He smiled faintly, and wiped his forehead with a large white handkerchief.
"If I should go to America," he observed, "I should greatly desire to visit the locality where women like you live and die unmarried."
"Oh, for that matter, you can't miss them," I replied laughingly: "they're common from Maine to California. Spinsterhood is an outgrowth of our Declaration of Independence--'liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'"
"But, really, I desire to know the name of the place where you live: I am sure it will interest me greatly. Will you not write it for me?" And he offered me a blank card.
"Oh, certainly, but I don't understand why."
"I may possibly go and see your aunt Edith and tell her I saw you on the top of a mountain. Perhaps you would like to send her a message?"
"Well, if you see her," I replied in the same tone, moving away, "tell her I haven't forgotten to beware of foreigners."
"Just one more word," he entreated, following me. "Is your aunt Edith, Edith Mack?"
"Yes, but how should you know?" and in that moment it flashed upon my mind like sudden daybreak. "And you are--" I stammered.
"A man who has loved her many a year. To-morrow I leave Vienna for England, to sail for New York. I cannot say more to you now than that I begin to see my way through a sad, sad mystery. Here is my card. Adieu!"
The bright glow left in the atmosphere by the brilliant sunset had quite died away, but it was light enough for me to read the superscription: "LE CHEVALIER ACHILLE ROMA."
I walked back to my lodgings in a manner probably quite sane to other people, although the distance was compassed by myself in a condition of complete unconsciousness as to how. Like the phantasmagoria of fated events swept before my mind the train of complicated circumstances that had led to my finding Aunt Edith's lost lover. And the beautiful romance at the end had resulted from my having disregarded her warning to "beware of foreigners."
There is not much more to tell. I left Baden at the end of the month, and returned to Paris. Six weeks later I had a letter from Aunt Edith urging me to come home for her wedding, which would take place prior to the holidays. The Chevalier Roma had long since become convinced that his "friend," the consul at Rome, was the key to the whole mischief, but his suspicions in that direction came too late for him to regain a clue to Aunt Edith. Several letters sent to her name at New York of course had never reached her. The surest and quickest way to accomplish his desire, to prove to the heart he had through so many years cherished how true and loyal had been his allegiance, how deep and sincere his love, was the one he had chosen and acted upon with such alacrity.