At first, Mrs. Cayley-Binns and her daughter (spelt Alys) had looked from afar off at the magnificent villa of this notable hostess, and had read enviously the paragraphs in London and Riviera papers describing her entertainments, not missing one of the long list of names attached. Then one day they had come across the name of Miss Constantia Sutfield, a woman who had been governess to a royal princess. Morton Cayley, M. D., their distant cousin, had cured Miss Sutfield of a malady pronounced fatal by other physicians with fewer letters after their names. He was unfortunately a very distant cousin; but when he was young Mrs. Cayley-Binns' late husband had lent him money, and he had been so grateful that she had always felt entitled to speak of him openly as "dear cousin Morton, the great physician, you know, whom all the royalties love." She wrote promptly and begged him for a letter of introduction to Miss Sutfield, who was living above the lower levels of Mentone, at the Annonciata. The letter came and was sent to Miss Sutfield, after Mrs. Cayley-Binns had increased her expenses at the Hotel Victoria Palace, by taking better rooms and a private salon. She had heard it said that the lady inquired of hall porters, before presenting her visiting cards, on which floor were the apartments of her would-be acquaintances, and whether they had their own sitting-room. Miss Sutfield, who always talked of the princess (now a queen) whom she had governed as "dear little Mousie," called in her most stately manner upon Sir Morton's cousins. She was chilling at first, icily regular as "Maud" herself, using the full power of that invaluable manner which had kept Mousie hypnotized for years, both as princess and queen. The cold museum of her memory, full of stately echoings from palaces of kings, was opened for the Cayley-Binns' benefit as show-houses are thrown open to the humble public. She wore a majesty of air which, to the Cayley-Binns and others who had never "been to court" or to country house parties except in the pages of Society novels, seemed peculiarly distinctive of the peerage. She warmed slightly, however, when in some turn of the conversation Mrs. Cayley-Binns mentioned knowing "that Miss Grant, who is engaged to poor Prince Giovanni Della Robbia." Seeing that she had inadvertently struck a vein of ore, Mrs. Cayley-Binns ventured to hint that the family of the Prince was known to her also. She was wisely a little mysterious about the acquaintance, and contrived to pique the interest of Miss Sutfield by vague and desperately involved allusions. When she begged the lady's good offices in the matter of a card for Lady Meason's next Casino tea, the favour was promised. The card came for mother and daughter, who met nobody during the early part of the entertainment, except a journalist who kindly pointed out notabilities—a good-natured man who confessed hating so intensely to hurt people's feelings that he invented for his "society" articles new pink, white or green frocks for girls who were too often obliged to appear in their old blue ones, during the season. Later, however, Miss Sutfield swept toward them like a large yacht under full sail, and regretted that her friend Miss Idina Bland had been prevented from appearing, on account of a sharp attack of influenza.

"She's staying with me at the Annonciata," Mousie's friend explained; "a charming creature, so uncommon, lately come into a tremendous lot of money, I believe, through some relative in America she nursed till the end. She wanted to have a talk with you both, when I told her you knew the Duke of Rienzi's family. They're cousins of hers in some way. She seems keen to hear about this Miss Grant. But everybody wants to hear about her! Would you like to come to quite a small intimate sort of lunch party at Lady Meason's, and meet Miss Bland when she gets well, and let us have a nice little cozy gossip about this quaint engagement?"

Mrs. Cayley-Binns was enchanted. The one difficulty lay in the scantiness of her information. She made up her mind, however, like a good general, that the difficulty must somehow be overcome, and accepted without visible hesitation. Before she left the Casino she invited the journalist to call, with the intention of pumping him, as he seemed to know everything about everybody of importance, and might have details to impart concerning Prince Vanno Della Robbia. Also, on the way home she bought an "Almanach de Gotha," and made herself familiar with the family history of the Dukes of Rienzi, since the year 1215, when the title first came into being.

Naturally, when the moment arrived, and everybody at Lady Meason's table was looking eagerly at Mrs. Cayley-Binns—hitherto insignificant—she felt forced to say something worth saying about Miss Grant. She swallowed hard, choked in a crumb, hastily sipped the excellent champagne Lady Meason gave at her second-best parties, and recovering herself said that "well, really, what she knew was almost too shocking to tell." There was a Frenchman, good-looking, evidently a sort of gentleman, in the train with Miss Grant when she was travelling from England. They had pretended to be strangers, but had evidently known each other well, as several little signs crossing on the boat, and later, had "given away." Since then, this man had followed Miss Grant to Monte Carlo, and the Cayley-Binns had seen him talking to her most earnestly in a retired corner of the biggest room at the Casino. Not (Mrs. Cayley-Binns hastened to interpolate) that she was in the habit of taking her daughter to the Casino at Monte Carlo, or of going often herself, but occasionally if with friends she did "just walk through the Rooms, on a Concert day." Others, whose word could not be doubted, had said that the Frenchman, an artist, had got into difficulties at the Casino and had obtained money from Miss Grant, some of it in the form of cheques, which he had boasted of and shown everywhere. Of course he must be a detestable creature; but that fact did not excuse Miss Grant's friendship with him; rather the contrary. And even if he were a blackmailer, why, there must be some foundation for the blackmail; otherwise there would be no object in paying to have a secret kept—whatever it might be. Then there ensued a good deal of discussion as to the nature of the secret, provided it existed; and Mrs. Cayley-Binns talked eloquently though discreetly with Miss Bland about the latter's "interesting Roman relatives." She admitted to Prince Vanno's cousin that she had not "exactly been at Rome, or at Monte Della Robbia, though she had travelled in Italy"; but she "thought it must have been in Cairo" that she had met the Prince. He was so much in the East, was he not? And she too had been in the East. (It was not necessary to state that it had been in an excursion steamer which allowed three days for Cairo, three for Constantinople.) The dear Prince might possibly not remember her name, but she would never forget him, he was so handsome and agreeable, such a romantic figure in the world; and Alys was quite in love with his profile.

In the end, she discovered that Miss Bland was far more interested in the elder brother than the younger, and in Prince Della Robbia's wife rather than in Prince Vanno's fiancee; but it was too late to construct an acquaintance, however slight, with the former; and certainly Miss Bland had seemed interested in the details concerning Mary Grant. The girl's name had struck her particularly, it appeared. She repeated it several times over, saying, "Mary Grant—Mary Grant. I didn't know her name was Mary." And Miss Bland had the air of being puzzled, as if there was something in the name—a very common sort of name—which perplexed her.

Luckily Mrs. Cayley-Binns and Alys were sure that the name was Mary. They had seen it on a cheque, payable at a Monte Carlo bank, which Miss Grant by request had given to a bazaar for a Mentone charity. Of course people like that often were charitable; and in such persons it was more selfish than generous when you came to think of it, as charity was supposed to cover a multitude of sins.

Everywhere the engagement was talked of, for it was considered extraordinary and hardly allowable that an eccentric, sensational sort of girl about whose early career nobody knew anything should have "gobbled up" a young man whose name was known throughout Europe. There were only a few who went about saying that she was worthy of her Prince; Dick Carleton, who was loyal, though heartbroken; Jim Schuyler, who wondered always why Mary Grant's face was closely associated in his mind with his cousin Molly Maxwell's; Major Norwood, who rejoiced that Mary was appropriated, because the Maharajah of Indorwana would now see the uselessness of lingering at Monte Carlo; and Captain Hannaford, who said rather loudly wherever he went that the Roman chap was a d——d lucky fellow.

The Dauntreys said nothing at all on the subject. If they had opinions they had ceased to count, for more people every day were dropping even Lord Dauntrey. There had been a scene at a hotel, where Lady Dauntrey had struck Miss Collis in the face with her muff, for refusing to bow to her. A pink paper in London had printed a verse describing the scene, which everybody saw and talked about and laughed at. The paying guests all, or almost all, left the Villa Bella Vista after this, and—it was said—tradesmen were refusing supplies. The servants were gone or going; Lady Dauntrey had to do her own work or leave it undone; but still Lord Dauntrey was continually in the Casino, his wife hovering restlessly in the background. Even the Holbeins gave them up, and Lady Dauntrey was sometimes seen with the Frenchman who boasted of receiving Miss Grant's cheques. He was supposed to be introducing amateurs to Lord Dauntrey, as fresh "victims" for the system.

As for Mary, she was out of the exotic atmosphere of gossip and scandal and system-mongering. It would have surprised her extremely if she had been told that whole luncheon parties at villas, and tea-parties at second-rate hotels, thrived and battened on talk concerning her affairs, past, present, and to come. She was so happy that she felt often as if she loved everybody in the world, and longed to make everybody else as happy, or almost as happy, as she.

For two days after meeting the Princess Della Robbia she was thoughtful, and a little absent-minded even with Vanno; but when his brother and sister-in-law came together to call upon her, Marie appeared so light-hearted, so entirely at ease, that Mary began to regain her spirits again. It was foolish to feel sad and anxious, almost conscience-stricken, about Marie, if Marie had none of these feelings about herself.

Then Mrs. Winter gave a large "At Home" in Miss Grant's honour, which was a great success. Marie did not come, because she was unfortunately suffering with headache; but Prince Della Robbia appeared, and stood most of the time near Mary and Vanno.

It was wonderful how many people knew and liked the Winters. All the most interesting "personages" on the Riviera passed through Rose's pretty rooms that afternoon, if but to say "How do you do?" and "Goodbye," and make the acquaintance of Prince Vanno, with the Princess-to-be. Everybody came, from a dowdy and perfectly charming German royalty down to poor old General Caradine, who had played roulette for twenty-five years, with the same live Mexican toad for a fetish; whose two great boasts were that he had learned the language of birds, and that he had fought a duel with a man for defaming Queen Mary of Scots. There were an English Foreign Secretary and a leader of the Opposition hobnobbing together. There was an author who wrote under two names, and had come to study Monte Carlo in order to write two epoch-making novels, one in favour of the Casino, one against, and was taking notes of everybody he met, for both books. There was an Austrian princess who had more beautiful jewels than any woman at Monte Carlo, except a celebrated dancer who was taking a rest cure at the Hotel de Paris; and there was the princess' half-sister who had married a poor artist and lived in his house in the mountains, doing her own cooking. Also there were all Rose's queer black sheep who yielded meekly to her ribbon-wreathed crook, though they "butted" against George's methods. Some of these were seriously shorn sheep, yet Rose would not for worlds have hurt their feelings by forgetting to invite them.

It was a marvellously incongruous assemblage, as most large and far-reaching entertainments at Monte Carlo must be; and odd things happened in corners behind tea-tables, such as young gamblers producing large wads of notes freshly won in the Rooms and flourishing them under the eyes of ladies who tabooed the name of the Casino. But there was no gossip, no scandal: for somehow in "St. George" Winter's house one felt warmly disposed even to one's enemies; and no unkind words were spoken by any one except General Caradine. He, who had a habit of mumbling his secret thoughts aloud unconsciously, was heard to mutter: "Same old crew: same dull lot, year after year, world without end. Damned tired of 'em!"

This party cleared the air for Mary. Engaged to Prince Vanno Della Robbia, approved by his elder brother, and the guest of the popular Winters, those who counted in the great world were quite ready to forget that she had been "rather talked about," or else to like her all the better for that reason. It was only the people who were on the fringe of things, like Mrs. Cayley-Binns, or beyond the pale, like Mrs. Holbein or Lady Dauntrey, who bitterly remembered her eccentricities.

The day after Rose's "At Home" for Miss Grant was Mary's last as the Winters' guest. Princess Della Robbia wanted her at the Villa Mirasole, and Vanno wished her to go. He had written to tell the Duke of his engagement; and as his father begged him to come home and talk it over, he thought of leaving soon, for three or four days. He felt that, if he must part from Mary, he would like her to be at his brother's house.

While Rose's maid obligingly packed her things, Mary went out on that last afternoon for a walk with Vanno. He had a special object in view, it seemed, but intended it to be a surprise.

First, he took her to the rock of the tablet, "Remember eternal at my heart." It was early, and fashionable folk were still lingering over their luncheons at the restaurants, therefore the two had the long road, in curve after curve of dusty whiteness, all to themselves, as if hour and place were both their own.

"It was here we first spoke to each other," Vanno said, "here where another man of Italy who loved a girl of your country had the great moment of his life to remember. Something made me speak to you at this spot. Perhaps where love has been—everlasting love—it leaves an influence always, something stronger and more eternal and far more subtle than words carved in a tablet of marble or stone. Who can tell about such things in life, things that are in life yet beyond and behind it, where we can catch only whispers of a message and a mystery? Perhaps it was the influence of that other love which made me speak in spite of myself—for I hadn't meant to speak. I wanted to tell you here, dearest one, cara, carissima, how I love you—how my love for you is 'eternal at my heart' and my soul—all there is of me."

He took both her hands, and when his eyes had said again to her eyes what his lips had just spoken, they both looked up at the words on the marble tablet.

"If those two who loved each other return in spirit sometimes together," Vanno said, "I think they must have been here the day when we first met at this spot, and that they are here again now. If they see us they know why we have come, and they are glad and pleased with us, like two lovers who 'make a match' between dear friends."

"It is a beautiful thought of yours," Mary answered; "and it seems so real that I can almost see those lovers. But remember the story—how they were parted forever on this earth. Do you know, I feel almost—just a tiny bit—superstitious. I mean about our coming here especially to make a vow of eternal love to each other. What if we, too, should be parted?"

"Darling, nothing can part us," Vanno assured her, "because love has made our hearts one, now and forever. You and I have belonged to each other since time began, through hundreds of earth-lives perhaps, and thousands of vicissitudes: always finding one another again. A little while ago, a cloud came between us, and it seemed as if we might be swept away from one another; but it passed, and we found each other and ourselves, in the light, far above cloudline. That's why I say, nothing can part us now, not even death. And as for this tablet of two parted lovers, it wasn't put up to commemorate their sorrows, but their happiness; and so it can bring us only happiness."

"Look!" Mary exclaimed, standing back a little from the mule path which descended there, and pressing closer under the rock of the tablet. Winding down the path came a little procession, a few peasants bareheaded, dressed in black, clean and piteous in their neatness. The women were silently crying, tears wet on their brown cheeks, their eyes red. The men, two who were old and two who were young, carried a very small, roughly made bier, on which was a tiny coffin almost covered with flowers, and wild, scented herbs of the mountains. Their thick boots clattered on the cobblestones, but they made no other sound, and none raised their eyes as they went by. It was as if the lovers were invisible to them, as though they were of a different order of being which the sad eyes were not fitted to see.

As the procession defiled upon the main road, at the foot of the mule path it paused a moment. Though the mourners did not see him, Vanno took off his hat and stood with it held rather high above his head, in his right hand, as is the custom with all Latin men for the passing of a funeral. The driver of a landau that climbed the hill, and a chauffeur driving an automobile down toward the lower Corniche, paid the same reverence to the little coffin, giving right of way to the procession before moving on. The funeral turned in the direction of Roquebrune, and Mary and Vanno guessed that it was going to the church there, and the cure. But in the landau which had waited was a pretty young bride and a tall-hatted bridegroom, with bridesmaid and "best man." They were evidently beginning the honeymoon, which would consist of a long drive in wedding finery and flowers, then a dinner, and perhaps the grand finale of a dance. At sight of the funeral coming out from the mule path and passing directly in front of their horses, the bride let fall her huge bouquet, and regardless of tulle veil and fluffy laces, cast herself into her husband's arms, hiding her face on his shoulder.

"Quel mauvais signe!" muttered the driver, as he put on his much paraffined silk hat, settled his wedding boutonniere in its place, and drove on at a trot.

Mary looked up at Vanno without speaking, but her eyes, saddened by the sorrow of others, asked a question.

"'In the midst of life!'" Vanno quoted. "But it is not a bad sign for us or for any one. And even if we were superstitious, we saw the wedding last."



XXX

Vanno's "surprise" for Mary was a beautiful piece of land which he wanted to buy for her, in order to have a home where they might come sometimes, and spend a few weeks alone together in the country where they had first met and loved each other.

The ground that he had set his heart upon was close to the cure's garden, and it belonged to Achille Gonzales. Already, at Vanno's request, the cure had interviewed both Achille and the older Gonzales. An appointment had been made for three o'clock, and the cure was to have introduced the two rich peasants, father and son, to the Prince; but owing to the procession which Vanno and Mary had seen, he was not able to keep his engagement. And rather strangely, Mary's host had been prevented by much the same reason, from accepting Vanno's invitation to meet him "on the land" a little later. He too had a funeral service that day, but a very different funeral, and one which oppressed "St. George" Winter with a peculiar sadness. Death, as a rule, did not seem sad to him; but he had a horror of the habit of gambling, which appeared to his eyes like an incubus on a man's life, a dead albatross hung round the neck to rot. And this man who had died and was to be buried in the cemetery at Monaco had been a gambler for thirty years. He and his faded wife had existed rather than lived in a third-class hotel, where they kept on the same rooms year after year, never going away in the summer unless, if exceptionally prosperous, to spend a few of the hottest weeks in the mountains. Their tiny rooms were given them at a cheap rate because the man brought clients to the hotel, "amateurs" who wished to learn his great system, the system to whose perfecting he had devoted thirty years. He had advertised himself, and almost believed in himself, as "le roi de la roulette," who for payment of two louis would impart to any one the secret of unlimited wealth. Ignoring failure, pursuing success, his own tiny fortune, his wife's youth, had gone. And as his body went to the grave the whole record of his life—thousands of roulette cards in neat packets, innumerable notebooks containing the great secret—lay waiting for the dustman. The man's wife in preparing to leave Monte Carlo forever had turned all his treasures out of the trunks where through years they had accumulated, and had them flung into a huge dust bin kept for the waste things of the hotel kitchen. This George Winter knew, for the woman had boasted bitterly of the last revenge she meant to take. "'Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.' Let all be swept away and forgotten," she had said; and the words haunted the chaplain, mourning through his brain like the voice of the tideless sea that moaned ceaselessly under his study window.

He longed to go back to Rose and be cheered by her into hopefulness, to have her assure him in her warm, loving way that he was doing some good in this strange place of brilliant gayety and black tragedy; that his work was not all in vain, though so often he likened it to the task of Sisyphus. But he found Dick Carleton with Rose, and their faces told him that there was no hope of comfort.

"Oh, St. George, poor Captain Hannaford is dead!" were Rose's first words as her husband came into the drawing-room. Then she was sorry that she had flung the news at him so abruptly, for just too late she read in his eyes the wistful need of consolation.

"Dead!" he echoed, almost stupidly. He had liked Hannaford, and had often invited him to play chess in the evenings, hoping with unconquerable optimism to "wean him from the Casino." The quiet man, with his black patches, his calm manner and slow smile as unreadable as the eyes of the Sphinx, had seemed to George Winter a curiously tragic yet mysteriously attractive figure. "Hannaford dead!" he repeated slowly.

"I only just heard," Dick explained. "I was down at my hangar tinkering with the Flying Fish, for, you know, I'm taking her to Cannes to-morrow. Poor Hannaford's hotel isn't far away, and he used to stroll over and talk to me sometimes. The manager knew that, and sent a boy to ask me to come in at once. He didn't say what the matter was, except that something had happened to Hannaford. It seems that lately he's been in the habit of sleeping through the whole morning, giving orders that he wasn't to be disturbed till he rang. So when there were no signs of him to-day at lunch time nobody worried. It was only when two o'clock came and he hadn't stirred that the valet de chambre began to think it queer. They have glass transoms over the doors, and they could see his room was dark. I expect they listened at the keyhole; anyhow, the landlord was consulted at last, and when they'd knocked and called without getting any answer, at last they opened the door. Luckily nobody was about at that time of day—every one out of doors or in the Casino, so there was no scene. Hannaford was lying as if asleep in bed, but stone cold; and the doctor they sent for said he must have been dead for hours. In his hand was a volume of Omar Khayyam, with a faded white rose for a book marker. There was a bottle half full of veronal tabloids on the table by the bedside; and he was known to be in the habit of taking veronal, as he was a bad sleeper. One hopes it was simply—an overdose, taken accidentally."

"Why should any one suspect the contrary?" Winter asked, his kind voice sharpened by distress.

Dick was silent, looking at Rose.

"Come and sit by me, dear," she said, holding out her hand to her husband. He came, sinking down on the sofa with a sense of relief, for he had been conscious of a weakness in the knees, as if on entering the room he had stumbled blindly against a bar of iron.

"Dick and I had just got to that part, when you opened the door," Rose went on. "We are afraid—you said yourself that Captain Hannaford was changed, the last time he came here."

"Only three days ago," George mused aloud. "He didn't look well. But he said he was all right."

"He would! You know how he hated to talk of himself or anything he felt, poor fellow. But I thought even then—I guessed——"

"What?"

"That it was a blow to him, hearing of Mary Grant's engagement." As she said this, Rose carefully did not look at her cousin. She was not at all anxious about Dick. She knew that he would "get over it," and even prophesied to herself that his heart would be "caught in the rebound" by the first very pretty, very nice girl who happened to be thrown with him in circumstances at all romantic. Mary was not his first love by any means, and would certainly not be his last; and meanwhile Rose felt that unconsciously he was enjoying his own jealous pain. Still, she did not wish to "rub it in." "We both imagined that Captain Hannaford was in love with Miss Grant," she explained; for one had to explain these things to George. She often thought it a wonder that he had come down to earth long enough to fall in love, himself; but when she observed this to him, he had answered that it was not coming down to earth.

"We were most of us more or less in that condition," Dick remarked bravely.

"The rest of you have a great deal left to live for, even without her," said Rose. "Captain Hannaford hadn't. But I'm thankful they're not likely, anyhow, to prove that his death was not—an accident."

"They don't go out of their way to prove such things here, ever," Dick mumbled.

"People will say," Rose pursued, "that there was no motive for suicide—nothing to worry about. He'd won heaps of money, and seemed very keen on the villa he'd bought."

"By Jove, I wonder what'll happen to that unlucky villa now!" Carleton exclaimed. "Somehow, Hannaford didn't seem the sort of chap to bother about wills and leaving all his affairs nice and tidy in case anything happened."

"He told me once that he had no people—that he was entirely alone," said George. "Still, he must have had friends, friends far more intimate than those he made here. Even we were no more than acquaintances. He gave us no confidence."

"I can't imagine his confiding in any one," Rose said. "But—I'm not at all sure whether it's a coincidence or not: a letter has just come by the afternoon post, for Mary Grant, in his handwriting. It has an Italian stamp, and is post-marked Ventimiglia. Probably he wrote it yesterday, at the Chateau Lontana, knowing it wouldn't get to her till this afternoon, as the posts from Italy are so slow."

"How strange!" George exclaimed. "Strange, and very sad."

"The letter hadn't been in the house five minutes, when Dick came in with the news of his death."

George's eyes, which appeared always to see something mysteriously beautiful behind people's heads, fixed themselves on vacancy that did not seem to be vacant for him. "Hannaford was there in his house alone yesterday, writing to Miss Grant," he murmured. "How little he thought that when she read his letter he would be in another world."

"I wonder?" Rose whispered. "It is long after five. Mary will be coming in soon. Then, perhaps, we shall know."



XXXI

Dick Carleton had gone before Vanno brought Mary back to the Winters' flat. Unconsciously he was enjoying his heartbreak. It was satisfactory to prove the depth and acuteness of his own feelings, for sometimes he had feared that he might not be capable of a great love, a love in the "grand manner," such as swept off their feet men in the novels and plays which women adored. Now he believed himself to be in the throes of such a love and was secretly proud of his passion, but the pain of seeing Prince Vanno with Mary was rather too real, too sharp for analytical enjoyment; and when he could, Dick avoided twisting the knife in his wound.

Rose and George Winter had been alone together only for a few minutes, and there had been no time to decide upon any plan of action, when Mary and Vanno came in.

The girl was looking radiant, for in the excitement of bargaining for land she had forgotten, not the little procession to which men lifted their hats, but the heavy sense of impending loss it had laid upon her heart. Rose thought that she had never seen Mary in such beauty. She seemed to exhale happiness; and the fancy flashed through the mind of the older woman that the girl's body was like a transparent vase filled to its crystal brim with the wine of joy and life. To tell the news of Hannaford's death would be to pour into the vase a dark liquid, and cloud the opalescent wine. Still, Mary must be told, and it would be better, safer, for her to know before she opened the letter with the Italian postmark; otherwise something written there might come upon her with a shock. Rose and her husband glanced at one another. Each was hoping that the other would find a way to begin.

Mary had come to feel very happily at home with the Winters in the short time she had spent with them; and often at night when she dreamed of being at the Villa Bella Vista she waked thankfully, with a sense of escape from something unknown yet vaguely terrible. She could talk with Rose and George Winter as with old friends, and Vanno too had the feeling of having known them both for a long time.

They began to tell of their adventures with the Gonzales family at Roquebrune, and Rose caught at the excuse to put off the moment she dreaded.

"It was such fun up there!" Mary exclaimed. "I'd no idea that one bought land by the square yard, or metre; but it's the way here, apparently; and Vanno's going to give that handsome young man who's engaged to your maid twelve francs a metre for his terrain, although there's no road to it. But really that's a great advantage according to the father, a large yellow old man with no hair to speak of, and only one tooth, round which his words seem to eddy as water eddies round a stone in a pool. It was fascinating to watch! We're to have crowds of fireflies, because there'll be no motor dust; and the saying among the peasants is that the mouches brillantes search always with their lanterns, for a lost brother. And birds will 'se coucher dans les roses chez nous.' Isn't that a darling expression? Think of having birds go to bed in your roses! So you see, the land's quite worth the twelve francs, because there's no road; and I almost hope there'll never be one, for Vanno and I shan't want to come down often from our castle in the air, where the view's so wonderful. There's no water there yet; but the most fun of all to-day was the water-diviner the old Gonzales brought. He squatted on the ground, holding an immense silver watch by a chain—a little gnome of a man with a huge head thatched with gray hair. As he swung his watch, tendons in his throat worked as chicken's claws do scratching for worms; and whenever his watch began to swing violently it meant that he was over a spring. He found three springs within a few yards of each other, so we've only to dig, and get torrents of water."

"I'm sure you were children in the hands of those shrewd peasants," said Rose, "unless your friend the cure was with you."

"No, he wasn't, but he sent a man to translate the patois, for the old Gonzales can't speak much French; and it was lucky we had this man to take our part, because of a big caroubier-tree on the place which belongs to a distant cousin of the Gonzales, and has been in his family for generations. Vanno must buy it separately, otherwise the owner will have a right to come and beat it all night if he likes, or tether animals under the branches. Fortunately the cure's friend warned us in time."

"Gonzales is rather a celebrated old chap," George Winter remarked, composing his mind as Mary talked on. "He made a reputation by refusing a fortune in order to keep a tiny baraque of a house which he and his wife had lived in for forty years."

"So he told us," said Vanno. "A wonderful story; it sounded too good to be true."

"Was it about the Russian countess who wanted to buy a large piece of land, and all the other peasant owners were keen to sell, except Gonzales, who had a bit about twenty yards square, exactly in the middle?" asked Rose.

"Yes, and the countess went up and up in her bidding from two thousand francs to four hundred thousand; but Gonzales wouldn't sell, because he liked the view. He told us that he still lives in the baraque, though he owns other houses and much land."

"Perfectly true," said Rose. "I walk up and chat with him sometimes. He's very rich for a peasant, and shrewd, though stupid too, for he has a horror of banks and hides his money heaven knows where. He had thousands of francs in banknotes in a cellar among his potatoes, and they were all eaten by rats; but he only shrugged his shoulders and said 'twas no worse than having them devoured by speculators. Oh, these peasants of the Riviera are wonderful!"

"Vanno and I will make friends with them when we have a house up there," said Mary. "Maybe it will be ready next year. Who knows? Vanno says we must come every season, if only for a few weeks, just to show ourselves that we care for other things than the Casino. And then, how delightful to see our friends! You, who have been so good to me, and Captain Hannaford, if he's living in his Italian chateau——"

"Dear, he won't be there," said Rose, laying her hand on Mary's, as the two sat together on the flowery chintz sofa.

"Why—what makes you think that?" Mary asked quickly, noticing at last the pallor of Rose's face.

"I don't think. I know. George and I have been wondering how we were to tell you, because you and Captain Hannaford were such good friends."

"Were? Oh, Mrs. Winter, he is not—dead? But no, we met him walking day before yesterday. He looked—much as usual. Only perhaps a little pale."

"His heart must have been weak," Rose said. "You know, he didn't sleep well. And a little while ago they found that he'd passed away in the night quite peacefully. They believe it must have been an overdose of veronal. He was in the habit of taking it."

Mary sprang up, her hands clasped and pressed against her breast. All colour was drained from her face. There was a look of horror in her eyes, as if she saw some dreadful thing which others could not see. But Rose thought that she knew what brought the look, and hurried on before Mary could speak. "Such accidents have been happening often lately. People oughtn't to be allowed to buy drugs and take any dose they choose."

"It—they do say that—that it was an accident?" Mary stammered, the blood flowing slowly back to cheeks and lips.

"Oh, yes. Dick, who told us, said so at once. And everybody else here will say it, you may be sure."

Vanno went to Mary, and taking her clasped hands, with gentle force drew her against his shoulder, in true Latin indifference to the presence of others. "Darling, don't look so desperate," he said. "Poor Hannaford wasn't a happy man in his life. I think he must be glad to die."

"Ah, that is the reason I——" Mary stopped. She had not told him or any one that Hannaford had wished to be more than a friend to her. It had not seemed right to tell even Vanno about another's love and disappointment. Almost it would have been, she felt, like boasting.

"Perhaps George and I might have let you go on being happy while you were with us," Rose said, "if a letter hadn't come addressed to you in Captain Hannaford's handwriting. It was better for you to know everything before opening it, just in case——" Rose did not finish her sentence, but, getting up, went to the mantelpiece, where she had placed the envelope in front of a gilded French clock that looked pitifully frivolous as a background.

"Would you like us to go out, and let you read your letter alone with the Prince?" she asked, as she gave the envelope to Mary.

The girl shook her head. "No, I'd rather have you all with me."

For a minute she stood with the sealed envelope in her hand, looking down at her name in Hannaford's clearly formed, thick, and very black handwriting. She had received two or three notes from him, and in spite of their friendship had tossed them indifferently away as soon as read. But that was before their luncheon together at the Rochers Rouges. Since then he had not written. Mary wished now that she had kept his letters, and her heart was heavy with remorse because she had thought very seldom about him since her need of his sympathy no longer existed. How selfish and cruel she had been!

The girl made a sudden movement as if to break the seal pressed by Hannaford's ring, but paused, and taking a hatpin from her hat carefully cut the envelope across the top. Pulling out the folded sheet of paper she turned away even from Vanno, making an excuse that she must have more light.

My One Friend [Hannaford's letter began]: You have many friends, and that is as it should be, but I have only one human being dear enough to be called by the good name of "friend": You. And that's why I am writing you now. There's nobody else I care to write to; but somehow I want you to know that I haven't got a very long lease of life. Doctors tell me this. My heart isn't much good for the ordinary everyday uses a man wants to put his heart to, and soon it may decide to strike work. I feel sure this verdict is a true one, but I wouldn't bother you with my presentiments if it weren't for a certain thing which concerns your future. I may wake up dead—as the Irishman remarked—any morning, and I want you to have whatever is mine to leave behind me. You mustn't object to this, for it's the one thought that gives me pleasure; and honestly there's no one else to whom I can bequeath my worldly goods. All I have worth giving is the Chateau Lontana and just enough money to make it habitable. I am writing this letter there, on the loggia I told you about. I used to wish it could be arranged for you to come and see my big new toy. I was pretty sure you would like it, for I felt—though you never told me so—that you cared a great deal for beautiful and romantic things.

The Chateau Lontana in its poetic wilderness of garden is both romantic and beautiful. You could never manage to come; but that doesn't matter now, if I may think of you there when the place is yours. Of course I may hang on in this weary vale for years, but I hope not, because (as I've mentioned more than once) even if I haven't outstayed my welcome, I'm getting more than a little tired of the entertainment provided by that "host who murders all his guests"—the World.

If I should drop off suddenly, you will find my will in the hands of Signor Antonio Nicolini, via Roma, Ventimiglia. He's a nice little Italian lawyer whom I've made my man of business lately. He has all my affairs in charge. It will be the greatest favour and kindness you can do me, if you will take this house I loved but never lived in. This I hope you will do for my sake—the sake of a friend. You know you promised that day at the Rochers Rouges to grant me a favour, and I hold you to your word. Another request I venture to make, you must grant only if you don't find the idea repugnant. It oughtn't to matter much to me one way or the other, and it shall be as you choose, but I should like when my body's cremated (that is to be done in any case) to have my ashes lie at the south end of the garden, where some steps are cut in the rock coming out at a wonderful viewpoint. If after death one can see what goes on in this world, it would console me for much to know of your coming sometimes to the Chateau Lontana, and perhaps sitting on that old stone seat on the rock-platform at the bottom of those steps. There is a wall of rock above the seat, and if a small niche could be cut there for an urn, with a tablet of marble to mark the spot, it would please my fancy. Should you decide to gratify the whim, please have no name carved on the marble, but only a verse you quoted that day at the Rochers Rouges. I think you told me it was by a Scottish poet, whom you liked; and I said the words had in them a strange undertone of music like a lullaby: the sound of the sea, and the sadness and mystery of the sea. You will remember. It was after luncheon was over, but we were still at the table, and you sat with your elbow on the low wall, looking down into the water.

You are not to suppose, though, that because I speak of the sadness of the sea, I am sad in the thought that soon I may be gone where I can no longer hear its voice. I am not sad, and you must not be sad either at my talk of dying, or at my death when it comes. Think of me, but not with sadness. Do not come to see my body before it's given to the burning: do not come to my funeral. I don't want a funeral, for though I am not without a religion of my own, it's one that does not lend itself to ceremonies. As for the mystery of the sea, it and all other mysteries which are hidden from us now will soon, I trust, be clear to

Your ever loyal, faithful friend, JOHN HANNAFORD.

Long before she reached the end tears were raining down Mary's face. She could not read the letter aloud, yet she wanted the others to know what Hannaford had said. On an impulse she handed the closely covered sheet to Mrs. Winter.

Rose took the letter, and read it out, not quite steadily. For a few seconds no one spoke, when she had finished. But at last she asked in a veiled voice what was the verse Hannaford wished to have on the tablet. The question seemed to Mary the only one she could have answered at that moment.

Almost in a whisper she began to repeat the verse of Fiona Macleod, for which, she remembered, Hannaford had begged twice over, as they two sat on the palm-roofed terrace built over the sea:

"'Play me a lulling chant, O Anthem-Maker, Out of the fall of lonely seas and the wind's sorrow. Behind are the burning glens of the sunset sky Where, like blown ghosts, the seamews Wail their desolate sea dirges. Make now of these a lulling chant, O Anthem-Maker.'"

"That is all?" asked George Winter.

"That is all," Mary echoed.

"I think I understand why a man might want just those words for a last lullaby," Vanno said. "You'll do as he asks, I know, Mary, about the urn and the tablet with the verse, and going there to sit and think of him sometimes."

"Oh, yes, I will do that," she replied quickly. "But—I don't think I can do the other thing. I can't live in his house. Anyway, I can't live in it with you, Vanno. It would be——" She did not finish. To have ended the sentence would have been the same as telling Hannaford's secret.

"I understand," Vanno said. But it was in Mary's mind that he did not and could not wholly understand. She did not even want him to understand. "You needn't live there," he went on. "Yet you can visit the place sometimes, from our 'castle in the air'; and maybe we can think of a way to use the house, if you accept it, which Hannaford would approve."

"You can hardly refuse to accept it now Captain Hannaford is dead," said Rose. "Not to do what he so much hoped you would do for his sake would be—almost treacherous."

"Yes, it seems to me you're bound to take his gift," George Winter added. "If you don't want to live in the house, why not make it a home of rest for women workers who are tired or ill, and need a few weeks of warmth and sunshine, but can't afford even cheap pension prices?"

"Next season we might get up a bazaar to support such a home," Rose suggested, warming to the scheme.

"Perhaps I could support it myself," Mary said, "if Vanno would consent. I haven't lost much more than my Casino winnings, and I should like to do some one good. I've ever so much money of my own. I know very little about such things, but I believe I must be quite rich. And then there's the jewellery I've bought since I came here. I've lost interest in it already. I could sell some to help the Home, couldn't I? The only things I really care for are the pearls, which I have on now under my dress; and the rest I mean to leave with you, Mrs. Winter, if you don't mind, instead of troubling to take the jewel-case over to the Villa Mirasole."

"Of course I don't mind," Rose said, "except that it's a responsibility. However, thieves aren't looking for 'big hauls' in parsons' houses. I'll store the jewel-case with pleasure; but you must keep the key of the cabinet, lest you should want to open it some day when I am out."

Then they went back to the subject of the Chateau Lontana, planning how to carry out Hannaford's wishes, even though Mary felt it would be impossible to live in the house. George Winter volunteered to arrange all details concerning the funeral urn and the placing of the tablet, because he had learned to feel an affection for Mary Grant which was almost that of a brother for a very young and beautiful sister. He wanted her, in spite of all, to be happy in her visit to Princess Della Robbia, happy as she could not be if constantly reminded of Hannaford and his tragedy. He offered also to see the lawyer at Ventimiglia, so that Vanno, who proposed soon to go to Rome, might spend his time meanwhile at the Villa Mirasole.

"Don't thank me," the chaplain said at last. "It is but little I'm engaging myself to do. And it's as much for Hannaford's sake as yours. Poor Hannaford! I didn't do half enough for him when he was alive. I feel as if I owed him something now."

Mary did not speak, but she shivered and very gently drew her hand away from Vanno's. She too felt that she owed Hannaford reparation, not for what she had left undone during his life, but rather for what she had done. She had taken his friendship, his kindness, his sympathy, and given him nothing in return except a little pity following upon repulsion. And she dared not ask herself how far her thoughtlessness was answerable for his death.



XXXII

"A letter for the Highness and one waits for answer," announced Americo, with the air of presenting a choice gift, as he bowed to the Princess over a small silver tray.

She was lying among the red cushions of her favourite hammock on the loggia. Beside her in a basket chair was Angelo, with a book in his hand which he did not read, because when Marie was near him everything else seemed irrelevant. Not far away Mary sat, writing a letter to Vanno which ought to reach him the next morning. Yesterday at five o'clock she had seen him off in the Rome express; and before this time he must have arrived.

"Idina Bland's hand," said Angelo, as his wife took a large gray envelope from the silver tray. "I wonder——" But he did not finish his sentence. To do so would have been superfluous, as in a moment he would know what Idina was writing about; and, besides, Angelo shrank curiously—perhaps foolishly, he sometimes felt—from speaking of Idina Bland or even mentioning her name to Marie. He was not superstitious, or at least, he told himself often that he was not; yet the very thought of his cousin depressed him as if she were a witch who from any distance could cast a spell of ill-luck upon a house.

Marie had no suspicion of Angelo's feeling for Miss Bland. She knew from him that there had been a "boy and girl flirtation" when Idina had first come to stay at the Duke's country place years ago; and there was enough malice in her to enjoy the idea of a defeated rival's jealousy. For this reason she had found a certain pleasure in Idina's few visits to the Villa Mirasole, though the pale "statue-eyes" had been cold as glass for her. If Idina disliked her a little, Marie had considered it natural, and had been secretly amused, saying nothing to Angelo.

"Miss Bland writes that an American friend of hers has come to stay a day or two only, and she'd like very much to have her meet us and see the villa," Marie announced, glancing through the short letter. "She wants to know if we'd mind asking them to lunch to-day. I suppose we don't mind, do we?" She held the gray sheet out to Angelo, but he did not take it.

"I suppose not," he answered reluctantly. "But it's a bore having a stranger thrust on us. Why not be engaged for luncheon and invite them for tea?"

Marie laughed. "Selfish man! I know what's in your head. You'd go out and leave Mary and me to entertain your dear cousin and her friend. No, I won't have Miss Bland think I'm jealous or inhospitable—for of course she'd blame me. She knows we never go out for luncheon. Unfortunately I told her. I'll write a line to send back by her messenger, to say lunch by all means."

"Very well, if you think you must." Angelo spoke with gloomy resignation.

"Dear Mary, you write," said Marie lazily. "You've got paper and a stylo, and she doesn't know my hand. I'm too comfortable to move."

Mary put aside her letter to Vanno which must catch the next post, and scribbled a few lines to Miss Bland.

"Will you sign if I bring you the pen?" she asked.

"No, thanks. I give you leave to forge my name. It will soon be your own, so you may as well practise writing it," said Marie. "Just put the initial 'M.'"

The girl obeyed. "M. Della Robbia," she wrote, forming the letters almost lovingly. How strange to think that before long that would be her own name! Mary Della Robbia! The sound was very sweet to her, though to be a princess was of no great importance. If Vanno were a peasant, to become his wife would make her a queen.

When the answer was ready, Americo received it upon his little tray.

"Two ladies for luncheon, you may tell the chef," said Marie.

"All right, Highness. And other Highness, I was to make you know from the gardener, one fox have bin catched in a trap on the way to eat the rabbits of the semaphore. If the Highness wish to visit him, he is there for this morning."

"One would think it was an invitation for an 'At Home,'" laughed Marie behind the butler's broad back, as he vanished with the letter, through the window-door. "Fancy, foxes in the woods of Cap Martin, within four miles of Monte Carlo! They ought to be extra cunning."

"They must be," said Angelo, "to keep out of sight as they do in the Season, and yet manage to snatch a meal of rabbit or chicken occasionally. I think I'll stroll over to the semaphore and have a look at the gentleman, as I could hardly believe our gardener the other day when he swore there were foxes and hares in the woods."

"Don't get too interested, and forget to come and receive your dear cousin and her American friend, who for all you know may be the most fascinating woman in the world," Marie called after her husband as he walked away.

His smile named the woman who was above all others for him; and though Marie knew herself his goddess, she never ceased to crave the assurance.

When Angelo had found his Panama and gone down the loggia steps into the garden, she laughed a soft and happy laugh. "Poor darling!" she said. "The fox is an excuse. He won't come back till the last minute. One would think he was afraid of his cousin! It's quite pathetic. Just because he had an innocent flirtation with her a hundred years ago."

Marie picked up Idina's letter, which lay in the hammock. "I wonder what a graphologist—if that's the right word—would make of this handwriting? I'm no expert. But to me the writing expresses the woman as I see her: heavy, strong, intelligent, lacking all charm of sex, and selfishly cold."

"Do you think Miss Bland cold?" asked Mary. "I've seen her only once, and I don't pretend to be a judge of character. Yet I had a queer thought about her when we met: that she was like a volcano under snow."

The Princess did not answer, for the character of Idina being of little importance to her, she had already begun to think of something else. She was comfortably glad to be younger and far, far more attractive than Miss Bland. She was resolving that, before the two guests arrived, she would put on a particularly becoming dress in order that the heroine of the old flirtation might more keenly than ever envy Angelo's wife. This idea she did not clothe definitely in words, but it floated in her mind. "Miss Bland must have come down from the Annonciata, to lurk about Mentone waiting for my answer," she said aloud, having reread the note. "Otherwise she wouldn't have time to arrive here for lunch at one, after her messenger got back."

It was now Mary's turn to be inattentive, for she was adding a postscript to her letter, which but for that addition she had finished.

"Marie dreamed of pigeons last night," she scribbled hastily. "She is superstitious about them, and says they mean trouble and parting. That seems rather funny to me, after the hundreds I saw in Monte Carlo and made friends with, and fed every day. I'm glad I am not superstitious, especially now that you and I are separated. How glorious it is to feel quite sure that our parting is only for a few days, instead of forever, like that of our poor lovers of 'Remember eternal.' It was dear of you to have those words engraved inside the ring you gave me. I love the quaint English. And it is like a secret which belongs only to us out of all the world."

"Well!" exclaimed the Princess, after she had tried in vain to attract Mary's notice, "as you're so delightfully occupied, I may as well remove myself and leave you in peace. In less than an hour the fair Idina will be upon us; and I'm going upstairs now to make myself as pretty as Angelo thinks me, to do honour to his cousin. By the way, it's our first luncheon party, not counting you and Vanno and the cure."

She slid out of the red hammock, showing slim ankles that gleamed like marble through a thin film of bronze-brown silk. As she went into the house humming some Italian air she had picked up, Mary thought how young and innocently gay she seemed. It was almost impossible to believe her the same woman who had sobbed behind a disguising veil in Rose Winter's drawing-room, begging Mary to swear by Vanno's love never to betray her secret. And it seemed equally incredible that this mirthful and charming girl could have such a secret to hide. Mary tried to forget. It was a kind of treachery to remember those tears, and the reason for them which Angelo must not know. To change her thoughts, Mary sprang up swiftly, and, calling Angelo's Persian dog Miro—a lovely white creature like a floating plume—she went out through the woods with her letter for Vanno, meaning to take a short cut among the olives, to a branch post-office not far off.

As she returned a few minutes later, two women walking at a distance under the great silvery arbour watched her run by with the Persian dog.

"That's the girl I told you about, who is going to marry my cousin Giovanni, Prince Della Robbia's younger brother," said Idina Bland to her companion; "the Miss Grant who has been so much talked about here." Idina had a contralto voice, with tones in it almost as deep as those of a very young man. It was musical, and gave an effect of careful training, as if she had studied voice-production and had become self-conscious through over-practising.

"It's strange, the resemblance in those names," the other woman murmured, almost as if speaking to herself. She was small and extremely thin, with insignificant features and sallow, slightly freckled complexion. But, though she was one of those women who might be of any age between twenty-eight and forty, her piercing gray eyes under black eyebrows, her quivering nostrils and slightly pointed chin, gave her a look of intense vitality. She was like a powerful if small electric lamp, purposely veiled by a dun-coloured shade. "It's doubly strange, because"——she went on; then let her voice trail away into silence rather than break off abruptly. She had a slight accent suggesting the Middle West of America.

"Because—what?" Miss Bland caught her up with impatience.

The other deliberated before answering. Then she replied: "I'd rather not say anything more yet. I may be mistaken—very likely am. Wait until I've seen your Princess and this girl together. Then—probably I shall know."

Idina Bland glanced at her angrily, and opened her lips, but closed them again, and in silence began to walk on toward the Villa Mirasole. The neat little figure of her friend in its khaki-brown tailor-made dress kept up with her briskly. The bright eyes fixed themselves for an instant on Miss Bland's sullen profile, and twinkled as they turned away. It was as if she enjoyed the knowledge that Idina was afraid to show impatience, as a small, intelligent animal often revels in dominating one that is larger and more important in its own estimation.

When Mary returned to the loggia to gather up the writing materials she had left there, the Princess had come back, wearing a gown which Mary had never seen. It was a silky white taffeta over yellow, and as she moved light seemed to run through the folds like liquid gold.

"'Clothed in samite, mystic, wonderful,'" Mary quoted.

"This is Angelo's favourite frock," said Marie. "He thinks"—her tone changed to bitterness—"that I look like a saint in it."

Mary made no comment. She felt that Marie was commanding her to silence. But it was true: this gleaming dress with its white and golden lights, and a filmy fichu crossed meekly over the breast, gave Marie a look of sweet and virginal innocence. Her head, on the long white throat rising out of the pointed folds, seemed delicately balanced as an aigrette.

"Do you think I shall be able to hold my own against the lovely ladies who are coming?" she asked lightly, snatching up her sleigh-bell gayety again.

"I feel sure you will," Mary replied in the same tone. Just then they faintly heard the electric bell which told that the guests had arrived, earlier than expected. Afterward Mary often remembered this question of the Princess' and her own answer.

Americo brought Miss Bland and her friend out to the loggia, which was the living-room of the family in warm, sunny weather. He announced the two names with elaborate unintelligibility, but Idina at once introduced her companion as Miss Jewett of St. Louis. "We met when I was in America," she explained. "Now she's 'doing' Europe in a few weeks, cramming in enough sightseeing for an Englishman's year."

"We're very flattered to be included among the sights," Marie said, smiling, but with something of the "princess" air which—perhaps unconsciously—she always put on with her husband's cousin. Miss Jewett, making some polite and formal little answer, gazed with glittering intentness at her hostess and Mary Grant. Her eyes, in the thin, sallow face with its pointed chin, were so brilliantly intelligent that they seemed to have a life and individuality of their own, separate from the rest of her small body.

"Where's Angelo?" asked Idina, when they had talked for a little while, and she had apologized for being too early.

"Oh, I'm so sorry he isn't at home!" Marie exclaimed, enjoying the blank disappointment that dulled Idina's expression. When she had produced her effect, she added that Angelo would come back in time for luncheon. Miss Bland turned her face away and looked down at a fountain on the terrace below the loggia. Fierceness flashed out of her like a knife unsheathed; but the back of her blond head, with its conventional dressing of the hair under a neat toque, was almost singularly non-committal.

Marie went on to make conversation about the fox Angelo had gone to see, laughingly describing the "fauna" of Cap Martin, of which season visitors knew little. "They say, as soon as everybody's well out of the way, the most wonderful birds and flowers appear, that only scientific people can tell anything about," she informed her visitors. Miss Jewett listened with interest and asked questions; but a curtain seemed to have been lowered behind Idina's eyes, shutting her mind away from outside things.

In the yellow drawing-room a clock tinkled out a tune, finishing with one sharp stroke; and Americo hovered uncertainly at the door-window of the big hall, seeing that his master was not with the ladies on the loggia.

"We must wait a few minutes, Americo," Marie said calmly; but at the same moment Angelo appeared on the fountain terrace, and came quickly up the loggia steps. He shook hands with Idina and greeted Miss Jewett with the grave, pleasant courtesy that was not unlike Vanno's, but colder and more remote, except with those for whom he really cared.

Mary wondered if Miss Bland felt the chill of his manner.

They went in to luncheon, and the conversation was of abstract things. If once or twice it seemed that Idina wished to turn the talk to old days which had given memories in common to her and Angelo, the Prince checked her quietly by asking some question about Ireland or America. And it struck Mary, who was feeling vaguely sorry for this cousin held at arm's length, that Miss Jewett watched Idina with interest and even curiosity, as if she were waiting for her to do or say something in particular.

At last the Princess rose, smiling at Miss Bland. "Shall we have coffee on the loggia?" she asked.

"We should both like that, shouldn't we, Miss Jewett?" Idina said, with almost unnecessary emphasis. As she spoke, she looked at her friend.

Angelo opened the door for them to pass out, and it was evident that he did not mean to follow at once. Seeing his intention, Idina stopped. "Aren't you coming with us, Angelo?" she asked.

"I thought of smoking a cigar and joining you later," he answered.

"Please come," she said. "Miss Jewett and I won't be staying long; and I'm leaving with her to-morrow. I've only been hanging on here for her to arrive. Nothing else would have kept me so long."

"I will come with pleasure," Angelo said. "My cigar can wait."

"Doesn't your wife let you smoke when you're with her?" Idina asked sharply.

"Of course I let him!" exclaimed Marie, "though sometimes on the loggia he won't if the wind blows the smoke in our faces. To-day there's no wind, and we'll all smoke except Mary, who hates it. I'm sure you're more modern?"

"I'm afraid I too am old-fashioned," said Idina.

"And I'm too nervous," added her friend.

"I should like to see Angelo smoke to-day," Idina went on. "It will remind me of old times. There's a balcony at Monte Della Robbia where we used to sit by moonlight sometimes, and while Angelo smoked I told him Irish fairy stories which he loved to hear. He was romantic and poetic in those days. Now I have another story to tell—not a fairy story this time. Still, it's quite interesting. At least, I think it is, and I want to see whether you agree with me—especially Angelo."

He gazed at her questioningly as she sat down on a sofa opposite to him. He stood with his back against a marble pillar, and in his eyes was the look that comes to the eyes of a lion teased by a boy whom he cannot reach through the bars of his cage.

"It's a story in which Miss Jewett's been collaborating with me," Idina continued. "Between us we've brought it to a fine point. I couldn't go on a step more till she came. You can imagine how tired I was of waiting, for I wanted to be at work. Now we've gathered up all our threads."

The baited look faded from Angelo's eyes. "You're writing a novel together?" he asked, smiling faintly.

"We've been piecing together a plot which might make a novel," said Idina. "That's why I wanted you to come out with us, instead of smoking your cigar in the house. I'd like to tell the story and see what you think of it, because I believe you are a very good judge. And a man's opinion of such things is always valuable. But please smoke! I won't begin till you do. I want that reminder of old times to give me inspiration."

Angelo, entirely at his ease now, though still slightly bored, lit his cigar. The pillar against which he leaned was close to Marie's red hammock. He could look down at her while he smoked, and as she swung back and forth her dress all but brushed his knee.

"Our heroine is an English girl, or perhaps Scottish, we haven't decided which," Idina began in her deep voice. "She's pretty, fascinating to men, in fact a man's woman. To other women she is a cat. And she's by nature as deceitful as all creatures of the cat tribe."

"Why take such a person for your heroine?" Angelo wanted to know.

"She's thrust upon us by the exigencies of the story. And, besides—why, Angelo, if you could meet the girl as I see her in real life, you'd admire her beyond anything! She would be exactly your style. You, being a man, wouldn't know that she was deceitful and a cat."

"I'm sure I should know," he protested, with an involuntary glance at Marie, so saintlike and virginal in her meekly fichued dress. "You've just said that you considered me a good judge."

"Not of a woman's character, but of what ought to happen to the heroine of our story in the end," Idina explained. "That's what I meant. You must give us the end of the story. But I'll go on. The girl—our heroine—comes upon the scene first at a convent-school in Scotland."

Idina paused for an instant, as if taking thought how to go on. The faint creaking of the hammock chains abruptly ceased. Mary glanced across at her friend, but Princess Della Robbia had stopped swinging only to lean forward and stroke the beautiful Persian dog Miro, who had come up the steps. She put an arm round his neck and bent her head over him. Though he adored his master exclusively, he tolerated the new member of the family, and yielded himself reservedly to her caress.

"It must be a coincidence about the convent," Mary told herself. Why should Miss Bland wish to torture Angelo's wife, even if she knew anything? And she could not know. It was impossible that she should know. But suddenly the girl remembered Marie's hints about a long-ago flirtation between the cousins. And Idina's manner had been odd when she begged Angelo to smoke because of old times. A dreadful idea opened a door in Mary's mind and leered at her, with the wicked eyes of a face seen in a nightmare, vague, yet growing larger and drawing inevitably near. She felt helpless and frozen as in a nightmare too; for she could do nothing to rescue Marie, if need arose. To stop Idina somehow might be possible, yet surely that would do more harm than good. To show fear would be to acknowledge cause for fear. Yet at this moment of suspense Mary would have given her right hand to be cut off, if that could have saved her friend.

"Our heroine is the last person who ought to be put into a convent-school," Idina went on, "for she cares more about flirting and fun and intrigue than anything else. Being shut up with a lot of girls and religious women bores her dreadfully, and after she's been there for a while she looks round for a little amusement. The pupils are allowed to go out sometimes, and she meets a man who's staying in a big country-house near by. He looks at her, and she looks back at him. That settles everything. He contrives to find out her name. Men are clever about such things. Then he begins smuggling letters for the girl into the convent. She consents to see him in the garden at night, if he can climb over the wall, or manage to get in somehow. He does manage it. All this appeals to her vanity and love of intrigue. She has a new interest in life—and a secret. They have these night meetings often. By and by the man begs the girl to run away with him. He says he will marry her at once, of course. He's good-looking and seems to be rich; and he's staying in the house of a Lord Somebody or Other, so she thinks he must be of importance in the world. She herself is—just nobody, with hardly a penny of her own, and only distant relatives who've put her in the convent to get rid of the bother she made them. But when our heroine has escaped in the most romantic fashion with her lover, she soon discovers that he can't marry her, even if he wished, for he has a wife already. And it's the wife who owns all the money. They don't live together, but they are quite good friends, he and his wife, who's a common sort of person, a beer-heiress or something like that. What do you think of our story so far, Angelo? Isn't it a good plot?"

Angelo had been smoking continuously as his cousin talked, sending out little quick puffs of smoke which, to those who knew him, betrayed annoyance. And Idina knew him well.

"Do you want me to say what I really think, or to pay you compliments?" he asked.

"What you really think, of course."

"Then, there's nothing new or original in your plot, to excuse its—unpleasantness."

"But if it happens to be true?"

"Many unpleasant things are true, but why rake them up unless there's something great in the theme that makes them worth retelling?"

"It's too soon to judge yet. You haven't heard the best part. What do you think of the story, Princess?"

Marie, who had not ceased caressing the dog, listening with her cheek pillowed on his silken forehead, lifted her face and returned Idina's look. As she raised her head, Mary's heart gave a bound which took her breath away. But it was she whose eyes were dilated, whose face was feverishly flushed, whose breast rose and fell as if a hammer were pounding within. The Princess was white, but scarcely whiter than usual. Her lips were pale, and rather dry, as if she had been motoring in a chilly wind. She was smiling; and if the smile were slightly strained and photographic, perhaps only one who watched her in the anxiety of love would have felt the subtle difference.

"I'm afraid Angelo's right," she said. "It's not a particularly original plot. And—forgive me—your heroine isn't of a very interesting type, is she? Intriguing, cold, ambitious, catty. One reads of women who give themselves to men without love, but—they don't seem natural, at least to me. I believe you must be mistaken in thinking your plot is a true story."

"I can prove its truth," said Idina, quietly. "At least Miss Jewett can. She has been getting the materials. That's her business. She's celebrated for it in America."

"Then I daresay you can work this up into something worth reading, for a certain sort of book," Marie answered. "But—just in the telling it isn't quite—quite—well, Angelo and I can stand it of course, but Mary—I must think of her, you know. And I don't see how our opinion can be of much use to you and Miss Jewett. So what is the use——"

"Of going on?" Idina caught her up, in a voice of iron or steel. "But I particularly want Angelo's opinion as to what the end of the story should be. It's for a man to judge. If it bores you to listen, and you don't think it's proper for Miss Grant——" She paused significantly, and her look flung venom. But she had not fully counted on her cousin's loyalty to his wife, his indifference, almost amounting to dislike at last, for herself.

"Don't you feel, Idina," he interposed with a deadly quietness she knew to be a danger-signal, "that any story which—er—bores my wife had better be left untold in her house? If you really wish to have my opinion on this plot of which you think so much, write the rest out for me, and I'll let you have my verdict."

With a swift movement Idina stood up. For once the statue-white face was flushed with a dull, disagreeable red which made her almost ugly. She looked tall and forbidding. "Write!" she repeated in a tone of suppressed fury, deep as a man's. "Do you think my letter would ever come to your eyes? She would destroy it before it could get to you—cunning cat that she is. You fool, it's her story I've been telling you—your wife's. She lived with that man—went to Russia with him——"

"Be silent!"

The two words cut short the torrent pouring from Idina's lips, as a block of ice might dam a rushing stream. But it was the look in Angelo's eyes, even more than his command, which shocked Idina into silence. She knew then that as much as he loved his wife, he hated her, Idina, and that nothing on earth could ever change his hate back into indifference. She knew that if she were a man he would by this time have killed her. The knowledge was anguish almost beyond bearing, yet the irrevocability of what she had done spurred her on after the first instant.

"I'll not be silent!" she panted. "For your father's sake. You've disgraced him in marrying this woman——"

"Go," Angelo said, "unless you wish to be turned out by my servants, you and your friend whom you brought here on false pretences."

"I didn't know how she was going to work this thing," Miss Jewett protested hastily. "If I had, I wouldn't——"

"It does not matter," Angelo said.

"But it does matter. Everything matters," Marie broke in, her quiet, alert, almost businesslike tone a surprise to her friend. "Don't send them away yet, Angelo—in justice to me. I know you don't believe things against me—of course not. Perhaps you would not believe, even if they could seem to prove anything, which they couldn't do. Things that aren't true can't be proved really, by the most cruel and malicious people. But maybe if you sent Miss Bland and her detective friend out of the house now, you might sometimes think of what you've heard, in spite of yourself—in the night, when dreadful thoughts seem almost true—and that would kill me. Besides, these women might spread tales. And that would distress your father. I must justify myself—not in your eyes; that isn't needed; but in theirs. I must do it—even at the awful expense of sacrificing another. Two names very much alike have made this mischief. Angelo, it was Mary Grant who was at that convent-school in Scotland, where Miss Jewett must have been spying for your cousin. I'd have saved poor Mary if I could. But you come first with me—first, before everything and every one. Ask her if what I say of her is not the truth."

Mary turned and looked at her friend. She was very still. Her heart, which had pounded in her bosom, moving the laces of her blouse, might almost have ceased beating. She appeared hardly to breathe. But through her large, soft eyes her soul seemed to pour itself out in a crystalline ray, piercing to the soul of Marie. And to the woman who had used the heart of her friend for a shield came a sudden and terrible thought. She remembered a passage in the Gospels where Judas led the Roman soldiers by night to the garden of Gethsemane, and Jesus, speaking no word, turned and looked at the betrayer. It was as if she saw a picture of this betrayal, beside the picture of herself leaning forward in the red hammock, with Angelo beside her and Mary's clear eyes questioning hers. She could have cried out aloud, and falling on her knees have confessed everything, begging God's forgiveness and Angelo's and Mary's. But instead, because she clung to this one desperate hope of keeping Angelo, she sat erect and firm, her ice-cold hands tightly grasping the edge of the hammock, one on either side of her body. If she had let go or tried to stand up, she knew that she must have collapsed. Grasping the edge of the hammock seemed to lend strength and power of endurance not only to her body but to her spirit as well. She gave back Mary's gaze steadily, and was hardly aware of turning her eyes for an instant from the still, pure face which had never looked so gentle or so sweet; yet she must have glanced away, for she warmed slowly with the consciousness that Idina Bland was confused, and that Miss Jewett too was under the influence of some new emotion which made her appear less hard, less dry, more like a human being. Hope ran through the veins of Marie in a vital tide. The desperate instinct of self-preservation had put the right weapon in her hand. She must go on and use it mercilessly, for she had touched the weak spot in her enemy's armour. Those two women did not know everything, after all. Idina had somehow overreached herself. It was certain that the allies were pausing to recover strength.

"Are you the woman to whom my cousin refers, Miss Grant?" Angelo asked; and his voice was the voice of the judge, not the protector.

Mary thought of Vanno. The very likeness between this cold voice and the dear, warm voice of the absent one made the thought a pang. Her eyes filled with tears. Still she was silent.

"Am I to take your silence as assent?" Angelo asked again, when he had waited in vain for her to speak, and the waiting had seemed long to both.

Mary was sitting almost opposite the hammock, in a chair turned slightly away from it, so that she faced Angelo more fully than she faced Marie, unless she moved her head purposely, as she had moved it when her eyes questioned the eyes of her friend. Her hands were loosely clasped in her lap; and without answering she slowly bowed her head over them. As she did so, her eyes fell upon the ring Vanno had slipped on her finger with a kiss that was a pledge, the ring with "Remember eternal" written inside. The sight of it was a knock at her heart, like the knock of a rescuer on the door of a beleaguered castle. She did not speak, in her own defence, for silence was defence of Marie. And little knowing how she would be tried, she had sworn to defend her friend, sworn by Vanno's love and her own love for Vanno. It was a vow she would not break if she could, lest a curse fall in punishment and kill the love which was her dearest treasure. Yet through all the echoing confusion in her mind one note rang clear: she must in the end right herself with Vanno.

It was almost as much for his sake as Marie's, she felt dimly, that she must keep her promise now and endure this shame, this martyrdom; for Marie was Angelo's wife, and Angelo was Vanno's beloved brother whose sorrow would be Vanno's sorrow, whose dishonour would be the family's dishonour. But as she looked at his ring, through the thick mist of her tears, Mary comforted herself by saying: "Somehow it must come right. I can sacrifice myself now, but not for always. In some way I will let Vanno know."

She thought vaguely, stumblingly, her ideas astray and groping like blind men in an earthquake, knowing not where to turn for safety. And as she thought, Miss Jewett was speaking. Mary heard what the American woman said only as an undertone to the clamour in her own brain; but at last the sense of the words and what they might mean for herself sprang out of darkness like the white arm of a searchlight.

"In justice to Princess Della Robbia and to me—though maybe you won't care much about that—you must hear what I've got to tell you," Miss Jewett said imperatively to Angelo. "It's true I'm a detective. I'm not ashamed of it. I've made a reputation that way. But I'm human. I didn't come here to be a beast. I'd no idea what Miss Bland was up to. I thought she wanted me to look at the Princess, and know whether I'd seen her picture at the Convent of St. Ursula-of-the-Lake, in Scotland. I went there on Miss Bland's business, while she waited here, near your house, so as to be on the spot when I came along with news. It was in America she first engaged me to do the work. She said her cousin the Duke di Rienzi wasn't satisfied with his son's marriage, and wanted to find out something about the lady. It was all one to me, so long as I was paid. And I have been paid. But if she offered me twice as much I wouldn't do the thing over again; and I won't raise a finger for her if she wants any more done. She can do her own dirty work. She said her cousin the Duke told her his new daughter-in-law was an artist in Dresden, and she sent me there. I got off the track a bit, but some things I heard sent me on to St. Petersburg. There had been a Mary Gaunt or Grant stopping there once in a hotel, with a man she wasn't married to; that's certain—and she came with him from Paris. From Paris I traced her—that is, I traced a Mary Grant—back to Scotland and a convent-school. The last place I went—while Miss Bland waited here keeping her eye on you all from a distance, and maybe spying out things on her own account—was that convent. I raked up old gossip outside, and I got in easily enough, for the Mother Superior and the nuns are nice to visitors who seem interested. But the minute I began to ask questions about a pupil in the school who'd run away, the good ladies shut up like oysters. I had to leave defeated as far as the last part of my job was concerned, though I'm not used to fail. One thing I did accomplish, though: I looked hard at a picture in the reception room, with a lot of girls in it, pupils of the school, and I memorized every face. The Princess was not there; but this young lady was; and her name I find now is Mary Grant. Unfortunately she's been a good deal talked about in Monte Carlo, it seems. Miss Bland knows that. I saw her in the woods but couldn't be certain at a distance, so I said nothing then to Miss Bland. Since then she hasn't given me time. And now whatever happens, I wash my hands of the whole business."

Angelo had listened quietly, after realizing that Miss Jewett's object was to justify his wife, not to incriminate her. And though Marie needed no justification in his eyes, it was well that Idina should hear it from the lips of her own paid employe.

When the self-confessed detective had finished, he turned upon his cousin eyes of implacable coldness.

"You are punished for your malevolence," he said, "though to my mind no punishment could be severe enough. Go, with your humiliation, the knowledge of your failure and my contempt for you. If possible, you have made me love my wife better than ever. But before you go, understand this: if you attempt to attack her again—if I hear of any malicious gossip, as I shall hear, provided you utter it—I shall pursue you with the law. Without any fear of exposure, since there is nothing to expose, I will prosecute you for slander, and you will go to prison. This is no empty threat. It is a warning. And it is all I have to say."

He walked swiftly to the end of the loggia and touched an electric bell on the house-wall. While Idina Bland and Miss Jewett stood in silence Americo came, smiling as usual, to the door-window.

"These ladies are going," announced the Prince. "Show them out."

* * * * * * *

When they had gone, he went at once to Marie, and taking her hand, kissed it tenderly. "My darling, this has been very trying for you," he said. "You are not strong. Now it is my wish that you go to your room and lie down. Soon I will come to you, but first I must talk for a little while with Miss Grant."

Until an hour ago he had called her Mary.

With an arm round her waist, Angelo lifted Marie from the hammock, and began to lead her toward the door, but she resisted feebly. "Angelo, I can't go!" she stammered. "I can't leave Mary with you—like this. I must stay. I——"

"Dear one, I wish you to go," Angelo insisted gently. "It is right for you to go. Trust me to be neither cruel nor unkind to Miss Grant."

"But——"

"There is no 'but.'" Angelo had her at the door; and resigning herself, with one backward look at Mary imploring pardon and mercy, the Princess went out.

Mary saw, though she scarcely troubled to read the look. She pitied Marie, but pitied her as a coward. The girl meant to be loyal, yet somehow, in the end, to save her own happiness. But she could not plan for the future. She felt dazed, broken, as if she had been on the rack and was now to be tortured again.



XXXIII

In a moment Angelo had softly closed the glass door after Marie, and had come back. He stood before Mary, looking down at her. At first she did not raise her eyes, but his drew hers to them. They gazed at her with a cold anger that was like fire burning behind a screen of ice. And the ice made the fire more terrible.

His look bade her rise and stand before him, a culprit, but she would not. She sat still, in the same chair where she had sat happily writing to Vanno a few hours before. Though she trembled, she faced the Prince without shrinking outwardly. Perhaps to Angelo's eyes she appeared defiant.

"Does my brother know?" he asked.

"He knows—that I was at a convent-school." In spite of herself Mary choked in the words. She stammered slightly, and a wave of giddiness swept over her. With a supreme effort she controlled herself, looking up at Angelo's tall figure, which to her loomed Titanic.

"I mean does he know the rest?"

"There is nothing else to know. I did not do any of those things Miss Bland talked about."

"Very well. But you must see that you will have to prove that, before you can show yourself worthy to be my brother's wife."

It was on Mary's lips to exclaim: "I can prove it easily!" But just in time she remembered that, to prove her own innocence—as indeed she very easily could—she would have to prove Marie's guilt. This could not be avoided. The guilty one in throwing the blame upon another had been as one who jumps into the sea to avoid fire. Mary could save her friend from the waves only by giving up her own boat; for in that boat there was not room for two.

Fear brushed the girl's spirit like the wing of a bat in the dark. Safety for her with Vanno began to seem far off and more difficult to attain than she had dreamed when, by silence, she kept her promise to Marie. And what she had done was largely for Vanno's sake, she repeated to herself once again. The Princess was his sister-in-law. Her honour was the Della Robbia's honour.

A way must open. Light must come.

"I think," Mary said, trying not to let the words falter on her lips, "Vanno won't want proof." But as she spoke, even before she finished, she recalled how Vanno had at first believed appearances and gossip against her. Of course it would be different now that he knew her heart and soul. Still, the bat's wings flapped in the night of her darkening fear. And Marie's words of the other day echoed in her memory. "The brothers are alike... they adore purity... and they have a pitying horror of women who aren't innocent." Could Vanno believe her not innocent—now? Could his eyes—"stars of love," Marie had called his and Angelo's—could his eyes that had adored, look at her with the dreadful coldness of Angelo's at this moment, the coldness which would be death for Marie?

As something far down within herself asked the question, another thought stood out clear and sharp-cut. She had promised Marie not to tell Vanno, not even to "tell a priest in confession." Yet she must tell, for after all that had happened she could not bear to let Vanno take her on faith alone.

Angelo's answer came like a confirmation of her resolve.

"It's not only a question of what Vanno may want," he said, with a very evident effort not to be harsh to a woman, defenceless if guilty. "You don't seem to realize, Miss Grant, that—both he and I owe something to our father—to our forefathers. The men of our family have done things they ought not to do. History tells of them. But history tells also that they have never taken wives unworthy to be the mothers of noble sons."

Then at last Mary rose swiftly, bidden to her feet not by Angelo's haughty eyes but by her own pride of womanhood, and resentment of the whip with which he had dared to lash her.

"If Vanno were here he would kill you!" the strange something that was not herself cried out in a voice that was not hers.

Angelo's face hardened as he looked down at her with a bitter contempt.

"So you would rejoice in bringing strife between brothers!" he said. "I had not yet thought so badly of you as that. But there are such women. It was almost incredible to me at first that you—in face a sweet young girl—could have accepted Vanno's love without telling him about—your past, and at least giving him the chance to choose. Now I begin to see you in a different light."

"You see me in a false light," Mary said passionately. "You tortured that out of me—about Vanno. I didn't mean it. I'd rather die this moment than bring strife between you. I know he loves you dearly. But if you loved him as well, you couldn't have spoken as you did to me. I too am dear to him."

"It is because I love Vanno that I had to speak so," Angelo persisted, not softening at all. "I am his elder brother. Soon, I fear, I shall be the head of our house. It is my duty to protect him."

"Against me?"

"Against you—if you make it necessary."

"I told you and I tell you again," Mary cried in exasperation, "that I have done nothing wrong. There's nothing in my 'past' to confess. If I haven't talked much to Vanno about it, that's because there was so much else to say."

"How old are you, Miss Grant?" Angelo put the question abruptly.

"Twenty-five," she replied without hesitation, though puzzled at the seeming irrelevance.

"Ah! I happen to know that Vanno believes you to be under twenty."

"I never said so. I would have told him my age if I had thought of it."

"He spoke of you to me, before we met, as a 'child not yet past her teens, and just out of a convent-school.' How long do you say it is since you were a pupil at that convent, where I believe you admit having been—St. Ursula-of-the-Lake, in Scotland?"

"It's almost four years since I was a pupil, but——" She checked herself in haste. In another instant she would have said a thing which might have opened the eyes of Marie's husband on some dim vision of the truth.