Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/308

Rh As he spoke, he tore a leaf out of a pocket-book in which his circular notes had been sent from the yacht, and wrote with its pencil a few rapid lines; they were simply, in German:

",—I am in pressing need. Send me at nightfall two of the fastest horses you have; let some boy ride them who cannot speak a word of Italian, and wait with them, unseen, in the cypress grove under the monastery of Taverna—wait all night till he sees me. Do no more than I ask, for God's sake. I know I need not say grant my request; our alliance is too old and too sure. Forgive all that sounds strange and vague in this, and send me simply word, 'yes' or 'no' by the Savoyard.

"Yours ever,

"."

Men of his temperament make firm and warm friendships amongst men. The Hungarian noble to whom he wrote, and who, as he had remembered, occupied a villa some dozen miles from the wastes in which he stood, was a generous, reckless man of pleasure, who, he knew well, would have done far greater things than this at his entreaty, and would