"A man can't know his wife too well," observed the Captain. "Come, let me go and communicate my wishes to Count Andrea."
"What? Why, you only met me for the first time last night!"
"That you had previously fallen in love with the Countess of Fieramondi? For your own sake and ours too--"
"That's very true," admitted the Captain. "I must wait a little, I suppose."
"You must wait to tell Andrea that you love me, but--"
"Precisely!" cried the Captain. "There is no reason in the world why I should wait to tell you."
And then and there he told her again in happiness the story which had seemed so tragic when it was wrung from him in the shepherd's hut.
"Undoubtedly, I am a very fortunate fellow," he cried, with his arm round Lucia's waist. "I come to this village by chance. By chance I am welcomed here instead of having to go to the inn. By chance I am the means of rescuing a charming lady from a sad embarrassment. I am enabled to send a rascal to the right-about. I succeed in preserving my papers. I inflict a most complete and ludicrous defeat on that crafty old fellow, Guillaume Sévier! And, by heaven! when I do what seems the unluckiest thing of all, when, against my will, I fall in love with my dear friend's wife, when my honour is opposed to my happiness, when I am reduced to the saddest plight--why, I say, by heaven, she turns out not to be his wife at all! Lucia, am I not born under a lucky star?"
"I think I should be very foolish not to--to do my best to share your luck," said she.
"I am the happiest fellow in the world," he declared. "And that," he added, as though it were a rare and precious coincidence, "with my conscience quite at peace."
Perhaps it is rare, and perhaps the Captain's conscience had no right to be quite at peace. For certainly he had not told all the truth to his dear friend, the Count of Fieramondi. Yet since no more was heard of Paul de Roustache, and the Countess's journey remained an unbroken secret, these questions of casuistry need not be raised. After all, is it for a man to ruin the tranquillity of a home for the selfish pleasure of a conscience quite at peace?
But as to the consciences of those two very ingenious young ladies, the Countess of Fieramondi, and her cousin, Countess Lucia, the problem is more difficult. The Countess never confessed, and Lucia never betrayed, the secret. Yet they were both devout! Indeed, the problem seems insoluble.