“Know her!” said Harry, “I only arrived here yesterday; besides I did not want to know her: it might not have been pleasant for her. We watched her safe out of reach; indeed we went on till we heard a door shut where she lived, I suppose. No, it was not for that. It was to say that if the fellow complained, or brought any action, or anything of that sort--I wanted you, Sir, being the representative of England, to know the real facts. That is how it was.”
There was a smile about the Vice-Consul’s mouth. “As it happens I have heard about it already,” he said. “I’ll speak to you farther on the subject by-and-bye--Don’t be alarmed, it will do you no harm; sit down and rest yourself, and wait for a few minutes. I am going in to lunch presently, and I’ll talk to you then,” the Vice-Consul said. Harry did not know what to think. The consequences could not be very bad, since this great functionary restrained a smile; but there was evidently a second chapter to the adventure. Harry withdrew as he was directed to the other end of the office, and there stood gazing at railway timetables, and pictures of ships. There was all about a line of vessels to America from Genoa which had lately been established, just the very thing for him if he intended to do what he had been thinking of. But Harry scarcely knew what he was looking at. All these questions seemed things of the past. What was the Vice-Consul going to say to him? What was to come of it? Till he knew this he could not think of anything else.
A door in the Vice-Consul’s office opened into a long passage with a row of windows on one side, which communicated with his house. When the hour came at which, after the comfortable fashion of leisurely Italian towns, the office was shut up for the midday meal, the Vice Consul made Harry an amiable sign to follow. He led him through this passage, which looked upon a courtyard full of plants, where a fountain trickled in the sunshine, into a large cool room with all its _jalousies_ closed, and in which for a minute or two he saw nothing. He was being introduced into a sort of enchanted country it seemed, unlike anything he had ever known or thought of; the tiled floor was almost covered with soft rugs, according to a fashion not then known in England, and the furniture dimly discerned in the gloom, was like rocks at sea to the stranger who had no chart of the confused and intricate passage. Something white in a corner, something which moved a little when they came in, was all he saw, and he could not make out even what that was till his eyes had got accustomed to the light. Then he perceived with a great tremor and shock of shyness that it was a lady, a slight girl in a white dress who looked up to nod to her father, then seeing a second figure behind him, rose hastily with a shy grace. Harry was still more shy than she was. He was not accustomed to the society of ladies. And he was dreadfully hungry, having had nothing but that dry bread and coffee, a circumstance which made him still more depressed and timid. He did not at all know why he was introduced so suddenly into this other world. He thought he was only going to an inner office, or perhaps--but that was a blessedness he dared scarcely hope for--that the Consul in his kindness had meant to give him some luncheon. But the drawing-room confused him wholly; he had done nothing to merit such an introduction. He only half took in accordingly the meaning of the words the Consul said, “Look here, Rita, I have brought your champion of last night.”