When they had concluded, the young leader held out his hand to them.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I ask your pardon for the roughness with which you have been treated, and shall never forgive myself for having without sufficient inquiry condemned you to death.

It will be a lesson to me never to judge by appearances in future.

I knew the countess well before her marriage.

Her estates are but a few miles distant from my own, and I last saw her some three years since, when she was there with her husband and daughters.

By the way," he said carelessly, "what are their names ?" Dick instantly repeated them.
"Right," the Pole answered.