case, we may take it for granted that wherever you put any letter from Garibaldi, he would get at it and read it. That in itself can do comparatively little harm, for rumours of the general’s proposed expedition are already current. But he will know that, immediately on receipt of that letter, you sent for Frank. Doubtless there are other Neapolitan spies over here, and every movement you have made since will, in that case, have been watched, and you will have been seen to go to the bank to-day. It is not likely that they would know how much we have drawn out, for your conversation was with the manager in his private room; but knowing your devotion to Garibaldi’s cause, they might well suppose that the amount would be a considerable one. We have made no secret of the fact that Frank will start the day after to-morrow to travel in Italy for a time; and he will guess that Frank is the bearer of this money to Garibaldi – possibly, as it seems that he listened at the doors, he may even have heard you tell Frank how much you were going to send. Yesterday evening we were talking over how the bills had best be concealed, and he may have heard that also; if he did, you may be pretty sure that they will never reach Garibaldi, unless our plans for their concealment are changed.”

“You frighten me, mother.”

“I don’t know that there is anything to be frightened about,” the signora said. “I do not for a moment suppose that he contemplates any actual attack upon Frank; though he will, I am convinced, try to get the money – partly, no doubt, for its own sake, partly because its loss would be a serious blow to Garibaldi. After the disappearance of his grandfather, and the commotion there was over the death or disappearance of his father, an attack upon Frank would appear to be a sequel of these affairs, and would cause such general indignation that the ministry would take the matter up in earnest, and the result would be far more disastrous for the government of Naples than could be caused by any amount of money reaching Garibaldi, whom they must regard as an adventurer who could give them some trouble, but who could not hope for success. Therefore, I do not think that there is any danger whatever of personal injury to Frank; but I do think there is grave fear that the money will be stolen on the way. If our suspicions are well founded as to Beppo, no doubt two or three of these agents will travel with him. If he stops to sleep at an hotel, his room would be entered and his coat carried off; he may be chloroformed when in a train and searched from head to foot; his baggage may be stolen on the way, but that would only be the case if they do not find the bills on his person or where we agreed last night to hide them.”

“I dare not let him go,” Mrs. Percival said, in a trembling voice.

“Why, mother,” Frank said almost indignantly, “you don’t suppose, now that I am warned, I shall be fool enough to let these fellows get the best of me? I will carry a loaded pistol in each pocket; I will not sleep in an hotel from the time I start till I have handed the bills to Garibaldi, and will take care always to get into a carriage with several other passengers. If I hadn’t had fair warning, I dare say I should have been robbed; but I have no fear whatever on the subject now that we have a suspicion of what may occur. But if you think it would be safer, I do not see why you could not send the bills by post to an hotel at Genoa.”

Signora Forli shook her head. “That would not do,” she said. “You do not know what these Neapolitan spies are capable of. If they find that you have not the money with you, they would follow you to your hotel at Genoa, bribe the concierge there to hand over any letter that came addressed to you, or steal it from the rack where it would be placed, while his attention was turned elsewhere. However, I have an old friend at Genoa, the Countess of Mongolfiere; we exchange letters two or three times a year. She is, of course, a patriot. I will, if your mother agrees with me, enclose the bills in an envelope addressed to you, put that in another with a letter saying that you will call at her house when you arrive at Genoa, and request her to hand the letter to you. I will say that it vitally concerns the cause, and beg her to place it under lock and key in some safe receptacle until you arrive.”

“That is an excellent idea, mother,” Mrs. Percival said, “and would seem to meet the difficulty.”

Frank rose from his seat quietly, stepped noiselessly to the door, and suddenly threw it open. To his surprise his mother’s maid was sitting in a chair against it, knitting.

“It is all right, Hannah,” he said, as she started to her feet. “I did not know you were there. I thought that fellow might be listening again,” and he closed the door.

“I asked her to sit there this evening, Frank,” Mrs. Percival said. “I knew that we should be talking this matter over, and thought it better to take the precaution to ensure our not being overheard.”

“Quite right, mother; I am glad you did so. Then you think that that plan will answer?”

“Yes, I think so; but you must be sure and take care of yourself, just as if you had the money about you.”

“That I will, mother; you can rely upon that.”

“And above all,” Signora Forli said, “you must beware, when you go to the Countess for the money, that you take every possible precaution. Call in the daytime, go in a carriage and drive straight from her place to the Villa Spinola; better still, go first to Garibaldi, tell him where the money is, and ask him to send three of his officers to your hotel on the following morning. Then take a carriage, drive to the Countess’s, and take it to the general with four of you in the carriage. They would not dare to attack you in broad daylight.”

“That is an excellent plan,” Mrs. Percival said, in a tone of great relief. “Certainly, if they do manage to search him on the way, and find that he has not got the bills upon him, they will watch him closely at Genoa, where, no doubt, they will get the assistance of some of Francisco’s agents. There are sure to be plenty of them in Genoa at present; but however many of them there may be, they would not venture to attack in daylight four men driving along what is no doubt a frequented road, more especially as they would know that three of them were Garibaldi’s men, which is as much as to say desperate fellows, and who would, no doubt, like yourself, be armed with pistols.”

“We had better take one more precaution,” Signora Forli said. “It is believed that you are going to start on Thursday morning. Your packing can be done in five minutes; and I think that it would be a good plan for you to have everything ready to-night, and send Mary out for a hansom to-morrow morning, so that you could, when it comes up to the door, go straight down, get into it, and drive to the station. I don’t say that they might not be prepared for any sudden change of our plans; but at least it would give you a chance of getting a start of them that they can never recover – at any rate, not until you get to Paris.”

“How could they catch me there?” Frank said.

“Francisco’s agents here might telegraph to his agents in Paris, and they might be on the look-out for you when you arrived, and take the matter up. You were going viâ Calais. Let me look at the Bradshaw.”

“Yes,” she said, after examining its pages; “the train for the tidal boat leaves at the same time as the Dover train. If, when you get into the cab, you say out loud, ‘Victoria,’ so that Beppo may hear it, you can then, when once on your way, tell the cabman to take you to Charing Cross. In that way, if there is any one on the look-out when the Calais train comes in, they will be thrown altogether off the scent.”

“It seems ridiculous, all these precautions,” Frank said, with a laugh.

“My dear, no precautions are ridiculous when you have Francisco’s agents to deal with. Now, I will write my letter to the Countess at once, so that she may get it before your arrival there. You will, of course, go out and post it yourself.”