"Ah, that would indeed be, next to my own marriage with her, the most
fortunate thing that could happen to myself."

"How? I don't understand!"

"Why, if my cousin has so abjured his birthright, and forsworn his rank;
if this heritage, which is so dangerous from its grandeur, pass, in case
of his pardon, to some obscure Englishman,--a foreigner, a native of a
country that has no ties with ours, a country that is the very refuge of
levellers and Carbonari--/mort de ma vie!/ do you think that such would
not annihilate all chance of my cousin's restoration, and be an excuse
even in the eyes of Italy for formally conferring the sequestrated
estates on an Italian? No; unless, indeed, the girl were to marry an
Englishman of such name and birth and connection as would in themselves
be a guarantee (and how in poverty is this likely?) I should go back to
Vienna with a light heart, if I could say, 'My kinswoman is an
Englishman's wife; shall her children be the heirs to a house so renowned
for its lineage, and so formidable for its wealth?' /Parbleu!/ if my
cousin were but an adventurer, or merely a professor, he had been
pardoned long ago. The great enjoy the honour not to be pardoned
easily."

Randal fell into deep but brief thought. The count observed him, not
face to face, but by the reflection of an opposite mirror. "This man
knows something; this man is deliberating; this man can help me," thought
the count.

But Randal said nothing to confirm these hypotheses. Recovering from his
abstraction, he expressed courteously his satisfaction at the count's
prospects, either way. "And since, after all," he added, "you mean so