"If knowledge be power," soliloquized Randal, "ability is certainly good
luck, as Miss Edgeworth shows in that story of Murad the Unlucky, which I
read at Eton; very clever story it is, too. So nothing comes amiss to
me. Violante's escape, which has cost me the count's L10,000, proves to
be worth to me, I dare say, ten times as much. No doubt she'll have a
hundred thousand pounds at the least. And then, if her father have no
other child, after all, or the child he expects die in infancy, why, once
reconciled to his Government and restored to his estates, the law must
take its usual course, and Violante will be the greatest heiress in
Europe. As to the young lady herself, I confess she rather awes me;
I know I shall be henpecked. Well, all respectable husbands are. There
is something scampish and ruffianly in not being henpecked." Here
Randal's smile might have harmonized well with Pluto's "iron tears;" but,
iron as the smile was, the serious young man was ashamed of it. "What am
I about," said he, half aloud, "chuckling to myself and wasting time,
when I ought to be thinking gravely how to explain away my former
cavalier courtship? Such a masterpiece as I thought it then! But who
could foresee the turn things would take? Let me think; let me think.
Plague on it, here she comes."

But Randal had not the fine ear of your more romantic lover; and, to his
great relief, the exile entered the room unaccompanied by Violante.
Riccabocca looked somewhat embarrassed.

"My dear Leslie, you must excuse my daughter to-day; she is still
suffering from the agitation she has gone through, and cannot see you."

The lover tried not to look too delighted.