“I don’t care.  I’m sick of the Contessa.  A plague upon her, and all her houses.  Yet, I wish her nothing worse than that she should marry Paolo.  Ugh!  A man with his hair en brosse!”

“Probably he is saying, ‘Ugh! a boy with curls on his collar.’”

“May one of his old balloons fly away with him, before he shoots me.  Anyhow, he shall find that curls don’t make a coward.  Only—­there’s just one thing before you treat with him.  I won’t—­I can’t—­be jabbed at with anything sharp.”

“You shan’t,” said I.

With this, the Contessa beckoned from a distance, with news that she was going home.  We followed, the Boy and I, allowing her to walk far ahead, with her triumphant aeronaut, the Baron and Baronessa, radiant with satisfaction in the success of their plot, arm in arm between the two couples.

Having seen my little Daniel to the gate of the Lions’ Den, I shook hands cordially with everybody, Paolo last of all.  He placed his fingers with haughty reluctance in my ostentatiously proffered palm, but I held the four chilly, fish-like things (chilly only for me) long enough to mutter, sotto voce:  “I want a word with you on a matter of importance.  I’ll walk up and down the road for twenty minutes.”

His impulse was to refuse, I could see by the sharp upward toss of his chin.  But a certain quality in my look, clearly visible to him in the light of the gate lamp (I was at some pains to produce the effect), warned him that if his bloodthirsty plans were not to be nipped in the red bud, he must bend his will to mine in this one instance.

He answered with a glance, and I knew that I should not be kept long on my beat.

CHAPTER XXII

An American Custom

     “Oh, have it your own way; I am too old a hand to argue
     with young gentlemen, . . .  I have too much experience,
     thank you.”—­R.L.  STEVENSON.

Five minutes, ten minutes passed, after the farewells.  Then, as I sauntered by on the other side of the way, I heard the sound of a foot on gravel, and Paolo di Nivoli appeared under the gate light.  There he paused, expecting me to cross to him, but I allotted him the part of Mahomet and selected for myself that of the Mountain.  Shrugging his square shoulders, he came striding over the road to me; and I had scored one small victory.  I hoped that I might take it for an omen.

“I do not understand the nature of this appointment, Monsieur,” began the Italian.  “I intended to send my friend Captain de Sales to you to——­”

“Ah, yes, that is the Continental way in these little affairs,” I ventured to interrupt him coolly.  “On our side of the Channel we are rather ignorant on such matters, I fear.  But my young friend Mr. Laurence is an American.”

“Do you mean that he will refuse to fight, after insulting me?” asked Paolo, bristling.