had tried ever so hard to forget that I had once
had the honour of meeting her, it would not
have been possible for me to do so. On that
day, I first learned the change in my fortunes."

Miss Colonna smiled, and put out her hand.

"Then I insist on being forgiven," she said.
"I will not consent to be the one disagreeable
episode in so bright a story."

"But I can't forgive you twice over," replied
Saxon, bashfully, scarcely daring to touch the
tips of her delicate fingers.

"Which means, that you had done so already?
Thank you. Now we must be friends; and you
shall come and talk to my father, who is deeply
interested in your free and beautiful country.
Would that our own beloved Italy were half so
happy!"

With this she took Saxon's arm, and they
crossed over to where her father and Major
Vaughan were sitting in earnest conversation.

In the mean while, Lord Castletowers was
wishing himself in Saxon's place, and thinking
how gladly he would have given the best hunter
in his stables to be so wronged, and so solicited,
by Olimpia Colonna.

   CHAPTER XXVI. THE OCTAGON TURRET

GIULIO COLONNA was never so immersed in
political labours as during these eight weeks
that he and his daughter had been staying at
Castletowers. He sat all day, and sometimes
more than half the night, at his desk, answering
letters, drawing up declarations and addresses,
and writing fiery pamphlets in Italian, French,
and English. Olimpia helped him for many
hours each day, often rising at dawn to correct
his proofs, and decipher his secret
correspondence. Every now and then, a special
messenger would come down from London by
the mid-day express; or a batch of telegraphic
despatches arrived, full of secret information
in cypher, or so worded to be unintelligible to all
save the receiver. And sometimes Lord
Castletowers, after a hasty summons to the octagon
turret, would order out his black mare, and,
laden with messages, gallop over to the station
as furiously as if the very lives of his guests
depended on his speed.

Then Lady Castletowers would look after
him with a little deprecating smile; and, turning
to the morning visitor who might happen to
be sitting with her at the time, would say
something about her poor, dear friend, Signor
Colonna, and those foolish intrigues in which he
still persisted in taking so much interest; or
would, perhaps, let fall a word of half-implied
regret that her son, the Earl, whose English
politics were so thoroughly unexceptionable,
should yet suffer himself to be attracted by the
romance of this so-called "Italian cause."

But the intrigues went on nevertheless; and
her ladyship, who was quite satisfied if Signor
Colonna showed himself at the dinner-table,
and Olimpia spent her evenings in the drawing-
room, little dreamed that that room in the
octagon turret was the focus of a fast-coming
revolution. Fearful things—things that would
have frozen the bluest blood in her ladyship's
veins—were being done daily under her very
roof. Strategical operations were mapped out,
and military proclamations translated, by the
hand of her own son. Subscriptions to the
cause poured in by every post. Revolutionary
commissions in embryo revolutionary regiments
were countersigned by Colonna, and despatched
in her ladyship's own post-bag, under cover to
all kinds of mysterious Smiths and Browns in
different quarters of London; and as for musket-
money, it was a marvel that the very cheques
which accumulated in her house did not explode,
and reduce the place to ashes.

A great storm was really brewing, and the
leaven of resistance was at work among the
masses of Southern Italy. An insurrection had
already broken out at Palermo; but it had
hitherto attracted no very serious notice in
London or Paris. Honourable members attended
to it but slightly, as a mere formidable riot,
or a salutary warning to sovereigns who
misgoverned their subjects and neglected the advice
of their neighbours. But Giulio Colonna, in his
little room at Castletowers, knew well enough
how to interpret the first faint mutterings of
that distant thunder. He knew where it would
break out next, and where the first shaft of the
lightning would fall. His own pen was the
conductor—his own breath the wind by which
the storm-clouds were driven.

Yet Colonna was no soldier. A braver
man never lived; but the sword was not his
weapon. A student in his youth, a delicate
man at his prime, he was born for the cabinet,
and not the camp. Bodies need brains as much,
and sometimes more, than they need hands;
and Colonna was the brain of his party. He
was never more useful to his friends, he was
never more formidable to his enemies, than
when bending over his desk, pale and sleepless,
and never weary.

The Earl of Castletowers had described his
friend rightly when he spoke of him as a man of
antique virtue. His virtues were precisely of
the antique type—so precisely that his detractors
ranked some of them but little above vices.
In his creed, as in the creed of the Roman
citizen during the great days of the Republic,
the love of country held the highest place.
Italy was his God. To serve her, he thankfully
accepted privation, contumely, personal danger,
banishment, and oppression. To serve her, he
stooped to beg, to dissimulate, to mask hatred
with smiles, and contempt with courtesy. To
say that he was ready at any moment to lay
down his own life for Italian liberty was to say
nothing. He was ready to sacrifice his daughter,
like Jephtha; or his dearest friends; or his
good repute; or innocent blood, if innocent
blood were the indispensable condition of
success. These were indeed antique virtues—
virtues that had nothing in common with the
spirit of Christian chivalry. His worst enemies
could not deny that Giulio Colonna was a hero,
and a patriot. His bitterest slanderers never
hinted a doubt of his sincerity. But it was a