"Thanks. The compliment is rather ambiguous."

"My compliments can not possibly be more ambiguous than your appearance. Surely, there will be an hour for unmasking."

"It has already begun, Mr. Hillard."

"So I am the one who is to be unmasked? Well, I have only the mask nature gave to me. I wish she had been more liberal. But I shall see what can be done with it."

"Is there any mask quite so terrible, quite so deceptive, as this very mask nature gives us? Can it not lie adroitly, break hearts, overthrow empires? You can judge a character by this mask sometimes, but never the working of the mind behind it." She resumed her seat on the divan.

"I wish I could read yours."

"And much good it would do you." She smiled, rather ruefully Hillard thought.

He took note of her teeth, and felt a sudden tinge of regret. One may disguise the face and hair, but the teeth are always the same. Two lower teeth on the right side appeared to be gone; the others were firm and glistening white. It was a pity, for a woman's teeth are as much her glory as her hair.

"I am curious to learn what you brought for dinner."

He enumerated the delicacies.

"You have evidently studied your Lucullus," she said.

Silence. The ruddy light on her hair fascinated him.

"What is it?" she demanded.

"Your hair," with a simplicity which silenced her. "You have the most beautiful hair I have ever seen."

"Thank you. And yet, for all you know, it may be a fine wig."

"If it is, I shall never be sure of anything again. Am I in prosaic New York? Have you not, by some carpet-magic, transported me to old Europe? If a dozen conspirators came in in cowls to render me the oath, I should not be at all surprised."

"There is no magic; only a mask."

"And there is no way of seeing behind that?"

"None, absolutely none. I am told that you are a gentleman; so I am confident that you will not stoop to use force."

"Only the force of eloquence, if ever I may lay claim to that again."

"You are beginning well. For I tell you, Mr. Hillard, I shall expect but the most brilliant wit from you to-night. As for me, I shall only interpolate occasionally. Now, begin."

"I am not used to dancing without the pole."

"You must learn. Dance!"

"Upon what—nothing? And how shall I know that my dancing pleases you?"

"I agree to tell you. I wear this mask to-night because I am taking a surreptitious leaf out of my book of cares."

"Cares? Have you any?"

"If I were without cares it would not be necessary to seek diversions of this equivocal character." She crossed her arms. The magic of old Venice seemed at that moment to enfold her.

"You are, then, seeking a diversion?"

"Nothing more or less. Do not flatter yourself that there is anything personal or romantic on my side. I am bored."

"I am wholly in your hands," he said; "and they are very beautiful hands."

"Is there anything more beautiful than a cat's paw, when the claws are hidden? Never judge a woman by her hands." Nevertheless she buried her hands in the depths of a down-pillow. She had forgotten her rings. She slipped them off and managed to hide them.

"I promise to remember. Your letters—" he began diffidently. Where the deuce was his tongue? Was he to be tongue-tied all the evening before this Columbine, who, with the aid of her mask, was covertly laughing at his awkwardness?

"My letters? A woman often writes what she will not say, and says what she will not write. Did you not ask me to disillusion you?"

"Yes, but softly, softly. I begin to believe one thing: you brought me here to teach me a lesson. Gentlemen should never use the personal column."

"Nor should ladies read it. I am not saving any mercy for myself!" with laughter.

"Shall I begin with my past?"

"Something less horrifying, if you please!"

"I object to the word nice," he said, seeking a new channel, for he was not steering very well in those he had so far selected.

"The word was employed negligently. Your friends used the word."

"I should have preferred milksop!" He was growing impatient. "Hadn't you better try some new kind of torture?"

"This is only a skirmish; your real torture hasn't even begun yet. But this will give you an appetite. I do not drink champagne, but the chambertin will do nicely. Oh, I propose that you shall pay for this dinner, Mr. Hillard; pay for the privilege of sharing it with me."

"Bring on the check. I should like to settle the bill at once, and have it off my mind."

"You may take off your gloves," she countered. "I know that you must feel uncomfortable with them on. To clasp one's own hands is a kind of personal sympathy. Try it."

He drew them off, not ungracefully, and tucked them away. He spread his thin brown muscular fingers a few times, then folded his arms.

"You look quite Napoleonic in that pose."

"If this were only Elba and not St. Helena! I should be coming back to you some day."

"I shall credit that against the partridges."

This time her laughter was relaxed and joyful. And somehow he felt more at ease. He was growing accustomed to the mask. He stretched his legs and fingered his nether lip.

"Have you not somewhere an invisible cloak?"

"I had one that night, which nature lent me," she answered readily. "I was so invisible to you that I heard the policeman call out your name. I thank you for insisting that I was not a chorus-lady."

Here was a revelation which accounted for many things. "I haven't been very fortunate so far in this adventure."

"That is rank ingratitude. I am of the opinion that fortune has highly favored you."

"But the mask, the mask! If you heard the policeman call my name, you must have heard him speak of one Leddy Lightfinger."

"I did indeed. And is it not possible that I am that very person?"

Hillard dropped his hand toward his watch. "Why do you hate Italy?"

She sat straight, and what little he could see of her mouth had hardened.

"There will be no retrospection this evening, if you please," her voice rather metallic.

The mystery lifted its head again. One does not hate a country without a strong and vital reason. Was Giovanni partly right, after all? Was this a kind of trap, a play to gain his interest? Was her singing under his window purely accidental? She hated Italy. The State or the Church? More likely the State. And what had the State done to her or she to the State? A conspirator, in need of funds and men? If this was the case, she was not going about her cause scientifically. Italy had no hold upon anything of his save his love of beauty. Perhaps her reason for hating Italy was individual and singular: as she would have hated any other country, had her unhappiness originated there.

"Will you not sing?" he asked. This was an inspiration. Music might assist in melting her new reserve.

"You recollect, then, that I possess a voice?"

"It is all I have to recollect. Tell me, whither is all this to lead?"

"To the door, and into the fog again."

"On my word, I'm half inclined to believe you to be an anarchist or a Red, or something on that order."

"On account of my hair?" She laughed again. "Put yourself at ease. I am neither Leddy Lightfinger nor a socialist. There are no dynamite bombs in this house. I despise any organization which aims to destroy society. Society is bad enough as it is; but think of trying to readjust it!"

"I give up the puzzle."

"That is better."

It is difficult to seek and hold a pair of eyes partly hidden behind a mask. Several times he made the attempt, but his eyes were first to lower.

Her severity, her irony and her apparent lack of warmth were mere matters of calculation. Her plan was to inspire him with trepidation, to keep him always at arm's length, for his own safety as well as hers. She knew something of men. Even the best, if suddenly thrown into an affair so strange as this, might commit an irreparable blunder; and this she did not want Hillard to do. She was secretly pleased with his strong face and shapely head. There was neither beard nor mustache to hide the virtues or defects. The chin was square but not heavy, the mouth humorous, kindly and firm, the nose bridged; and the brown eyes, sleepy yet with latent fires, were really handsome. She knew all about him; she was not afraid to be alone with him; nor was it really necessary to wear a mask. But the romance in her heart, that she believed to be dead, was not dead, only waiting to be rekindled. True, they were never to meet again; it was all to begin to-night and end to-night. No man was likely to forget a face met under such whimsical and extraordinary circumstances; so he must not have hers to remember. She arose.

"I will sing!"

"That is more than I dared to hope." He made as though to rise.

"Sit down. I do not play by note; my memory is very good. While I am singing I should much prefer you to remain where you are."

He obeyed without protest, and she went to the piano. Above the instrument was a rare old Venetian mirror; in it he could see her face fairly well. And where had he seen that mirror before?

"What shall it be?" she asked, and he forgot the mirror.

"The song you sang under my window."

"But that is for the male voice!"

"You sang it very well, nevertheless. I have a good memory, too." He leaned forward, his arms crossed on his knees. Was there ever, in all the world, such an Arabian night?

She sang, but without that buoyant note of the first night. One after another he called out the popular airs of the old light operas. She had them all on her tongue's end.

"Light opera appeals to you?" She had followed in the mirror his slightest move. Was she disappointed?

Where had he seen that copy of Botticelli before? If only there was a little more light.

"Pardon me," he said. "You asked—?"

She repeated her question, wondering what had drawn his attention.

"I like my grand opera after dinner. After dinner I shall want Verdi, Berlioz, Gounod."

"But after dinner I may not care to sing." She spoke in German.

He was not expecting this tongue; besides, his German had never been a finished product. For all that, he made a passable reply.

"You speak as many languages as a Swiss hotel-concierge."

"I wish I did. My mother had one idea in regard to my youth: I should speak four languages and eventually become a great diplomat. As it stands, I speak indifferent French and German, and am not in the diplomatic service. My mother had one of the loveliest voices. It was a joy to hear her speak, now Italian, now German, now French. She understood that in these days one does not travel far with Greek and Latin, though they come in handy when you strike old inscriptions. We were great comrades. It was rare fun to go with her on an antique-hunting expedition. They never fooled her nor got the better of her in a bargain."

She liked the way he spoke of his mother.

"But you," he said; "you are not Italian."

She smiled.

"You are neither French, German nor English."

She still smiled, but to the smile she added a gentle shrug.

"You are American—like myself!" he hazarded.

Her fingers stirred over the keys again, and Grieg's Papillon fluttered softly from flower to flower.



CHAPTER VI

INTO THE FOG AGAIN

He sat there, waiting and listening. From the light and airy butterfly, the music changed to Farwell's Norwegian Song. Hillard saw the lonely sea, the lonely twilight, the lonely gull wheeling seaward, the lonely little cottage on the cliffs, and the white moon in the far east. And presently she spoke, still playing softly.

"My father was an American, my mother Italian. But I have lived in Europe nearly all my life. There! You have more of my history than I intended telling you." The music went dreamily.

"I knew it. Who but an American woman would have the courage to do what you are doing to-night? Who but one of mine own countrywomen would trust me so wholly and accept me so frankly for what I am, an American gentleman?"

"Softly!" she warned. "You will dig a pit for your vanity."

"No. I am an American gentleman, and I am proud of it; though this statement in your ears may have a school-boy ring."

"A nobility in this country? Impossible!"

"Not the kind you find in the Almanach de Gotha. I speak of the nobility of the heart and the mind." He was very much in earnest now.

"Indeed!" The music stopped, and she turned. She regarded his earnestness with favor.

"I have traveled much; I have found noblemen everywhere, in all climes, and also I have found beasts. Oh, I confess that my country is not wholly free from the beast. But the beast here is a beast; shunned, discredited, outcast. On the other side, if he be mentioned in the Almanach, they give him sashes and decorations. And they credit us with being money-mad! It is not true. It is proved every day in the foreign cables that our love for money is not one-tenth so strong as that which our continental cousins evince."

"But if you are not money-mad, why these great fortunes?" dubiously.

"At a certain age a fortune in this country doubles itself without any effort on the part of the owner. Few of us marry for money; and when we do, we at least have the manhood to keep the letter of our bargain. We do not beat the wife, nor impoverish her, nor thrust opera-singers into the house she shares with us."

"And when you marry?"

"Well, it is generally the woman we love. Dowries are not considered. There is no social law which forbids a dowerless girl to marry a dowerless man," laughing. "But over there it is always and eternally a business contract simply. You know that."

"Yes, a business contract," listlessly.

"And yet these foreigners call us a business nation! Well, we are, outside our homes. But in the home we are husbands and fathers; most of us live cleanly and honestly; we make our homes our havens and our heavens. But of course there is always the beast. But they talk of nobility on the other side. That is it; they talk, talk. Italy, France, Germany! Why, I had rather be the son of an English farmer than a prince on the continent. And I had rather be what I am than the greatest nobleman in England."

"Go on, go on! I like it. What do you call it—jingo?"

"Call it what you will. Look at the men we produce. Three or four hundred years ago Europe gave us great poets, great artists, great soldiers, great churchmen, and great rascals. I admire a great rascal, when he is a Napoleon, a Talleyrand, a Machiavelli; but a petty one! We have no art, no music, no antiquity; but we have a race of gentlemen. The old country is not breeding them nowadays."

"No, she simply prints new editions of the Almanach. Continue; I am becoming illumined."

"If I am boring you?"

"No. I have the greatest admiration for the American gentleman. My father was one. But I have met Americans who are not so loyal as you are, who see no good in their native land."

"I said we have beasts; I forgot to mention the cads. I am perfectly frank. Italy is the most beautiful country in the world; France is incomparable; Germany possesses a rugged beauty which I envy for my country's sake. Every square foot of it is cultivated; nowhere the squalidity one sees among the farm-houses of this country. Think of the histories, the romance, the art, the music! America has little history; and, saving the wildernesses, it is not beautiful; but it is generous and bountiful and healthy mentally. Europe is a story-world, and I should like nothing better than to read it to the end of my days."

"Signora, dinner is served!" The little maid stood between the sliding doors which gave entrance to the dining-room.

Signora! thought Hillard. He certainly would look at her hands again.

"After you, Mr. Hillard," she said.

He bowed and passed on before her. But not till he had passed did he understand the manoeuver. To follow her would have been nothing less than the temptation to pluck at the strings of her mask. Would he have touched it? He could not say, the temptation not having been his.

That dinner! Was he in New York? Was it not Bagdad, the bottle and the genii? Had he ever, even in his most romantic dreams, expected to turn a page so charming, so enchanting, or so dangerous to his peace of mind? A game of magical hide-and-seek? To see, yet to be blindfolded! Here, across the small table, within arm's length, was a woman such as, had he been a painter, he must have painted; a poet, he must have celebrated in silken verse. Three-and-thirty? No, he was only a lad this night. All his illusions had come back again. At a word from this mysterious woman, he would have started out on any fool's errand, to any fool's land.

And she? A whim, a fantastic, unaccountable whim; the whim of a woman seeking forgetfulness, not counting the cost nor caring; simply a whim. She had brought him here to crush him for his impertinence; and that purpose was no longer in her mind. Was she sorry? Did he cause her some uneasiness, some regret and sadness? It was too late. There could be no Prince Charming in her world. He had tarried too long by the way. Not that there was the least sentiment in her heart regarding him; but his presence, his freshness, his frank honesty, these caused her to resort to comparisons. It was too late indeed.

On the little table was a Tuscany brass lamp of three wicks, fed by olive oil. It was sufficient to light the table, but the rest of the room was sunk in darkness. He half understood that there was a definite purpose in this semi-illumination: she had no wish that he should by chance recognize anything familiar in this house. Dimly he could see the stein-rack and the plate-shelf running around the walls. Sometimes, as the light flickered, a stein or a plate stood out boldly, as if to challenge his memory.

He watched her hands. The fingers were free from rings. Was she single or married? The maid had called her signora; but that might have been a disguise, like the mask and the patches of court-plaster.

"May I ask you one question?"

"No," promptly. There was something in his eyes that made her grow wary of a sudden.

"Then I shan't ask it. I shall not ask you if you are married."

"And I shall not say one way or the other."

She smiled and he laughed quietly. He had put the question and she had answered it.

Neither of them ate much of this elaborate dinner. A game like this might easily dull the sharpest appetite. He studied her head, the curves of her throat, the little gestures, the way her shoulders seemed to narrow when she shrugged; and all these pictures he stored away for future need. He would meet her again; a touch of prescience told him this. When, where, did not matter.

A running conversation; a fencing match with words and phrases. Time after time she touched him; but with all his skill he could not break through her guard. Once or twice he thrust in a manner which was not in accord with the rules.

"And that interesting dissertation on the American gentleman?" she said icily, putting aside each thrust with a parry of this kind.

"That's the trouble with posing as a moralist; one must live up to the precepts. Would you believe me if I told you that, at the age of three-and-thirty, I am still heart-whole?"

She parried: "I trust you will not spoil that excellent record by making love to me." She reached for the matches, touched off one, watched it burn for a moment, extinguished it, and then deliberately drew a line across the center of the table-cloth.



"Now what might that represent?" he asked curiously.

"A line, Mr. Hillard. The moment you cross that line, that moment you leave this house. On guard!"

"Come, that is not brave. You can retreat till your shoulders touch the mat, but I must stand this side of the line, unable to reach you. And you have the advantage of the mask besides. You are not a fair fencer."

"The odds should be in my favor. I am a woman. My wrist is not so strong as yours."

"Physically, of course, I may pass the line; to reach the salt, for instance. Will that be against the rules?"

"To a certain extent, no."

"You make it very hard. You have put temptation in my path."

"Bid Satan get behind thee."

"But supposing he should take it into his head to—shoulder me forward?"

"In that case, under the new rules, I should referee the matter."

"I wish I knew the color of your eyes. Behind those holes I see nothing but points of fire, no color. Are they blue, brown, grey?"

"They are blue. But supposing I wear this mask because my face is dreadfully scarred, and that I have some vanity?"

"Vanity, yes; but scars, never; at least never so deep as you yourself can make. You do not wear that mask to cover defects, but out of mercy to me."

And so the duel went on. Sometimes the heat of the mask almost suffocated her, and she could hardly resist the desire to tear it from her face. Yet, in spite of this discomfort, she was enjoying herself. This adventure was as novel to her as it was to him. Once she rose and approached the window, slyly raising the mask and breathing deeply of the cold air which rushed in through the crevices. When she turned she found that he, too, had risen. He was looking at the steins, one of which he held in his hand. Moreover, he returned and set the stein down beside his plate.

"Tell me, why do you do that?" There was an anxious note in her voice.

"I have an idea. But let us proceed with the dinner. This salad—"

"I am more interested in the idea." She pushed aside the salad and took a sip of the ruby Burgundy. Had he discovered something?

"May I smoke?" he asked.

"By all means."

He lighted a cigarette and put the case near the line.

"Do you not enjoy a cigarette?"

"Sometimes," she answered. "But that idea—"

"Will you not have one?" He moved the case still nearer to the line.

She reached out a firm round white arm.

"One moment," he said; "let us understand each other thoroughly."

"What do you mean?" her arm poised in mid-air. "To touch a cigarette you must cross the line to this side."

She withdrew her arm slowly.

"I shall not smoke. If I crossed the line I should establish a dangerous precedent. A good stroke. Now, the idea. I must have that idea."

He blew the smoke toward the lamp; it sailed over the flaming wicks and darted into the dark beyond.

"The mirror over the piano confused me. I had seen it somewhere before. Then, there was that old copy of Botticelli. The frame was familiar, but I could not place it. This stein, however!" He laughed; the laughter was boyish, even triumphant.

"Well, that stein?" She was now leaning across the table, her fingers tense on the cloth.

"I bought that stein two seasons ago. This is the Sandfords' place, and you are the veiled lady who has been riding Mrs. Sandford's favorite hunter in the park."

"And so?"

"I shall find out who you are presently."

"How?"

"That shall be my secret. Mutual friends, indeed! You will not have to send me home blindfolded."

"That is precisely what I shall do, in a certain sense. My name? Perhaps. But you will never know my face."

"Suppose I should determine to cross the line, despite your precepts?"

They stood up simultaneously. In a matter of this sort he was by far the quicker. In an instant he had caught her by the wrist, at the same time drawing her irresistibly round the table toward him. His grasp was not rough, only firm. She ceased to pull against him.

"I must see your face. I shall never be at peace if I do not."

"Certainly you will never know any peace if you do. Be careful!"

His free hand stole toward the strings of her mask. She moved not. His face was very close to hers now. If only she would struggle! Yes, he was certain now that her eyes were blue. But they looked at him with a menace which chilled his ardor. He dropped the hand from the mask and released her wrist.

"No, I haven't the courage. If I take that mask from your face, it will be the end. And I do not want this ever to end. If you will not let me see your face of your own free will, so be it. I shall see it some day, mark me. Fate does not cross two paths in this manner without a purpose." He stepped back slowly. "You do not understand the lure of that mask."

"Perhaps I do. I am beginning to admire your self-control, Mr. Hillard; I am beginning to admire it very much. But I am tired now, and I must ask you to go."

"Once more, will you let me see your face?"

"No. If, as you say, fate intends for us to meet again, you will see it. But I have my doubts. So it is my will to pass out of your life as completely as though I had never entered it; from one fog into another. No, I am not a happy woman; I am not happy in my friendships. Listen to me," and her voice grew low and sweet. "Let me appeal to your imagination. This light adventure shall be a souvenir for your old age. One night Romance stepped into your life and out of it. Think! There will always be the same charm, the same mystery, the same enchantment. Knowing nothing of me, there will follow no disillusions, no disenchantments; I shall always be Cinderella, or the Sleeping Beauty, or what your fancy wills. Do you understand me?"

He nodded.

"Nothing," she proceeded, "nothing lasts so long in the recollection as a pleasant mystery. In other days, in other times.... Well, on my side I shall recall this night pleasantly. Without knowing it, you have given me a new foothold in life. I did not believe that there lived a single man who could keep to the letter of his bargain. Presently you will forget the chagrin. Good night! And do not lean out of any more windows," she added lightly.

"You are right," he said reluctantly. "Something to dream over in my old age. And certainly I shall dream of it; a flash of sunlight in the shadow."

Then slowly he reached down toward her wine-glass. She understood his purpose and essayed to stop him.

"Do not deny me this little thing," he said.

She let her hand fall. He took the glass, held it against the light to see where her lips had touched it. Carefully he poured out the wine from the opposite side and kissed the rim.

"I shall keep this glass. I must have some visible object to make sure that this hasn't been a dream. Mrs. Sandford may send me the bill."

"You may kiss my hand, Mr. Hillard."

He bent quickly and kissed, not the hand, but the wrist where the marks of his fingers still remained faintly. He squared himself, and gazed long and steadfastly into her eyes. In that moment he seemed to her positively handsome; and there was a flutter in her heart that she was unable to define. On his part he realized the sooner he was gone the better; there was a limit to his self-control.... He gained the street somehow. There he stopped and turned. Did the curtain move? He wasn't sure; but he raised his hat, settled it firmly on his head, and walked rapidly away. He was rather proud of himself. He had conquered a hundred temptations. And he confidently knew that it would be many a day before she ceased to think of him. Was she single or married? Well, it mattered not, one way or the other; he knew that long years ago this night had been written and his fate summed up. Unhappy? There was more than one mask. Once in his own room, however, the longing to see her face grew terribly strong. He stood the glass on the mantel and stared at it. Why must she go out of his life? What obstacle was there to stand between them and a kindly friendship?

There was little sleep for him that night; and in the morning the first thing he did was to pick up the wine-glass. It was all true. And then his good resolutions melted and vanished. He must have one more word with her, happen what might. So at ten o'clock he called a cab and drove rapidly to the Sandford place. Snow had fallen during the night, and many of the steps were still spotless white. Impossible! He leaned from the cab and rubbed his eyes. Absolutely impossible! For, what did he see? Wooden shutters over all the lower windows and the iron gates closed before the doors! And not a footprint anywhere. This was extraordinary. He jumped from the cab, ran up the steps, and rang the bell, rang it ten times with minute intervals. And no one answered. Then he heard a call from across the street. A man stood in one of the area-ways.

"Nobody home!" he shouted. "Gone to Egypt."

"But there was some one here last night," Hillard shouted back.

"Last night? Guess you've got the wrong street and wrong house, young man."

"But this is the Sandford place?"

"Nothing else."

"I was here last night."

"Dreaming. That house has been empty since November. I happen to be the caretaker."

Hillard went back to his cab, dazed. No one there last night? Come, come; there was a mistake somewhere. It was out of the question that he had been in another house. He would soon find out whether or not he had dined there the night before.

"A cable-office!" he cried to the cabby. "Hurry!"

Once there he telephoned down-town and secured Sandford's cable address. Then he filled out a blank which cost him ten dollars. Late that night at the club he received his reply. It was terse.

You are crazy. House absolutely empty. SANDFORD.



CHAPTER VII

THE TOSS OF A COIN

Hillard made an inexcusably careless shot. It was under his hand to have turned an even forty on his string. He grounded his cue and stood back from the table. That was the way everything seemed to go; at tennis, at squash, at fencing, at billiards, it was all the same. The moment victory was within his grasp his interest waned. Only last night he had lost his title as the best fencer in the club; disqualified in the preliminaries, too, by a tyro who would never cease to brag about the accident.

"I say, Jack, what's the matter with you, anyhow?" asked Merrihew, out of patience. "A boy could have made that three-cushion, his hands tied behind him."

"It was bad," Hillard agreed. "Perhaps I am not taking the interest in the game that I formerly took."

"I should say not. You lost me fifty last night. Corlis has no more right to cross foils with you than I have; and yet he goes in for the finals, while you are out of it. Where's your eye? Where's your grip?"

Hillard chalked his cue silently.

"And when I make a proposition," pursued Merrihew, "to ride to the Catskills and back—something you would have jumped at a year ago—you shake your head. Think of it! Through unbroken roads, nights at farm-houses, old feather beds, ice in the wash-basin, liver and bacon for breakfast, and off again! Snow or rain! By George, you had a bully time last year; you swore it was the best trip we ever took on the horses. Remember how we came back to town, hungry and hardy as Arctic explorers? Come on; everything is dull down-town. Where's your spirit of adventure?"

"I'm sure I don't know where it is. Shall we finish the game?"

"Not if you're going to throw it like this," declared Merrihew. He was proud of his friend's prowess in games of skill and strength, and he was wroth to see him lose all interest unaccountably.

"Ten and a string against your half a string," said Hillard, studying the score. "I'll bet a bottle that I beat you."

"Done!" said Merrihew. Being on his mettle, he made a clean score of twenty, five to go. "I can see you paying for that check, Jack."

But the odds tingled Hillard's blood. He settled down to a brilliant play and turned sixty-one in beautiful form. There were several shots which caused Merrihew to gasp.

"Well, it's worth the price of the bottle. If only you had had that eye last night! We'll have the bottle in the alcove at the head of the stairs. I want to talk to you."

So the two passed up-stairs to the secluded alcove, and the bottle shortly followed. Merrihew filled the glasses with the air of one who would like to pass the remainder of his days doing the same thing. Not that he was overfond; but each bottle temporarily weeded out that crop of imperishable debts, that Molochian thousand, that Atalanta whose speed he could not overtake, having no golden apples. To him the world grew roseate and kindly, viewed through the press of the sparkling grape, and invariably he saw fortune beckoning to the card-tables.

"Now, then, Jack, I've got you where I want you. Who is she?"

"On my word, I don't know," answered Hillard, stirring restlessly.

"Then there is a woman!" cried Merrihew, astonished at his perspicacity. "I knew it. Nothing else would so demoralize your nerve. Shall we drink a health to her?"

Hillard raised his glass and touched that of his comrade. For the good of his soul and the peace of his mind, he then and there determined to tell Merrihew the whole adventure, without a single reservation.

"To the Lady in the Fog!" he said.

"Fog?" blankly.

"Well, the Lady in the Mask."

"Fog, mask? Two of them?"

"No, only one. Once I met her in the fog, and then I met her in the mask."

"I'll drink to her; but I'm hanged if I don't believe you're codding me," said Merrihew disappointedly. "This is New York."

"I know it; and yet sometimes I doubt it. Here's to the lady."

They drank. Hillard set down his glass; Merrihew refilled his.

"The whole story, Jack, details and all; no half-portions."

Hillard told the yarn simply, omitting nothing essential. He even added that for three weeks he had been the author of the personal inquiry as to the whereabouts of one Madame Angot. More than that, he was the guilty man who had set the club by the ears.

"I don't know, Dan, but this has taken so strong a hold on me that I shan't forget it soon. Imagine it yourself. Oh, but she could sing! I am a man not to be held in the leash of an adventure like this; but she held me. How? By the hope that one day I might see her face, with no veil of mystery to hold her off at arm's length."

Merrihew was greatly excited. He was for ordering a second bottle, but Hillard stayed him.

"By George! And you are sure that it was at the Sandfords'?"

"I am positive. But there is a puzzle that I have failed to solve: Sandford's cable and the caretaker's declaration. I know that I was in that house. I ran across a stein which I had given Sandford. I have inquired of the police; they had been requested to watch the house in the absence of the owner. The patrolman says that he has seen no light in the house since the family sailed for Africa. I sleep soundly; never have nightmares. And yet, but for her letters and the fact that Giovanni heard her sing under my window, I might almost believe I've been dreaming. It is no dream; but it begins to look as if I were the victim of some fine hoax."

"And Sandford mixed up in it," supplemented Merrihew.

"Sandford and I are good friends, but we are not so intimate that he'd take the pains to work out a hoax of this magnitude. It did not originate with him, and his wife is altogether out of the picture. If I had only seen her face, I might have forgotten all about her in a few days. But the mask, the charm, the mystery! I can't get her out of my thoughts; I am irrational in all I do; an absolute failure in the office."

"It is more than a hoax, in my opinion. Wait till Sandford returns and finds his silver gone!"

Hillard started.

"And his gold-plate," continued Merrihew, pleased with the idea. "My boy, that's what it is; the best dodge I ever heard of. But how did they get into the house, she and her maid? It will make a good story for the Sunday papers. You won't be in it, unless she ropes you in as an accomplice. That would be rich!"

"I'm a romantic ass!" Hillard sighed. Leddy Lightfinger! If this turned out to be the case, he would never trust a human being again; he would take to breeding dogs.

"Let's take that ride on the horses," Merrihew urged. "That'll clear your brain of this sentimental fog."

"No!" Hillard struck his hands together. "I've a better idea than that, and it has just come to me. I shall go to Italy in March, and you, my boy, shall go with me."

"Impossible! Why, I'm all but broke." Merrihew shook his head decidedly.

"I'll take you as a companion. I'm a sick man, Dan. I'm likely to jump overboard if some one isn't watching me every minute."

"I'd like to go, Jack; Heaven and earth, but I should! But I can't possibly go to Italy with a letter of credit no more than twenty-five hundred, and that's all there is in the exchequer at present."

"Between such friends as we are—"

"That racket won't work. I could not take a moment's peace if I did not feel independent. Supposing I wanted to come home and you didn't, or you did and I didn't? No, Jack; nothing to it that way." And Merrihew was right.

"But I'm not going to give it to you!" Hillard protested. He was determined to break down Merrihew's objections if it took all night. "I am going to lend it to you."

"And could I ever pay you back if I accepted the loan?" humorously. "You'll have to invent some other scheme."

"There's Monte Carlo; you might pull down a tidy sum," said the tempter.

"That's the way, you beggar; hit me on the soft side." But Merrihew was still obdurate. To go to Europe was out of the question.

"Now listen to reason, Dan. If you wait for the opportunity to go to Europe, you'll wait in vain. You must make the opportunity. One must have youth to enjoy Italy thoroughly. The desire to go becomes less and less as one grows older. Besides, it completes every man's education; it broadens his charity and smooths down the rough edges of his conceit. I'll put the proposition in a way you can't possibly get round. You've simply got to go. You will always have that thousand, so don't worry about that. You have twenty-five hundred on hand, you say. With that you can see Italy like a prince for three months. I know the tongue and the country; I know what you would want to see, what to avoid, where to stop."

"What's the proposition?" Merrihew drained the bottle.

"This: I'll agree to take not a penny more than twenty-five hundred myself. We'll go on equal terms. Why," confidently, "besides living like a prince, you'll have four hundred to throw away at roulette. Boy, you have never seen Italy; therefore you do not know what beauty is. When we eventually land at Bellaggio, on Lake Como, and I take your lily-white hand in mine and lead you up to the terrace of Villa Serbelloni, and order tea, then you will realize that you have only begun to live. Gardens, towering Alps, the green Lecco on one side and the green Como on the other; and Swiss champagne at a dollar-forty the quart! Eh?"

Merrihew produced his black cigar. This matter needed some deep reflection, and could not be determined offhand. The ash turned white on the end of the cigar before he replied.

"If you weren't Irish, you'd just naturally be Dago," he said with a laugh. "But it isn't fair to shoot me up this way, with flowery speeches."

"And then, besides all these things," Hillard added, "there's Kitty Killigrew, singing her heart out to a people who can't understand a word she's singing. Kitty Killigrew!"

"Can it be done for twenty-five hundred?"

"He's melting!" murmured Hillard jubilantly. "He's melting!"

"For a small amount I'd punch your head!" Merrihew chewed his cigar with subdued fierceness. He knew very well that he was destined to go to Europe. Kitty Killigrew, who had promised to mail the route they were to play, and hadn't!

"It is written, Dan, that you shall go with me. Think of running into the theater and seeing Kitty! I begin to like the music of that name."

"We'll settle this argument right here and now." Merrihew drew out a coin. "Call it!" he cried recklessly.

"Heads!"

The coin flickered in the light, fell, and proved that all money is perverse, by rolling under the davenport upon which they were sitting. An amusing hunt followed. They ran their hands over the floor, turned the rug, pulled out the davenport and looked behind, burnt innumerable matches, and finally rang for the attendant. The situation was explained, and he procured a candle. He was ultimately successful.

"Here it is, sir."

"Don't touch it!" warned Hillard.

"What is it, head or tail?" asked Merrihew weakly.

"Heads, sir," said the attendant, picking up the coin and offering it to the owner.

"Keep it," said Merrihew generously, even sadly. He never got up a game of chance that he did not get the worst of it. And now, Italy! All that way from home! "Boy, bring up a bottle of '96."

"Dan!"

"You be still," said Merrihew savagely. "You've roped me in nicely, and I'm game to go; but I'll have that bottle if I have to drink it all alone."

But he did not drink it all alone. Hillard was too wise to permit that. Merrihew might wish to add a few hundred to his letter of credit, via the card-room.

"And the Lady in the Mask?" asked Merrihew, as they at length stood up, preparatory to going down-stairs.

"I must relegate her to the fog she came out of. But it would be a frightful thing if—if—" He hesitated to form the words.

But Merrihew had no such scruple. "If the silver and plate were missing when the Sandfords return?"

"Oh, bosh! It's all some joke, and I'm the butt of it. She was in that house by the same authority she rode the horse."

"A woman of that sort would have no difficulty in hoodwinking the stablemen," declared Merrihew, certain that he had solved the riddle.

"And so you add forgery? Not a shred of my romance left!" Hillard spoke jestingly, but like a man who covers up a sudden twinge of pain.

"We'll know all about it in the fall. And ten to one, my theory will be the correct one."

"That's better. I have some hope now. You never won a bet in all your life."

"I know it; but this may be the one time. By the way, received a postal from Kitty this morning. From Gibraltar. Fine trip. Visited the gun-galleries and the antique furniture shops. Says no sign of prima donna as yet, but believes her to be on board. O'Mally's on the water-wagon. But Kitty aggravates me."

"What has she done now—refused you by Marconigraph?"

"No; but she promised me her address."

"Address her care Cook's, Florence, Rome, Venice. It's the popular mail-box of Europe; and if she has given them the address, they will forward."

"That helps considerably. I'm glad there's one Cook which can be relied on."

"In the morning I'll arrange for passage. We'll try the Celtic."

"I'll leave the business end of the trip to you."

"The first Saturday in March, then, if we can get booking. That will be in less than two weeks."

"I'm game. Shall I pack up my riding-breeches?"

"Prepare for everything except automobiles."

"Bah! I wouldn't take one as a gift."

"You couldn't afford to, if what I hear about them is true. Though you might be able to sell the gift and wipe out that thousand."

"Hang the thousand! I had almost forgotten it again."

In the lobby of the club, as they were about to enter the coat-room, Hillard ran into one of several gentlemen issuing.

"Pardon me," he said, stepping aside.

"Non un importa!" said the stranger with a graceful wave of the hands.

Hillard looked quickly into the gentleman's face. "I am clumsy," he said in Italian.

Then the other stared at him, and smiled. For a moment there was a brief tableau, in which each took the other's measure and noted the color of the eyes. The man was an exceedingly handsome Italian, for all that a scar ran from his check to his chin. It was all over in a moment; and Hillard and Merrihew proceeded to the street.

"Handsome duffer," was Merrihew's comment. "But you never can tell a man by his looks. Gaze on me, for instance. I'm a good example of handsome is as handsome does." He was growing merry.

"Go home!" Hillard slapped him jovially on the shoulder.

"Home? Ah, yes! But shall I have a home to go to when I get back? You have roped me in nicely. My poor little twenty-five hundred! But Swiss champagne at a dollar-forty the quart! Well, every cloud has its lining. Say, Jack, how much brighter the world looks after a magnum! And a funny story's twice as funny. Good night. As for the Lady in the Fog, take the cash and let the credit go. That's my motto."

As Hillard never received any answer to his personal, he discontinued it. Truly, she had returned to the fog out of which she had come. But it was no less difficult for him to take up the daily affairs again; everything was so terribly prosaic now; the zest was gone from work and play. Italy was the last resort; and the business of giving Merrihew a personally conducted tour would occupy his mind. Always he was asking: Who was she? What mystery veiled her? Whither had she gone? We never can conjure up a complete likeness. Sometimes it is the eyes, again the mouth and chin, or the turn of the throat; there is never any ensemble of features and adornments. And as for Hillard, he really had nothing definite to recall, unless it was the striking color of her hair or the mellow smoothness of her voice. And could he really remember these? He often wished that she had sung under any window but his.

Giovanni was delighted when he heard the news. He would go, too, and act as valet to the signore and his friend till they put out for Rome. Then, of course, he would be obliged to leave them. Occasionally Hillard would reason with him regarding his deadly projects. But when a Latin declares that he has seen through blood, persuasions, arguments, entreaties, threats do not prevail. He comforted himself with the opinion, however, that Giovanni's hunt would come to no successful end.

"You will surely fall into the hands of the police."

"What God wills comes true. But by this time they will have forgotten me."

"But you have not forgotten."

"Padre mio, that is different. One obeys the civil law from habit. Between me and the carabinieri there is nothing personal. Thus it is easy for them to forget. Still, I shall not announce my approach, that I am Giovanni l'Aguello, returned for arrest. I shall take good care to keep out of their way."

"The eagle; that is a good name for you."

"And once I was as tame as a dove."

"But your man might be dead."

"He is not dead. If he were, something would tell me."

"It is a bad business, and I wish you no luck."

Giovanni smiled easily. Wishes seldom interfere with any one.

"I will double your wages," said Hillard, "if you will go where I go and return with me when I come back to America."

A deprecating movement. "Money? It is nothing. I am rich, after my kind."

"Are you still in the Church?"

"I confess regularly once a week. Oh, I am a good Catholic."

"Take yourself off. I am displeased with you."

The few days before sailing found Merrihew in a flutter of intense excitement. He carried his letter of credit about in order to convince himself during the day that he was really and truly going to Italy. He forswore the bottle and the illumined royalty of the card-deck, and spent his evenings "studying up" the lay of the land. To be sure, there was one grand dinner the night before they sailed. Suppose, Merrihew advanced, for the sake of argument, suppose the ship went down or he never came back, or he was ill all the way over? There would be one good dinner to remember, anyhow.

It was a drizzling, foggy morning when they drove down to the boat. There are seldom bright sailing days in the forepart of March. But the atmospheric effects made no impression on the volatile Merrihew. It was all very interesting to him. And he had an eye for all things, from the baskets of fruit and flowers, messengers with late orders from the stores, repeated farewells, to the squalling babies in the steerage. Even in the impudent shrieking tugboats he found a measure of delight; and the blur on the water was inviting.

At four o'clock they were on the high seas, heading for the Azores. Hillard was dreaming and Merrihew was studiously employed over a booklet on How to Speak Italian in One Day. There was a moderate sea on.

By and by Giovanni, who had spent most of the time arranging the luggage in the adjoining staterooms, came up on deck. He had two packets of letters and telegrams. One he gave to Merrihew and the other to his master.

"I forgot to give the signore his mail at breakfast. The boat-mail has just been distributed." He then went forward.

Merrihew was greatly pleased with his packet. There were humorous letters and cheery telegrams, containing all sorts of advice in case of seasickness, how to slip cigars through the customs, where to get the best post-cards, and also the worst.

Hillard found among his a bulky envelope post-marked Naples. After he opened it he lay back in his chair and contemplated the ruffled horizon. Naples! He sat up. It had been addressed to the house and the address typewritten.

"Dan?"

"What is it?"

"Look at this!"

"Good Lord!" Dan gasped, his feet coming down to the deck.

For Hillard was holding up for his inspection a crumpled black silk mask.



CHAPTER VIII

WHAT MERRIHEW FOUND

The great ship had passed the Isle of Ischia, and now the Bay of Naples unfolded all its variant beauties. Hillard had seen them many times before, yet they are a joy eternal, a changing joy of which neither the eye nor the mind ever grows weary. Both he and Merrihew were foremost in the press against the forward rail. To the latter's impressionable mind it was like a dream. In fancy he could see the Roman galleys, the fighting triremes, the canopied pleasure-craft, just as they were two thousand years ago. Yonder, the temples and baths of Nero of the Golden House; thither, the palaces of the grim Tiberius; beyond, Pompeii, with Glaucus, lone, and Nydia, the blind girl. The dream-picture faded and the reality was no less fascinating: the white sails of the fishermen winging across the sapphire waters, leaving ribboned pathways behind that crossed and recrossed like a chart of the stars; proud white pleasure-yachts, great vessels from all ports in the world; and an occasional battle-ship, drab and stealthy. And the hundred pink and white villages, the jade and amethyst of the near and far islands, the smiling terraces above the city, the ruined temples, the grim giant ash-heap of Vesuvius!

"That is it," said Merrihew, whose flights of rhetoric were most simplified.

"Vedi Napoli e poi mori!" replied Hillard.

"Hold on," exclaimed Merrihew. "Pass it out slowly. What's that mean?"

"See Naples and die."

"I prefer to see it and live. But I am kind of disappointed in Vesuvius. It's not the terrible old Moloch of my geographies that gobbled up cities and peoples. And nobody seems to be afraid of it," with a gesture toward the villages nestling with the utmost confidence at the circling base. "Not a bit of smoke anywhere."

"No, my boy, don't speak slightingly of old Vesuvius. It is one of the great mysteries of the world. To-morrow that mountain may swallow up the whole bay, or it may never wake up again. Respect it; I do. When I recall Herculaneum and Pompeii—"

"Two thousand years ago; that's different. I'm never satisfied, I know, but I should like to see it blow its head off while I'm here."

"Not I! As I grow older I like comfort and security more and more. See that village on the cliffs toward the south? That's Sorrento, where I was born. The eruption of '72 happened while I was there, but I was too young to take any particular notice. Sh! Look at Giovanni."

Merrihew looked at the old Roman. Tears were running down his cheeks, and his gaze strove to pierce the distance to the far-off Sabine Hills. Italy! Yonder his heart and soul had taken root; his native land, his native land, and condemned to live in exile from it! Hillard leaned over and touched him on the arm, and he started.

"Take care, Giovanni."

"Pardon! I am weak this day, but to-morrow I shall be strong. Seven years! Have you not longed for it yourself? Has not your heart gone out many times across the seas to those cliffs?" pointing to Sorrento.

"Many times, Giovanni. But remember and control yourself. Presently the carabinieri will come on board. You will see that all our luggage goes promptly to the Bristol, once we are through the customs."

"Trust me, signore."

They landed at the custom-house at two in the afternoon, and passed without any difficulty. Naples is the easiest port in the world, if you are not a native and you chance to be an uncommercial traveler who is willing to purchase salt and tobacco of the State. The Italian tobacco is generally bad, and formerly one had to smoke it or go without; but now the best of imported cigars may be found in all the large cities, cheaper in some respects than those in America, and not a whit inferior, since there is no middleman's profit, buying, as one does, direct from the State. The hotels, however, sell the same brands at an outrageous advance; the proprietor must have his commission, the concierge, the head-waiter, the waiters, the porters, and the chef, for this slight favor to the guest. Commission! It means something in sunny Italy. All this Hillard explained to Merrihew as they were awaiting the examination. Merrihew, holding grimly on to his hand-luggage, stood waiting for Hillard at the iron gates fronting the railroad. Suddenly a brilliantly uniformed man rushed up to him, bowed, and insisted on taking the luggage. Merrihew protested feebly.

"But you are Meestaire Merrihoo, the friend of Meestaire Hillar?"

"Yes."

"It is all right, then." The brilliant uniform prevailed, and Merrihew surrendered the luggage, marveling. Hillard seemed to know every one over here.

"Beautiful weather," said the uniform, as they passed through the gates.

"Fine," said Merrihew. From the corner of his eye he inspected the man at his side. Certainly he could be no less than a captain in the navy, with those epaulets and sleeve-bands.

"This is your first trip to Italy?"

"Yes. You people are very courteous here."

"Oh, we make that a part of our business."

A hundred cabmen yelled and shouted; but at a sign from Merrihew's new acquaintance they subsided or turned their attention elsewhere. This sign of respect made a still deeper impression on Merrihew.

"I'll bet a dollar he's an admiral!" he thought.

At length they came to an omnibus. The admiral beckoned to Merrihew to step in. The luggage was thrown on top.

"I am very grateful to you," said Merrihew, offering his hand.

The admiral shook it somewhat doubtfully, tipped his cap, and went hurriedly back to the dogana, or custom-house.

Shortly after Hillard appeared.

"We shan't go up in the omnibus," he said. "We'll take a carriage."

Merrihew looked around in vain for his distinguished acquaintance.

"What did you give the porter?" Hillard asked as they drove off.

"Porter? I didn't see any porter."

"Why, the chap who took your luggage from the customs."

"Good Lord! was that the porter? Why, I thought he was a personal friend of yours and an admiral in the Italian navy. I shook hands with him!"

Hillard shouted with laughter.

What a noisy, smelly, picturesque city it was! The cries of the hawkers, the importunities of the guides, the venders and cabmen, the whining beggars; the clatter of horses and carriages and carts; strolling singers, goats with tinkling bells, the barking of outcast dogs, and the brawling and bawling of children, hundreds upon hundreds of children! Merrihew grew dizzy trying to absorb the whole canvas at once. How the sturdy little campagna ponies ran up and down the narrow winding streets! Crack-crack! went the driver's lash. It possessed a language all its own. It called, it warned at the turning of the corners, it greeted friends, it hurled curses at rivals. Crack-crack! till Merrihew's ears ached. It was all very crowded and noisy till they reached the upper terrace of the Corso Vittorio; then the sounds became murmurous and pleasing.

Their rooms were pleasantly situated, looking out upon the sparkling bay. Giovanni began at once to unpack the trunks, happy enough to have something to occupy him till after dark, when he determined to venture forth. The dreaded carabinieri had paid him not the slightest attention; so far he was as safe as though he were in New York.

It was yet so early in the day that the two young men sallied forth in quest of light adventure. Besides, Merrihew was very eager to find some Roman and Florence newspapers. The American Comic Opera Company was somewhere north. They found stationed outside the hotel a rosy-cheeked cabby who answered to the name of Tomasso, or Tomass', as the Neapolitans generally drop the finals. He carried a bright red lap-robe and blanket, spoke a little English, and was very proud of the accomplishment. He was rather disappointed, however, when Hillard bargained with him in his own tongue. He saw at once that there would be no imposing on the young Americano. The two harangued for a while, on general principles. Twice words rose so high that Merrihew thought they were about to come to blows. Tomass' shook his fingers under Hillard's nose and Hillard returned the compliment. Finally Tomass' compromised on one-lira-fifty per hour, with fifty centesimi pourboire. Crack-crack! Down the hill they went, as if a thousand devils were after them.

"By George!" gasped Merrihew, clutching his seat; "the fool will break our necks!"

"They are always like this," laughed Hillard. "Slowly, slowly!" he called.

Tomass' grinned and cracked his whip. He did not understand the word slowly in his own tongue or in any other; at least, not till he reached the shops. It was business to go slowly there. A dozen times, on the Via Roma, Merrihew yelled that they would lose a wheel. But Tomass' knew the game. A man on foot could not have eluded collisions more skilfully. Merrihew never saw such driving. Nor had he ever seen such shops. Coral, coral, wherever the eye roamed. Where did they get it all and to whom did they sell it? Necklaces, tiaras, rings, brooches, carved and uncarved; were there women enough in the world to buy these things?

"If I had a wife..." he began.

"Well?"

"I'd feel devilish sorry for her husband at this moment."

"But isn't the color great?" said Hillard. It was good to be in Naples again.

Indeed, on a sunny afternoon, the traveler will find no other street offering such a kaleidoscope of luxuriant colors as the Via Roma of Naples. Behold the greens, the flowers, the cheeses, the shining fish, the bakestuffs, the silver- and goldsmiths, the milliners, the curio-dens! And the people! Dark-eyed beauties on foot or driving, handsome bearded men, monks, friars, priests, an archbishop in his splendid carriage, a duke driving tandem, nuns, and children. And uniforms as thick as poppies in a wheat-field. Officers rode past in their light blue capes, their gold and scarlet braids and polished scabbards; the foot-soldiers with their flowing green cock-feathers, policemen with their short swords, the tall and dignified carabinieri (always in pairs) with their cocked hats and crimson pompons towering above the sea of hats. It seemed to Merrihew that a rainbow had been captured and trained accordingly.

"I never saw so many kids," he observed; "so many dirty ones," he added. "Herod would have had his work cut out for him here. Now, where can we get some newspapers? I must know where she is."

"Presently," said Hillard. "The Piazza dei Martin," he directed Tomass'. Then he turned to Merrihew solemnly. "My boy, if you are to travel with me, beware of the Tauchnitz edition."

"What's that?"

"It's good reading in paper-covers. It is easier to sit in the hotel all day and read Tauchnitz than it is to tramp through churches and galleries and museums."

"No Tauchnitz; I promise." And Merrihew was an inveterate novel reader.

At the book-shop in the Piazza they found the Rome and Florence papers. Hillard went through them thoroughly, but nowhere did he see anything relative to the doings of the American Comic Opera Company.

"Not a line, Dan."

"But there must be something in the Florence paper. They should be playing there yet."

"Nothing; these papers are two weeks old."

Merrihew stared blankly at the sheet. "I should like to know what it means."

"We will write to the consulate in Rome. If there has been any trouble he will certainly notify us. I'll write to-night. Now, here's Cook's next door. We'll ask if there is any mail for Kitty Killigrew."

But there wasn't, nor had there been; and the name was not on the forwarding books.

"Looks as if your Kitty were the needle in the haystack."

"Hang the luck!" Merrihew jammed his hands into his pockets and sulked with the world.

"It is evident that Kitty will not have you."

"Cut it!" savagely. Pictures and churches and museums were all well enough, but Merrihew wanted Kitty Killigrew above all the treasures of earth. It was no longer a passing fancy; he was downright in love.

When they turned down to the Via Caracciolo, with the full sweep of the magnificent bay at their feet, Merrihew's disappointment softened somewhat. It was the fashionable hour. The band was playing near-by in the Villa Nazionale. Americans were everywhere. Occasionally a stray princess or countess flashed by, inert and listless against the cushions, and invariably over-dressed. And when men accompanied them, the men (if they were husbands) lolled back, even more listless. And beggars of all sorts and descriptions besieged the "very great grand rich Americans." To the Neapolitan all Americans are rich; they are the only forestieri who are always ready to throw money about, regardless of results. The Englishman, now, when the poveretto puts out his unlovely hand, looks calmly over his head and drives on. The German (and in the spring there are more Germans in Italy than Italians!) is deep in his Koran, generally, his Karl Baedeker, or too thrifty to notice. It is to the American, then, that the beggar looks for his daily macaroni.

They were nearly a week in Naples. They saw the galleries, the museums and churches; they saw underground Naples; they made the weary and useless ascent of Vesuvius; and Merrihew added a new smell to his collection every hour. Pompeii by moonlight, however, was worth a thousand ordinary dreams; and Merrihew, who had abundant imagination, but no art with which to express it—happily or unhappily—saw Lytton's story unfold in all its romantic splendor. In the dark corners he saw Glaucus, and Sallust, and Arbaces; he could hear the light step of the luxurious Julia, and the tramp of the gladiators; he could hear Ione's voice in song and the low whisper of Nydia with her roses. "To the lions! Glaucus to the lions!" It would have been perfect had Vesuvius blown off the top of its head at that moment.

They lingered at Amalfi three days, and dreamed away the hours under the white pergola. Merrihew was loath to leave; but Hillard was for going on to Sorrento, for which his heart was always longing.

A spring rain fell as they took the incline, and it followed them over the mountains and down into Sorrento. The ruddy oranges hung in clusters over the old walls which lined both sides of the road, walls so old that history stops before them doubtfully. And the perfume of the sweet rain mingling with that of the fruit was like nothing Merrihew had ever sensed before. They finally drew up in the courtyard of the Hotel de la Sirena, and the long ride was at an end. The little garden was white and pink with roses and camellias, and the tubbed mandarins were heavy with fruit.

"And this is March!" said Merrihew, his thought traveling back to his own bleak country, where winter is so long and summer is so short.

Their rooms were on the northeast corner, on the first floor; and from the windows they could look down upon the marina piccola and the tideless sea, a sheer hundred and fifty feet below. Everybody welcomed the Signore Hillard; the hotel was his, and everything and everybody in it. Fire? It was already burning in the grate; orange wood, too, the smoke of which leaves no strong acidulous odor on the air. The Signore Hillard had only to speak, he had only to express a wish; they would scour the village to gratify it. Hillard accepted all these attentions as a matter of course, as a duke or a prince might have accepted them.

"By George!" whispered Merrihew; "they treat you like a prince here."

Later, when they were alone, Hillard began to explain.

"They remember my father; he used to live like a prince in Sorrento. Every time I come here I do the best I can to keep the luster to his name. To-morrow I shall point out to you the villa in which I was born. A Russian princess owns it now. You will know the place by the pet monkey which is always clambering about the balconies near the porter's lodge. More than that, if the princess is not on the Riviera, I'll take you there to tea some afternoon."

"A real live princess!" said Merrihew. "Is she beautiful?"

"Once upon a time," returned Hillard, laughing. "And, now, what do you say to a game of penuchle till dinner, a penny a point?"

Merrihew found two decks of cards, arranged them, and the game began. It was all very cheerful, the fire in the grate, the rain on the casement-windows, the blur on the bay, and the fragrance of two well-filled pipes.

There is very little to do in Sorrento at night; no theaters, no bands, no well-lighted cafes, nothing save wandering companies who dance the tarantella in the lobbies of the hotels, the men clumsy in their native costumes and the girls with as much grace and figure as so many heifers. It is only in Sicily that the Latin has learned to dance. But the tarantella is a novelty to the sight-seeing tourist, who believes he must see everything in order to be an authority when he gets back home.

Giovanni did not return till late that night, and on the morrow Hillard questioned him.

"I have been to see a cousin," said Giovanni, "who lives on the way to El Deserta."

"Ah! So you have a cousin here?"

"Yes, signore."

How old he looked, poor devil! Hillard had not taken particular notice of him during the past week's excursions. Giovanni had aged ten years since they landed.

"And was this cousin glad to see you? And is he to be trusted?"

"Both, signore. He had some news. She is—dancer in one of the Paris music-cafes."

Hillard kindled his pipe thoughtfully. And patiently Giovanni waited, knowing that shortly his master would offer some suggestion.

"Would you like me to give you the necessary money to go to Paris and bring her back to the Sabine Hills?" he asked softly.

"I shall go to Paris, signore—after."

"You will never find him."

"Who can say?"

"What is his name?" Hillard had never till this moment asked this question.

"I know it; that is sufficient. He is high, signore, very high; yet I shall reach him. If I told you his name—"

"There would be the possibility of my warning him."

"That is why I hesitate."

"You are a Catholic, Giovanni."

Giovanni signified that he was.

"Does not the God of all Catholics, of all Christians, in fact, does He not say that vengeance is His and that He will repay?"

"But there are so many of us, signore, so many of us small and of slight importance, that, likely enough, God with all His larger cares has not the time to remember us. What may happen to him in the hereafter does not concern me; for he will certainly be in the purgatory of the rich and I in the purgatory of the poor. It must be now, now!"

"Go your own way," said Hillard, dismissing him; "I shall never urge you again."

Giovanni gone, Hillard leaned against the casement. The sun was bright this morning and the air was clear. He could see Naples distinctly. Below, the fishermen and their wives, their bare feet plowing in the wet sands, were drawing in the nets, swaying their bodies gracefully. Presently the men in the boat landed the catch, and the net sparkled with living silver. So long as Giovanni was with him, he would be morally responsible for his actions. He would really be glad when the grim old Roman took himself off on his impossible quest.

How the sight of this beach recalled his boyhood! How many times had he and his brilliant mother wandered over these sands, picking up the many-colored stones, or baiting a young star-fish, or searching the caverns of the piratical Saracens that honeycombed the clifts, or yet, again, taking a hand at the nets! Sometimes he grew very lonely; for without a woman, either of one's blood or of one's choice, life holds little. Ah, that woman in the mask, that chimera of a night, that fancy of an hour!

And then Merrihew burst in upon him, wildly excited, and flourished the hotel register.

"Look at this!" he cried breathlessly. He flung the book on the table and pointed with shaking finger.

Hillard came forward, and this is what he saw:

Thomas O'Mally James Smith Arthur Worth La Signorina Capricciosa Kitty Killigrew Am. Comic Opera Co., N.Y.

"Kitty has been here!"

"Perfectly true. But I wonder."

"Wonder about what?" asked Merrihew.

"Who La Signorina Capricciosa is. Whimsical indeed. She must be the mysterious prima donna."

He studied the easy-flowing hand, and ran his fingers through his hair thoughtfully. Then he frowned.

"What is it?" asked Merrihew curiously.

"Nothing; only I am wondering where I have seen that handwriting before."



CHAPTER IX

MRS. SANDFORD WINKS

A week in Sorrento, during which Merrihew saw all the beautiful villas, took tea with the Russian princess, made a martyr of himself trying to acquire a taste for the sour astringent wines of the country, and bought inlaid-wood paper-cutters and silk socks and neckties and hat-bands, enough, in truth, to last him for several generations; another week in Capri, where, at the Zum Kater Hidigeigei, he exchanged compliments with the green parrot, drank good beer, played batseka (a game of billiards) with the exiles (for Capri has as many as Cairo!) and beat them out of sundry lire, toiled up to the ledge where the playful Tiberius (see guide-books) tipped over his whilom favorites, bought a marine daub; and then back to Naples and the friendly smells. His constant enthusiasm and refreshing observations were a tonic to Hillard.

At the hotel in Naples they found a batch of mail. There was a letter which held particular interest to Merrihew. It was from the consul at Rome, a reply to Millard's inquiries regarding the American Comic Opera Company.

"We'll now find out where your charming Kitty is," Hillard said, breaking the seal.

But they didn't. On the contrary, the writer hadn't the slightest idea where the play-actors were or had gone. They had opened a two weeks' engagement at the Teatro Quirino. There had been a good house on the opening night; the remainder of the week did not show the sale of a hundred tickets. It was a fallacy that traveling Americans had any desire to witness American productions in Italy. So, then, the managers of the theater had abruptly canceled the engagement. The American manager had shown neither foresight nor common sense. He had, in the first place, come with his own scenery and costumes, upon which he had to pay large duties, and would have to pay further duties each time he entered a large city. His backer withdrew his support; and the percentage demanded by the managers in Florence, Genoa, Milan and Venice was so exorbitant (although they had agreed to a moderate term in the beginning) that it would have been nothing short of foolhardiness to try to fill the bookings. The singing of the prima donna, however, had created a highly favorable impression among the critics; but she was unknown, and to be unknown was next to positive failure, financially. This information, the writer explained, had been obtained by personal investigation. The costumes and scenery had been confiscated; and the manager and his backer had sailed for America, leaving the members of the company to get back the best way they could. As none of the players had come to the consulate for assistance, their whereabouts were unknown. The writer also advised Mr. Hillard not to put his money in any like adventure. Italy was strongly against any foreign invasion, aside from the American trolley-car.

"That's hard luck," growled Merrihew, who saw his hopes go down the horizon.

"But it makes me out a pretty good prophet," was Hillard's rejoinder. "The Angel's money gave out. Too many obstacles. To conquer a people and a government by light opera—it can't be done here. And so the American Comic Opera Company at the present moment is vegetating in some little pensione, waiting for money from home."

Merrihew gnawed the end of his cane. All his pleasant dreams had burst like soap-bubbles. Had they not always done so? There would be no jaunts with Kitty, no pleasant little excursions, no little suppers after the performance. And what's a Michelangelo or a Titian when a man's in love?

"Brace up, Dan. Who knows? Kitty may be on the high seas, that is, if she has taken my advice and got a return-ticket. I'll give you a dinner at the Bertolini to-night, and you may have the magnum of any vintage you like. We'll have Tomass' drive us down the Via Caracciolo. It will take some of the disappointment out of your system."

"Any old place," was the joyless response. "Seems to me that Italy has all the cards when it comes to graft."

"America, my boy, is only in the primary department. Kitty's manager forgot the most important thing of the whole outfit."

"What's that?"

"The Itching Palm. Evidently it had not been properly soothed. Come on; we may run across some of our ship-acquaintances. To-morrow we'll start for Rome, and then we shall add our own investigations to those of the consul."

They had ridden up and down the Via Caracciolo twice when they espied a huge automobile, ultramarine blue. It passed with a cloud of dust and a rumble which was thunderous. Hillard half rose from his seat.

"Somebody you know?" asked Merrihew.

"The man at the wheel looked a bit like Sandford."

"Sandford? By George, that would be jolly!"

"Perhaps they will come this way again. Tomass', follow that motor."

Sure enough, when the car reached the Largo Vittoria, it wheeled and came rumbling back. This time Hillard had no doubts. He stood up and waved his arms. The automobile barked and groaned and came to a stand.

"Hello, Sandford!"

"Jack Hillard, as I live, and Dan Merrihew! Nell?" turning to one of the three pretty women in the tonneau. "What did I tell you? I felt it in my bones that we would run across some one we knew."

"Or over them," his wife laughed.

In a foreign land one's flag is no longer eyed negligently and carelessly, as though it possessed no significance; it now becomes a symbol of the soil wherein our hearts first took root. A popular tune we have once scorned, now, when heard, catches us by the throat; the merest acquaintance becomes a long-lost brother; and persons to whom we nod indifferently at home now take the part of tried and true friends. But when we meet an old friend, one who has accepted our dinners and with whom we have often dined, what is left but to fall on his neck and weep? There was, then, over this meeting, much ado with handshaking and compliments, handshaking and questions; and, as in all cases like this, every one talked at once. How was old New York? How was the winter in Cairo? And so forth and so on, till a policeman politely told them that this was not a private thoroughfare, and that they were blocking the way. So they parted, the two young men having promised to dine with the Sandford party that evening.

"What luck, Dan!" Hillard was exuberant.

"Saves you the price of a dinner."

"I wasn't thinking of that. But I shall find out all about her to-night."

"Who?"

"The Lady in the Fog, the masquerading lady!"

"Bah! I should prefer something more solid than a vanishing lady."

"Look here, Dan, I never throw cold water on you."

"There have been times when it would have done my head good."

Sandford knew how to order a dinner; and so by the time that Merrihew had emptied his second glass of Burgundy and his first of champagne, he was in the haze of golden confidence. He would find Kitty, and when he found her he would find her heart as well.

"Say, Jack," said Sandford, "what did you mean by that fool cable, anyhow?"

Hillard had been patiently waiting for an opening of this sort. "And what did you mean by hoaxing me?"

"Hoaxing you?"

"That's the word. I was in your house that night; I was there as surely as I am here to-night."

"Nell, am I crazy, or is it Jack?"

"Sometimes," said Mrs. Sandford, "when you put the chauffeur in the tonneau, I'm inclined to think that it is you."

Hillard looked straight into the placid grey eyes of his hostess. Very slowly one of the white lids drooped. His heart bounded.

"But really," continued Sandford seriously, "unless you bribed the caretaker, you could not possibly have entered the house. You have been dreaming."

"Very well, then; it begins to look as if I had." It was apparent to Hillard that Sandford was not in his wife's confidence in all things. He also saw the wisdom of dropping the subject while at the table. To take up the thread of that romance again! He needed no wine to tingle his blood.

They took coffee and liqueur in the glass-inclosed balcony. All Naples sparkled at their feet, and the young moon rose over the Sorrentine Hills. Sandford and Merrihew and the other two ladies began an animated exchange of experiences. Hillard found a quiet nook, not far from the lift. He saw that Mrs. Sandford's chair was placed so that she could get a good view of the superb night. He sat down himself, sipped his liqueur meditatively, drank his coffee, and, as she nodded, lighted a cigarette.

"Well?" she said, smiling into his brown eyes. She was rather fond of Hillard; a gentleman always, and one of excellent taste. There was never any wearisome innuendo in his wit nor suggestion in his stories.

"You deliberately winked at me," he began.

"I deliberately did."

"Sandford is in the dark; I suspected as much."

"Regarding the wink?"

"Regarding the mysterious woman who occupied your house by your express authority, and who rode the hunter in the park."

"Was there ever a more beautiful picture?" sweeping her hands toward the city.

"The beauty of it will last several hours yet. Who and what was she?"

"I wish I could find you a wife; you would make a good husband."

"Thank you. I am even willing, with your assistance, to prove it. Who was she, and how came she in your house?"

"She wished that favor, and that her presence in New York should not be known. Now, describe to me exactly what happened. I am worrying about the plate and the silver."

He laughed. "And you will meet me half-way?"

"I promise to tell you all I ... dare."

"There is a mystery?"

"Yes. So begin with your side of it."

He was a capital story-teller. He recounted the adventure in all its color; the voice under his window, the personals in the paper, the interchange of letters, the extraordinary dinner, the mask in the envelope. She followed him with breathless interest.

"Charming, charming!" She clapped her hands. "And how well you tell it! You have told it just as it happened."

"Just as it happened!" confounded for a moment.

"Exactly. I have had a letter, two, in fact. You did not see her face?"

"Only the chin and mouth. But if I ever meet her again I shall know her by her teeth."

"Heavens! And how?"

"Two lower ones are gone; otherwise they would be beautiful."

"Poor man! You have builded your house upon the sands. Her teeth are perfect. She has fooled you."

"But I saw with these two eyes!"

"There is a preparation which theatrical people use; a kind of gum. She mentioned the trick. Isn't she clever?"

"Yet I shall know her hair," doggedly.

She put her hands swiftly to her head. "Now, you have known me for years. What is the color of my hair?"

"Why, it is blond."

"Nothing of the kind. It is auburn. If you can not tell mine, how will you tell hers?"

"I shall probably run after every red-headed woman in Europe till I find her," humorously.

"If you can keep out of jail long enough."

"I shall at any rate remember her voice."

"That is better. Our ears never deceive half so often as our eyes."

"Her face is not scarred, is it?"

"Scarred!" indignantly. "She is as beautiful as a Raphael, as lovely as a Bouguereau. If I were a man I should gladly journey round the world for the sight of her."

"I am willing, even anxious."

"I should fall in love with her."

"I believe I have."

"And I should marry her, too."

"Even that."

"Come, Mr. Hillard; I am just fooling. You are too sensible a man to fall in love with a shadow, a mask. Your fancy has been trapped, that is all. One does not fall in love that way."

"You ought to know," with a sidelong glance at Sandford.

As her glance followed his, hers grew warm and kindly. Sandford, by chance meeting the look, smiled back across the room. This little by-play filled Hillard with a sense of envy and loneliness. At three-and-thirty a bachelor realizes that there is something else in life besides business and travel.

"It is quite useless to ask who she is?" he inquired of his hostess.

"Quite useless."

"She is married?"

"Certainly I have not said so."

He flicked the ash from his cigarette. What was the use of trying to trap a woman into saying what she did not propose to say?

"Have you those letters?"

"One of them I'll show you."

"Why not the other?"

"It would be wasting time. It merely relates to your adventure. She sailed the day after you dined with her."

"That accounts for the shutters. The police and the caretaker were bribed."

"I suspect they were."

"If I were a vain man, and you know I am not, I might ask you if she spoke well of me in this letter. Understand, I am not inquiring."

"But you put the question as adroitly as a woman. We are sure of vanity always. Yes, she spoke of you. She found you to be an agreeable gentleman. But," with gentle malice, "she did not say that she wished she had met you years ago, under more favorable circumstances, or that she liked your eyes, which are really fine ones."

He had to join in her laughter.

"Come, give me the death-stroke and have done with it. Tell me what you dare, and I'll be content with it."

She opened her handkerchief purse and delved among the various articles therein.

"I expected that you would be asking questions, so I came prepared. I did not tell my husband for that very reason. He would have insisted upon knowing everything. Here, read this. It is only a glimpse."

He searched eagerly for the signature.

"Don't bother," she said. "The name is only a nickname we gave her at school."

"School? Do you mean to tell me that you went to school with her? Where?"

"In Pennsylvania first; then in Milan. Read."

O Cara Mia—If only you knew how sorry I am to miss you! Why must you sail at once? Why not come to my beautiful Venice? True, I could not entertain you as in the days of my good father. But I have so much to say to you that can not be written. You ask about the adventure. Pouf! goes my little dream of greatness. It was a blank failure. Much as I knew about Italy I could not know everything. The officials put unheard-of obstacles in our path. The contracts were utterly disregarded. In the first place, we had not purchased our costumes and scenery in Italy.

"Costumes and scenery?" Hillard sought the signature again. Mrs. Sandford was staring at the moonlit bay.

That poor manager! And that poor man who advanced the money! They forgot that the booking is as nothing, the incidentals everything. The base of all the trouble was a clerk in the consulate at Naples. He wrote us that there would be no duties on costumes and scenery. Alas! the manager and his backer are on the way to America, sadder and wiser men. We surrendered our return tickets to the chorus and sent them home. The rest of us are stranded—is not that the word?—here in Venice, waiting for money from home. If I were alone, it would be highly amusing; but these poor people with me! There is only one way I can help them, but that, never. You recollect that my personal income is quarterly, and it will be two months before I shall have funds. I could get it advanced, but I dare not. There are persons moving Heaven and earth to find me. My companions haven't the least idea who I am; to them I am one of the profession. So here we all are, wandering about the Piazza San Marco, calling at Cook's every day in hopes of money, and occasionally risking a penny in corn for the doves. I am staying with my nurse, my mother's maid, in the Canipo Santa Maria Formosa, near our beloved Santa Barbara. Very quietly I have guaranteed the credit of my unfortunate companions, and they believe that Venetians are very generous people. Generous! Think of it! Come to Venice, dear; it is all nonsense that you must return to America. Perhaps you will wonder how I dared appear on the stage in Italy. A black wig and a theatrical make-up; these were sufficient. A duke sent me an invitation to take supper with him, as if I were a ballerina! I sent one of the American chorus girls, a little minx for mischief. She ate his supper, and then ran away. I understand that he was furious. Only a few months more, Nell, and then I may come and go as I please. Come to Venice. Capricciosa.

Hillard did not stir. Another labyrinth to this mystery! Capricciosa; Kitty Killigrew's unknown prima donna; and all he had to do was to take the morning train for Venice, and twenty-four hours later he would be prowling through the Campo Santa Maria Formosa. Though his mind was busy with a hundred thoughts, his head was still bent and his eyes riveted upon the page.

Mrs. Sandford observed him curiously, even sadly. Why couldn't his fancy have been charmed by an every-day, sensible girl, and not by this whimsical, extraordinary woman who fooled diplomats, flaunted dukes, and kept a king at arm's length as a pastime? And yet—!

"Capricciosa," he mused aloud. "That is not her name."

"And I shall not tell it you."

"But her given name? Just a straw; something to hold on; I'm a drowning man." Hillard's pleadings would have melted a heart of stone.

"It is Hilda."

"That is German."

"She prefers it to Sonia."

"Sonia Hilda; it begins well. May I keep this letter?"

"Certainly not. With that cara mia? Give it to me."

He did so. "Shall I seek her?"

"This is my advice: don't think of her after to-night. If you ever see or recognize her, avoid her. It may sound theatrical, but she is the innocent cause of two deaths. These men sought her openly, too."