"It will be, of course, a great loss to Casa Udeschini, when you marry," he remarked.

Beatrice looked up, astonishment on her brow.

"When I marry?" she exclaimed. "Well, if ever there was a thunderbolt from a clear sky!"

And she laughed.

"Yes-when you marry," the Cardinal repeated, with conviction. "You are a young woman—you are twenty-eight years old. You will, marry. It is only right that you should marry. You have not the vocation for a religious. Therefore you must marry. But it will be a great loss to the house of Udeschini."

"Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof," said Beatrice, laughing again. "I haven't the remotest thought of marrying. I shall never marry."

"Il ne faut jamais dire a la fontaine, je ne boirai pas de ton eau," his Eminence cautioned her, whilst the lines of humour about his mouth emphasised themselves, and his grey eyes twinkled. "Other things equal, marriage is as much the proper state for the laity, as celibacy is the proper state for the clergy. You will marry. It would be selfish of us to oppose your marrying. You ought to marry. But it will be a great loss to the family—it will be a great personal loss to me. You are as dear to me as any of my blood. I am always forgetting that we are uncle and niece by courtesy only."

"I shall never marry. But nothing that can happen to me can ever make the faintest difference in my feeling for you. I hope you know how much I love you?" She looked into his eyes, smiling her love. "You are only my uncle by courtesy? But you are more than an uncle—you have been like a father to me, ever since I left my convent."

The Cardinal returned her smile.

"Carissima," he murmured. Then, "It will be a matter of the utmost importance to me, however," he went on, "that, when the time comes, you should marry a good man, a suitable man—a man who will love you, whom you will love—and, if possible, a man who will not altogether separate you from me, who will perhaps love me a little too. It would send me in sorrow to my grave, if you should marry a man who was not worthy of you."

"I will guard against that danger by not marrying at all," laughed Beatrice.

"No—you will marry, some day," said the Cardinal. "And I wish you to remember that I shall not oppose your marrying—provided the man is a good man. Felipe will not like it—Guido will pull a long nose—but I, at least, will take your part, if I can feel that the man is good. Good men are rare, my dear; good husbands are rarer still. I can think, for instance, of no man in our Roman nobility, whom I should be content to see you marry. Therefore I hope you will not marry a Roman. You would be more likely to marry one of your own countrymen. That, of course, would double the loss to us, if it should take you away from Italy. But remember, if he is a man whom I can think worthy of you, you may count upon me as an ally."

He resumed his walk, reopening his Breviary.

Beatrice resumed her needlework. But she found it difficult to fix her attention on it. Every now and then, she would leave her needle stuck across its seam, let the work drop to her lap, and, with eyes turned vaguely up the valley, fall, apparently, into a muse.

"I wonder why he said all that to me?" was the question that kept posing itself.

By and by the Cardinal closed his Breviary, and put it in his pocket. I suppose he had finished his office for the day. Then he came and sat down in one of the wicker chairs, under the awning. On the table, among the books and things, stood a carafe of water, some tumblers, a silver sugar-bowl, and a crystal dish full of fresh pomegranate seeds. It looked like a dish full of unset rubies. The Cardinal poured some water into a tumbler, added a lump of sugar and a spoonful of pomegranate seeds, stirred the mixture till it became rose-coloured, and drank it off in a series of little sips.

"What is the matter, Beatrice?" he asked, all at once.

Beatrice raised her eyes, perplexed.

"The matter—? Is anything the matter?"

"Yes," said the Cardinal; "something is the matter. You are depressed, you are nervous, you are not yourself. I have noticed it for many days. Have you something on, your mind?"

"Nothing in the world," Beatrice answered, with an appearance of great candour. "I had not noticed that I was nervous or depressed."

"We are entering October," said the Cardinal. "I must return to Rome. I have been absent too long already. I must return next week. But I should not like to go away with the feeling that you are unhappy."

"If a thing were needed to make me unhappy, it would be the announcement of your intended departure," Beatrice said, smiling. "But otherwise, I am no more unhappy than it is natural to be. Life, after all, is n't such a furiously gay business as to keep one perpetually singing and dancing—is it? But I am not especially unhappy."

"H'm," said the Cardinal. Then, in a minute, "You will come to Rome in November, I suppose?" he asked.

"Yes—towards the end of November, I think," said Beatrice.

The Cardinal rose, and began to walk backwards and forwards again.

In a little while the sound of carriage-wheels could be heard, in the sweep, round the corner of the house.

The Cardinal looked at his watch.

"Here is the carriage," he said. "I must go down and see that poor old woman.... Do you know," he added, after a moment's hesitation, "I think it would be well if you were to go with me."

A shadow came into Beatrice's eyes.

"What good would that do?" she asked.

"It would give her pleasure, no doubt. And besides, she is one of your parishioners, as it were. I think you ought to go. You have never been to see her since she fell ill."

"Oh—well," said Beatrice.

She was plainly unwilling. But she went to put on her things.

In the carriage, when they had passed the village and crossed the bridge, as they were bowling along the straight white road that led to the villa, "What a long time it is since Mr. Marchdale has been at Ventirose," remarked the Cardinal.

"Oh—? Is it?" responded Beatrice, with indifference.

"It is more than three weeks, I think—it is nearly a month," the Cardinal said.

"Oh—?" said she.

"He has had his hands full, of course; he has had little leisure," the Cardinal pursued. "His devotion to his poor old servant has been quite admirable. But now that she is practically recovered, he will be freer."

"Yes," said Beatrice.

"He is a young man whom I like very much," said the Cardinal. "He is intelligent; he has good manners; and he has a fine sense of the droll. Yes, he has wit—a wit that you seldom find in an Anglo-Saxon, a wit that is almost Latin. But you have lost your interest in him? That is because you despair of his conversion?"

"I confess I am not greatly interested in him," Beatrice answered. "And I certainly have no hopes of his conversion."

The Cardinal smiled at his ring. He opened his snuffbox, and inhaled a long deliberate pinch of snuff.

"Ah, well—who can tell?" he said. "But—he will be free now, and it is so long since he has been at the castle—had you not better ask him to luncheon or dinner?"

"Why should I?" answered Beatrice. "If he does not come to Ventirose, it is presumably because he does not care to come. If he does care to come, he needs no invitation. He knows that he is at liberty to call whenever he likes."

"But it would be civil, it would be neighbourly, to ask him to a meal," the Cardinal submitted.

"And it would put him in the embarrassing predicament of having either to accept against his will, or to decline and appear ungracious," submitted Beatrice. "No, it is evident that Ventirose does not amuse him."

"Bene," said the Cardinal. "Be it as you wish."

But when they reached Villa Floriano, Peter was not at home.

"He has gone to Spiaggia for the day," Emilia informed them.

Beatrice, the Cardinal fancied, looked at once relieved and disappointed.

Marietta was seated in the sun, in a sheltered corner of the garden.

While Beatrice talked with her, the Cardinal walked about.

Now it so happened that on Peter's rustic table a book lay open, face downwards.

The Cardinal saw the book. He halted in his walk, and glanced round the garden, as if to make sure that he was not observed. He tapped his snuff—box, and took a pinch of snuff. Then he appeared to meditate for an instant, the lines about his mouth becoming very marked indeed. At last, swiftly, stealthily, almost with the air of a man committing felony, he slipped his snuff-box under the open book, well under it, so that it was completely covered up.

On the way back to Ventirose, the Cardinal put his hand in his pocket.

"Dear me!" he suddenly exclaimed. "I have lost my snuff box again." He shook his head, as one who recognises a fatality. "I am always losing it."

"Are you sure you had it with you?" Beatrice asked.

"Oh, yes, I think I had it with me. I should have missed it before this, if I had left it at home. I must have dropped it in Mr. Marchdale's garden."

"In that case it will probably be found," said Beatrice.

Peter had gone to Spiaggia, I imagine, in the hope of meeting Mrs. O'Donovan Florence; but the printed visitors' list there told him that she had left nearly a fortnight since. On his return to the villa, he was greeted by Marietta with the proud tidings that her Excellency the Duchessa di Santangiolo had been to see her.

"Oh—? Really?" he questioned lightly. (His heart, I think, dropped a beat, all the same.)

"Ang," said Marietta. "She came with the most Eminent Prince Cardinal. They came in the carriage. She stayed half an hour. She was very gracious."

"Ah?" said Peter. "I am glad to hear it."

"She was beautifully dressed," said Marietta.

"Of that I have not the shadow of a doubt," said he.

"The Signorina Emilia drove away with them," said she.

"Dear, dear! What a chapter of adventures," was his comment.

He went to his rustic table, and picked up his book.

"How the deuce did that come there?" he wondered, discovering the snuff box.

It was, in truth, an odd place for it. A cardinal may inadvertently drop his snuff box, to be sure. But if the whole College of Cardinals together had dropped a snuff box, it would hardly have fallen, of its own weight, through the covers of an open book, to the under-side thereof, and have left withal no trace of its passage.

"Solid matter will not pass through solid matter, without fraction—I learned that at school," said Peter.

The inference would be that someone had purposely put the snuff box there.

But who?

The Cardinal himself? In the name of reason, why?

Emilia? Nonsense.

Marietta? Absurd.

The Du—

A wild surmise darted through Peter's soul. Could it be? Could it conceivably be? Was it possible that—that—was it possible, in fine, that this was a kind of signal, a kind of summons?

Oh, no, no, no. And yet—and yet—

No, certainly not. The idea was preposterous. It deserved, and (I trust) obtained, summary deletion.

"Nevertheless," said Peter, "it's a long while since I have darkened the doors of Ventirose. And a poor excuse is better than none. And anyhow, the Cardinal will be glad to have his snuff."

The ladder-bridge was in its place.

He crossed the Aco.



XXVIII

He crossed the Aco, and struck bravely forward, up the smooth lawns, under the bending trees, towards the castle.

The sun was setting. The irregular mass of buildings stood out in varying shades of blue, against varying, dying shades of red.

Half way there, Peter stopped, and looked back.

The level sunshine turned the black forests of the Gnisi to shining forests of bronze, and the foaming cascade that leapt down its side to a cascade of liquid gold. The lake, for the greater part, lay in shadow, violet-grey through a pearl-grey veil of mist; but along the opposite shore it caught the light, and gleamed a crescent of quicksilver, with roseate reflections. The three snow-summits of Monte Sfiorito, at the valley's end, seemed almost insubstantial—floating forms of luminous pink vapour, above the hazy horizon, in a pure sky intensely blue.

A familiar verse came into Peter's mind.

"Really,"' he said to himself, "down to the very 'cataract leaping in glory,' I believe they must have pre-arranged the scene, feature for feature, to illustrate it." And he began to repeat the vivid, musical lines, under his breath...

But about midway of them he was interrupted.

"It's not altogether a bad sort of view—is it?" a voice asked, behind him.

Peter faced about.

On a marble bench, under a feathery acacia; a few yards away, a lady was seated, looking at him, smiling.

Peter's eyes met hers—and suddenly his heart gave a jump. Then it stood dead still for a second. Then it flew off, racing perilously. Oh, for the best reasons in the world. There was something in her eyes, there was a glow, a softness, that seemed—that seemed... But thereby hangs my tale.

She was dressed in white. She had some big bright-yellow chrysanthemums stuck in her belt. She wore no hat. Her hair, brown and warm in shadow, sparkled, where the sun touched it, transparent and iridescent, like crinkly threads of glass.

"You do not think it altogether bad—I hope?" she questioned, arching her eyebrows slightly, with a droll little assumption of concern.

Peter's heart was racing—but he must answer her.

"I was just wondering," he answered, with a tolerably successful feint of composure, "whether one might not safely call it altogether good."

"Oh—?" she exclaimed.

She threw back her head, and examined the prospect critically. Afterwards, she returned her gaze to Peter, with an air of polite readiness to defer to his opinion.

"It is not too sensational? Not too much like a landscape on the stage?"

"We must judge it leniently," said he; "we must remember that it is only unaided Nature. Besides," he added, "to be meticulously truthful, there is a spaciousness, there is a vivacity in the light and colour, there is a sense of depth and atmosphere, that we should hardly find in a landscape on the stage."

"Yes—perhaps there is," she admitted thoughtfully.

And with that, they looked into each other's eyes, and laughed.

"Are you aware," the lady asked, after a brief silence, "that it is a singularly lovely evening."

"I have a hundred reasons for thinking it so," Peter answered, with the least approach to a meaning bow.

In the lady's face there flickered, perhaps, for half a second, the faintest light, as of a comprehending and unresentful smile. But she went on, with fine detachment

"How calm and still it is. The wonderful peace of the day's compline. It seems as if the earth had stopped breathing—does n't it? The birds have already gone to bed, though the sun is only just setting. It is the hour when they are generally noisiest; but they have gone to bed—the sparrows and the finches, the snatchers and the snatched-from, are equal in the article of sleep. That is because they feel the touch of autumn. How beautiful it is, in spite of its sadness, this first touch of autumn—it is like sad distant music. Can you analyse it, can you explain it? There is no chill, it is quite warm, and yet one knows somehow that autumn is here. The birds know it, and have gone to bed. In another month they will be flying away, to Africa and the Hesperides—all of them except the sparrows, who stay all winter. I wonder how they get on during the winter, with no goldfinches to snatch from?"

She turned to Peter with a look of respectful enquiry, as one appealing to an authority for information.

"Oh, they snatch from each other, during the winter," he explained. "It is thief rob thief, when honest victims are not forthcoming. And—what is more to the point—they must keep their beaks in, against the return of the goldfinches with the spring."

The Duchessa—for I scorn to deceive the trustful reader longer; and (as certain fines mouches, despite my efforts at concealment, may ere this have suspected) the mysterious lady was no one else—the Duchessa gaily laughed.

"Yes," she said, "the goldfinches will return with the spring. But isn't that rather foolish of them? If I were a goldfinch, I think I should make my abode permanent in the sparrowless south."

"There is no sparrowless south," said Peter. "Sparrows, alas, abound in every latitude; and the farther south you go, the fiercer and bolder and more impudent they become. In Africa and the Hesperides, which you have mentioned, they not infrequently attack the caravans, peck the eyes out of the camels, and are sometimes even known to carry off a man, a whole man, vainly struggling in their inexorable talons. There is no sparrowless south. But as for the goldfinches returning—it is the instinct of us bipeds to return. Plumed and plumeless, we all return to something, what though we may have registered the most solemn vows to remain away."

He delivered his last phrases with an accent, he punctuated them with a glance, in which there may have lurked an intention.

But the Duchessa did not appear to notice it.

"Yes—true—so we do," she assented vaguely. "And what you tell me of the sparrows in the Hesperides is very novel and impressive—unless, indeed, it is a mere traveller's tale, with which you are seeking to practise upon my credulity. But since I find you in this communicative vein, will you not push complaisance a half-inch further, and tell me what that thing is, suspended there in the sky above the crest of the Cornobastone—that pale round thing, that looks like the spectre of a magnified half-crown?"

Peter turned to the quarter her gaze indicated.

"Oh, that," he said, "is nothing. In frankness, it is only what the vulgar style the moon."

"How odd," said she. "I thought it was what the vulgar style the moon."

And they both laughed again.

The Duchessa moved a little; and thus she uncovered, carved on the back of her marble bench, and blazoned in red and gold, a coat of arms.

She touched the shield with her finger.

"Are you interested in canting heraldry?" she asked. "There is no country so rich in it as Italy. These are the arms of the Farfalla, the original owners of this property. Or, seme of twenty roses gules; the crest, on a rose gules, a butterfly or, with wings displayed; and the motto—how could the heralds ever have sanctioned such an unheraldic and unheroic motto?

Rosa amorosa, Farfalla giojosa, Mi cantano al cuore La gioja e l' amore.

They were the great people of this region for countless generations, the Farfalla. They were Princes of Ventirose and Patricians of Milan. And then the last of them was ruined at Monte Carlo, and killed himself there, twenty-odd years ago. That is how all their gioja and amore ended. It was the case of a butterfly literally broken upon a wheel. The estate fell into the hands of the Jews, as everything more or less does sooner or later; and they—if you can believe me—they were going to turn the castle into an hotel, into one of those monstrous modern hotels, for other Jews to come to, when I happened to hear of it, and bought it. Fancy turning that splendid old castle into a Jew-infested hotel! It is one of the few castles in Italy that have a ghost. Oh, but a quite authentic ghost. It is called the White Page—il Paggio Bianco di Ventirose. It is the ghost of a boy about sixteen. He walks on the ramparts of the old keep, and looks off towards the lake, as if he were watching a boat, and sometimes he waves his arms, as if he were signalling. And from head to foot he is perfectly white, like a statue. I have never seen him myself; but so many people say they have, I cannot doubt he is authentic. And the Jews wanted to turn this haunted castle into an hotel... As a tribute to the memory of the Farfalla, I take pains to see that their arms, which are carved, as you see them here, in at least a hundred different places, are remetalled and retinctured as often as time and the weather render it necessary."

She looked towards the castle, while she spoke; and now she rose, with the design, perhaps, of moving in that direction.

Peter felt that the moment had come for actualities.

"It seems improbable," he began,—"and I 'm afraid you will think there is a tiresome monotony in my purposes; but I am here again to return Cardinal Udeschini's snuff box. He left it in my garden."

"Oh—?" said the Duchessa. "Yes, he thought he must have left it there. He is always mislaying it. Happily, he has another, for emergencies. It was very good of you to trouble to bring it back."

She gave a light little laugh..

"I may also improve this occasion," Peter abruptly continued, "to make my adieux. I shall be leaving for England in a few days now."

The Duchessa raised her eyebrows.

"Really?" she said. "Oh, that is too bad," she added, by way of comment. "October, you know, is regarded as the best month of all the twelve, in this lake country."

"Yes, I know it," Peter responded regretfully.

"And it is a horrid month in England," she went on.

"It is an abominable month in England," he acknowledged.

"Here it is blue, like larkspur, and all fragrant of the vintage, and joyous with the songs of the vintagers," she said. "There it is dingy-brown, and songless, and it smells of smoke."

"Yes," he agreed.

"But you are a sportsman? You go in for shooting?" she conjectured.

"No," he answered. "I gave up shooting years ago."

"Oh—? Hunting, then?"

"I hate hunting. One is always getting rolled on by one's horse."

"Ah, I see. It—it will be golf, perhaps?"

"No, it is not even golf."

"Don't tell me it is football?"

"Do I look as if it were football?"

"It is sheer homesickness, in fine? You are grieving for the purple of your native heather?"

"There is scarcely any heather in my native county. No," said Peter, "no. To tell you the truth, it is the usual thing. It is an histoire de femme."

"I 'might have guessed it," she exclaimed. "It is still that everlasting woman."

"That everlasting woman—?" Peter faltered.

"To be sure," said she. "The woman you are always going on about. The woman of your novel. This woman, in short."

And she produced from behind her back a hand that she had kept there, and held up for his inspection a grey-and-gold bound book.

"MY novel—?" faltered he. (But the sight of it, in her possession, in these particular circumstances, gave him a thrill that was not a thrill of despair.)

"Your novel," she repeated, smiling sweetly, and mimicking his tone. Then she made a little moue. "Of course, I have known that you were your friend Felix Wildmay, from the outset."

"Oh," said Peter, in a feeble sort of gasp, looking bewildered. "You have known that from the outset?" And his brain seemed to reel.

"Yes," said she, "of course. Where would the fun have been, otherwise? And now you are going away, back to her shrine, to renew your worship. I hope you will find the courage to offer her your hand."

Peter's brain was reeling. But here was the opportunity of his life.

"You give me courage," he pronounced, with sudden daring. "You are in a position to help me with her. And since you know so much, I should like you to know more. I should like to tell you who she is."

"One should be careful where one bestows one's confidences," she warned him; but there was something in her eyes, there was a glow, a softness, that seemed at the same time to invite them.

"No," he said, "better than telling you who she is, I will tell you where I first saw her. It was at the Francais, in December, four years ago, a Thursday night, a subscription night. She sat in one of the middle boxes of the first tier. She was dressed in white. Her companions were an elderly woman, English I think, in black, who wore a cap; and an old man, with white moustache and imperial, who looked as if he might be a French officer. And the play—."

He broke off, and looked at the Duchessa. She kept her eyes down.

"Yes—the play?" she questioned, in a low voice, after a little wait.

"The play was Monsieur Pailleron's 'Le monde ou l'on s'ennuie'," he said.

"Oh," said she, still keeping her eyes down. Her voice was still very low. But there was something in it that made Peter's heart leap.

"The next time I saw her," he began...

But then he had to stop. He felt as if the beating of his heart must suffocate him.

"Yes—the next time?" she questioned.

He drew a deep breath. He began anew—

"The next time was a week later, at the Opera. They were giving Lohengrin. She was with the same man and woman, and there was another, younger man. She had pearls round her neck and in her hair, and she had a cloak lined with white fur. She left before the opera was over. I did not see her again until the following May, when I saw her once or twice in London, driving in the Park. She was always with the same elderly Englishwoman, but the military-looking old Frenchman had disappeared. And then I saw her once more, a year later, in Paris, driving in the Bois."

The Duchessa kept her eyes down. She did not speak.

Peter waited as long as flesh-and-blood could wait, looking at her.

"Well?" he pleaded, at last. "That is all. Have you nothing to say to me?"

She raised her eyes, and for the tiniest fraction of a second they gave themselves to his. Then she dropped them again.

"You are sure," she asked, "you are perfectly sure that when, afterwards, you met her, and came to know her as she really is—you are perfectly sure there was no disappointment?"

"Disappointment!" cried Peter. "She is in every way immeasurably beyond anything that I was capable of dreaming. Oh, if you could see her, if you could hear her speak, if you could look into her eyes—if you could see her as others see her—you would not ask whether there was a disappointment. She is... No; the language is not yet invented, in which I could describe her."

The Duchessa smiled, softly, to herself.

"And you are in love with her—more or less?" she asked.

"I love her so that the bare imagination of being allowed to tell her of my love almost makes me faint with joy. But it is like the story of the poor squire who loved his queen. She is the greatest of great ladies. I am nobody. She is so beautiful, so splendid, and so high above me, it would be the maddest presumption for me to ask her for her love. To ask for the love of my Queen! And yet—Oh, I can say no more. God sees my heart. God knows how I love her."

"And it is on her account—because you think your love is hopeless—that you are going away, that you are going back to England?"

"Yes," said he.

She raised her eyes again, and again they gave themselves to his. There was something in them, there was a glow, a softness ...

"Don't go," she said.

Up at the castle—Peter had hurried down to the villa, dressed, and returned to the castle to dine—he restored the snuff-box to Cardinal Udeschini.

"I am trebly your debtor for it," said the Cardinal.

THE END