Blythe and the little girl were sitting, somewhat apart from the others, on the long bench by the hatchway where Cecilia had first laid siege to the Count's affections, and Blythe was allowing the child to look through the large end of her field-glass,--a source of endless entertainment to them both. Suddenly Cecilia gave a little shriek of delight at the way her good friend, Mr. Grey, dwindled into a pigmy; upon which the Count, attracted apparently by her voice, left his chair and came and sat down beside them.
As he lifted his hat, with a polite "_Permetta, Signorina_," Blythe noticed, for the first time on the whole voyage, that he was without his gloves. Perhaps the general humanising of his attitude, through intercourse with the child, had caused him to relax this little point of punctilio.
Cecilia, meanwhile, had promptly climbed upon his knee, and now, laying hold of one of the ungloved hands, she began twisting a large seal ring which presented itself to her mind as a pleasing novelty. Presently her attention seemed arrested by the device of the seal, and she murmured softly, "_Fideliter_."
Blythe might not have distinguished the word as being Latin rather than Italian, had she not been struck by the change of countenance in the wearer of the ring. He turned to her abruptly, and asked, in French:
"No," Blythe answered, thankful that she was not obliged to muster her "conjugations" for the emergency!
There was a swift interchange of question and answer between the old man and the child, of which Blythe understood but little. She heard Cecilia say "Mamma," in answer to an imperative question; the words "_orologio_" and "_perduto_" were intelligible to her. She was sure that the crest and motto formed the subject of discussion, and it was distinctly borne in upon her that the same device--a mailed hand and arm with the word _Fideliter_ beneath it--had been engraved on a lost watch which had belonged to the child's mother. But it was all surmise on her part, and she could hardly refrain from shouting aloud to Mr. Grey, standing over there, in dense unconsciousness, to come quickly and interpret this exasperating tongue, which sounded so pretty, and eluded her understanding so hopelessly.