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Title: The Guests Of Hercules

Author: C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

Illustrator: M. Leone Bracker and Arthur H. Buckland

Release Date: October 18, 2006 [EBook #19569]

Language: English

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                         THE GUESTS OF HERCULES




                                BOOKS BY
                       C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON


                    The Golden Silence
                    The Motor Maid
                    Lord Loveland Discovers America
                    Set in Silver
                    The Lightning Conductor
                    The Princess Passes
                    My Friend the Chauffeur
                    Lady Betty Across the Water
                    Rosemary in Search of a Father
                    The Princess Virginia
                    The Car of Destiny
                    The Chaperon




[Illustration: "MARY WAS A GODDESS ON A GOLDEN PINNACLE. THIS WAS LIFE;
THE WINE OF LIFE"]




                                  The
                           Guests of Hercules


                                   BY
                       C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON


                             ILLUSTRATED BY
                 M. LEONE BRACKER & ARTHUR H. BUCKLAND


                       GARDEN CITY      NEW YORK
                       DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
                                  1912




                          Copyright, 1912, by
                        C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON

                 All rights reserved, including that of
                  translation into Foreign Languages,
                       including the Scandinavian




                                   TO
                         THE LORD OF THE GARDEN




                             ILLUSTRATIONS


"Mary was a goddess on a golden pinnacle. This was life;
the wine of life"  .     .     .     .     .     .     .    Frontispiece

Mary Grant   .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .  FACING PAGE 22

"'I can't promise!' she exclaimed. 'I've never wanted to marry.'"  . 286

"'It was Fate brought you--to give you to me. Do you regret it?'"  . 398




I

THE GUESTS OF HERCULES


Long shadows of late afternoon lay straight and thin across the garden
path; shadows of beech trees that ranged themselves in an undeviating
line, like an inner wall within the convent wall of brick; and the
soaring trees were very old, as old perhaps as the convent itself, whose
stone had the same soft tints of faded red and brown as the autumn
leaves which sparsely jewelled the beeches' silver.

A tall girl in the habit of a novice walked the path alone, moving
slowly across the stripes of sunlight and shadow which inlaid the gravel
with equal bars of black and reddish gold. There was a smell of autumn
on the windless air, bitter yet sweet; the scent of dying leaves, and
fading flowers loth to perish, of rose-berries that had usurped the
place of roses, of chrysanthemums chilled by frost, of moist earth
deprived of sun, and of the green moss-like film overgrowing all the
trunks of the old beech trees. The novice was saying goodbye to the
convent garden, and the long straight path under the wall, where every
day for many years she had walked, spring and summer, autumn and winter;
days of rain, days of sun, days of boisterous wind, days of white
feathery snow--all the days through which she had passed, on her way
from childhood to womanhood. Best of all, she had loved the garden and
her favourite path in spring, when vague hopes like dreams stirred in
her blood, when it seemed that she could hear the whisper of the sap in
the veins of the trees, and the crisp stir of the buds as they unfolded.
She wished that she could have been going out of the garden in the
brightness and fragrance of spring. The young beauty of the world would
have been a good omen for the happiness of her new life. The sorrowful
incense of Nature in decay cast a spell of sadness over her, even of
fear, lest after all she were doing a wrong thing, making a mistake
which could never be amended.

The spirit of the past laid a hand upon her heart. Ghosts of sweet days
gone long ago beckoned her back to the land of vanished hours. The
garden was the garden of the past; for here, within the high walls
draped in flowering creepers and ivy old as history, past, present, and
future were all as one, and had been so for many a tranquil generation
of calm-faced, dark-veiled women. Suddenly a great homesickness fell
upon the novice like an iron weight. She longed to rush into the house,
to fling herself at Reverend Mother's feet, and cry out that she wanted
to take back her decision, that she wanted everything to be as it had
been before. But it was too late to change. What was done, was done.

Deliberately, she had given up her home, and all the kind women who had
made the place home for her, from the time when she was a child eight
years old until now, when she was twenty-four. Sixteen years! It was a
lifetime. Memories of her child-world before convent days were more like
dreams than memories of real things that had befallen her, Mary Grant.
And yet, on this her last day in the convent, recollections of the first
were crystal clear, as they never had been in the years that lay
between.

Her father had brought her a long way, in a train. Something dreadful
had happened, which had made him stop loving her. She could not guess
what, for she had done nothing wrong so far as she knew: but a few days
before, her nurse, a kind old woman of a comfortable fatness, had put
her into a room where her father was and gently shut the door, leaving
the two alone together. Mary had gone to him expecting a kiss, for he
was always kind, though she did not feel that she knew him well--only a
little better, perhaps, than the radiant young mother whom she seldom
saw for more than five minutes at a time. But instead of kissing her as
usual, he had turned upon her a look of dislike, almost of horror, which
often came to her afterward, in dreams. Taking the little girl by the
shoulder not ungently, but very coldly, and as if he were in a great
hurry to be rid of her, he pushed rather than led her to the door.
Opening it, he called the nurse, in a sharp, displeased voice. "I don't
want the child," he said. "I can't have her here. Don't bring her to me
again without being asked." Then the kind, fat old woman had caught Mary
in her arms and carried her upstairs, a thing that had not happened for
years. And in the nursery the good creature had cried over the "poor
bairn" a good deal, mumbling strange things which Mary could not
understand. But a few words had lingered in her memory, something about
its being cruel and unjust to visit the sins of others on innocent
babies. A few days afterward Mary's father, very thin and
strange-looking, with hard lines in his handsome brown face, took her
with him on a journey, after nurse had kissed her many times with
streaming tears. At last they had got out of the train into a carriage,
and driven a long way. At evening they had come to a tall, beautiful
gateway, which had carved stone animals on high pillars at either side.
That was the gate of the Convent of Saint Ursula-of-the-Lake, the gate
of Mary's home-to-be: and in a big, bare parlour, with long windows and
a polished oak floor that reflected curious white birds and dragons of
an escutcheon on the ceiling, Reverend Mother had received them. She had
taken Mary on her lap; and when, after much talk about school and years
to come, the child's father had gone, shadowy, dark-robed women had
glided softly into the room. They had crowded round the little girl,
like children round a new doll, petting and murmuring over her: and she
had been given cake and milk, and wonderful preserved fruit, such as she
had never tasted.

Some of those dear women had gone since then, not as she was going, out
into an unknown, maybe disappointing, world, but to a place where
happiness was certain, according to their faith. Mary had not forgotten
one of the kind faces--and all those who remained she loved dearly; yet
she was leaving them to-day. Already it was time. She had wished to come
out into the garden alone for this last walk, and to wear the habit of
her novitiate, though she had voluntarily given up the right to it
forever. She must go in and dress for the world, as she had not dressed
for years which seemed twice their real length. She must go in, and bid
them all goodbye--Reverend Mother, and the nuns, and novices, and the
schoolgirls, of whose number she had once been.

She stood still, looking toward the far end of the path, her back turned
toward the gray face of the convent.

"Goodbye, dear old sundial, that has told so many of my hours," she
said. "Goodbye, sweet rose-trees that I planted, and all the others I've
loved so long. Goodbye, dear laurel bushes, that know my thoughts.
Goodbye, everything."

Her arms hung at her sides, lost in the folds of her veil. Slowly tears
filled her eyes, but did not fall until a delicate sound of
light-running feet on grass made her start, and wink the tears away.
They rolled down her white cheeks in four bright drops, which she
hastily dried with the back of her hand; and no more tears followed.
When she was sure of herself, she turned and saw a girl running to her
from the house, a pretty, brown-haired girl in a blue dress that looked
very frivolous and worldly in contrast to Mary's habit. But the bushes
and the sundial, and the fading flowers that tapestried the ivy on the
old wall, were used to such frivolities. Generations of schoolgirls,
taught and guarded by the Sisters of Saint Ursula-of-the-Lake, had
played and whispered secrets along this garden path.

"Dearest Mary!" exclaimed the girl in blue. "I begged them to let me
come to you just for a few minutes--a last talk. Do you mind?"

Mary had wanted to be alone, but suddenly she was glad that, after all,
this girl was with her. "You call me 'Mary'!" she said. "How strange it
seems to be Mary again--almost wrong, and--frightening."

"But you're not Sister Rose any longer," the girl in blue answered.
"There's nothing remote about you now. You're my dear old chum, just as
you used to be. And will you please begin to be frivolous by calling me
Peter?"

Mary smiled, and two round dimples showed themselves in the cheeks still
wet with tears. She and this girl, four years younger than herself, had
begun to love each other dearly in school days, when Mary Grant was
nineteen, and Mary Maxwell fifteen. They had gone on loving each other
dearly till the elder Mary was twenty-one, and the younger seventeen.
Then Molly Maxwell--who named herself "Peter Pan" because she hated the
thought of growing up--had to go back to her home in America and "come
out," to please her father, who was by birth a Scotsman, but who had
made his money in New York. After three gay seasons she had begged to
return for six months to school, and see her friend Mary Grant--Sister
Rose--before the final vows were taken. Also she had wished to see
another Mary, who had been almost equally her friend ("the three Maries"
they had always been called, or "the Queen's Maries"); but the third of
the three Maries had disappeared, and about her going there was a
mystery which Reverend Mother did not wish to have broken.

"Peter," Sister Rose echoed obediently, as the younger girl clasped her
arm, making her walk slowly toward the sundial at the far end of the
path.

"It does sound good to hear you call me that again," Molly Maxwell said.
"You've been so stiff and different since I came back and found you
turned into Sister Rose. Often I've been sorry I came. And now, when
I've got three months still to stay, you're going to leave me. If only
you could have waited, to change your mind!"

"If I had waited, I couldn't have changed it at all," Sister Rose
reminded her. "You know----"

"Yes, I know. It was the eleventh hour. Another week, and you would have
taken your vows. Oh, I don't mean what I said, dear. I'm glad you're
going--thankful. You hadn't the vocation. It would have killed you."

"No. For here they make it hard for novices on purpose, so that they may
know the worst there is to expect, and be sure they're strong enough in
body and heart. I wasn't fit. I feared I wasn't----"

"You weren't--that is, your body and heart are fitted for a different
life. You'll be happy, very happy."

"I wonder?" Mary said, in a whisper.

"Of course you will. You'll tell me so when we meet again, out in my
world that will be your world, too. I wish I were going with you now,
and I could, of course. Only I had to beg the pater so hard to let me
come here, I'd be ashamed to cable him, that I wanted to get away before
the six months were up. He wouldn't understand how different everything
is because I'm going to lose you."

"In a way, you would have lost me if--if I'd stayed, and--everything had
been as I expected."

"I know. They've let you be with me more as a novice than you could be
as a professed nun. Still, you'd have been under the same roof. I could
have seen you often. But I _am_ glad. I'm not thinking of myself. And
we'll meet just as soon as we can, when my time's up here. Father's
coming back to his dear native Fifeshire to fetch me, and I'll make him
take me to you, wherever you are, or else you'll visit me; better still.
But it seems a long time to wait, for I really _did_ come back here to
be a 'parlour boarder,' a heap more to see you than for any other
reason. And, besides, there's another thing. Only I hardly know how to
say it, or whether I dare say it at all."

Sister Rose looked suddenly anxious, as if she were afraid of something
that might follow. "What is it?" she asked quickly, almost sharply. "You
must tell me."

"Why, it's nothing to _tell_--exactly. It's only this: I'm worried.
I'm glad you're not going to be a nun all your life, dear;
delighted--enchanted. You're given back to me. But--I worry because I
can't help feeling that I've got something to do with the changing of
your mind so suddenly; that if ever you should regret anything--not that
you will, but if you should--you might blame me, hate me, perhaps."

"I never shall do either, whatever happens," the novice said, earnestly
and gravely. She did not look at her friend as she spoke, though they
were so nearly of the same height as they walked, their arms linked
together, that they could gaze straight into one another's eyes.
Instead, she looked up at the sky, through the groined gray ceiling of
tree-branches, as if offering a vow. And seeing her uplifted profile
with its pure features and clear curve of dark lashes, Peter thought how
beautiful she was, of a beauty quite unearthly, and perhaps unsuited to
the world. With a pang, she wondered if such a girl would not have been
safer forever in the convent where she had lived most of her years. And
though she herself was four years younger, she felt old and mature, and
terribly wise compared with Sister Rose. An awful sense of
responsibility was upon her. She was afraid of it. Her pretty blond
face, with its bright and shrewd gray eyes, looked almost drawn, and
lost the fresh colour that made the little golden freckles charming as
the dust of flower-pollen on her rounded cheeks.

"But I _have_ got something to do with it, haven't I?" she persisted,
longing for contradiction, yet certain that it would not come.

"I hardly know--to be quite honest," Mary answered. "I don't know what I
might have done if you hadn't come back and told me things about your
life, and all your travels with your father--things that made me tingle.
Maybe I should never have had the courage without that incentive. But,
Peter, I'll tell you something I couldn't have told you till to-day.
Since the very beginning of my novitiate I was never happy, never at
rest."

"Truly? You wanted to go, even then, for two whole years?"

"I don't know what I wanted. But suddenly all the sweet calm was broken.
You've often looked out from the dormitory windows over the lake, and
seen how a wind springing up in an instant ruffles the clear surface.
It's just like a mirror broken into a thousand tiny fragments. Well, it
was so with me, with my spirit. And after all these years, when I'd been
so contented, so happy that I couldn't even bear, as a schoolgirl, to go
away for two or three days to visit Lady MacMillan in the holidays,
without nearly dying of homesickness before I could be brought back! As
a postulant I was just as happy, too. You know, I wouldn't go out into
the world to try my resolve, as Reverend Mother advised. I was so sure
there could be no home for me but this. Then came the change. Oh, Peter,
I hope it wasn't the legacy! I pray I'm not so mean as that!"

"How long was it after your novitiate began that the money was left
you?" Peter asked: for this was the first intimate talk alone and
undisturbed that she had had with her old school friend since coming
back to the convent three months ago. She knew vaguely that a cousin of
Mary's dead father had left the novice money, and that it had been
unexpected, as the lady was not a Roman Catholic, and had relations just
as near, of her own religion. But Peter did not quite know when the news
had come, or what had happened then.

"It was the very next day. That was odd, wasn't it? Though I don't know,
exactly, why it should have seemed odd. It had to happen on some day.
Why not that one? I was glad I should have a good dowry--quite proud to
be of some use to the convent. I didn't think what I might have done for
myself, if I'd been in the world--not then. But afterward, thoughts
crept into my head. I used to push them out again as fast as they
crawled in, and I told myself what a good thing I had a safe refuge,
remembering my father, what he wrote about himself, and my mother."

For a moment she was silent. There was no need to explain, for Peter
knew all about the terrible letter that had come from India with the
news of Major Grant's death. It had arrived before Mary resolved to take
vows, while she was still a fellow schoolgirl of Peter's, older than
most of the girls, looked up to and adored, and probably it had done
more than anything else to decide her that she had a "vocation." Mary
had told about the letter at the time, with stormy tears: how her father
in dying wrote down the story of the past, as a warning to his daughter,
whom he had not loved; told the girl that her mother had run away with
one of his brother officers; that he, springing from a family of
reckless gamblers, had himself become a gambler; that he had thrown away
most of his money; and that his last words to Mary were, "You have wild
blood in your veins. Be careful: don't let it ruin your life, as two
other lives have been ruined before you."

"Then," Mary went on, while Peter waited, "for a few weeks, or a few
days, I would be more peaceful. But the restlessness always came again.
And, after the end of the first year, it grew worse. I was never happy
for more than a few hours together. Still I meant to fight till the end.
I never thought seriously of giving it up."

"Until after I came?" Peter broke in.

"Oh, I was happier for a while after you came. You took my mind off
myself."

"And turned it to _my_self, or, rather, to the world I lived in. I'm
glad, yes, I'm glad, I was in time, and yet--oh, Mary, you _won't_ go to
Monte Carlo, will you?"

Mary stopped short in her walk, and turned to face Peter.

"Why do you say that?" she asked, sharply. "What can make you think of
Monte Carlo?"

"Only, you seemed so interested in hearing me tell about staying with
father at Stellamare, my cousin's house. You asked me such a lot of
questions about it and about the Casino, more than about any other
place, even Rome. And you looked excited when I told you. Your cheeks
grew red. I noticed then, but it didn't matter, because you were going
to live here always, and be a nun. Now----"

"Now what does it matter?" the novice asked, almost defiantly. "Why
should it occur to me to go to Monte Carlo?"

"Only because you were interested, and perhaps I may have made the
Riviera seem even more beautiful and amusing than it really is. And
besides--if it should be true, what your father was afraid of----"

"What?"

"That you inherit his love of gambling. Oh, I couldn't bear it, darling,
to think I had sent you to Monte Carlo."

"He didn't know enough about me to know whether I inherited anything
from him or not. I hardly understand what gambling means, except what
you've told me. It's only a word like a bird of ill omen. And what you
said about the play at the Casino didn't interest me as other things
did. It didn't sound attractive at all."

"It's different when you're there," Peter said.

"I don't think it would be for me. I'm almost sure I'm not like that--if
I can be sure of anything about myself. Perhaps I can't! But you
described the place as if it were a sort of paradise--and all the
Riviera. You said you would go back in the spring with your father. You
didn't seem to think it wicked and dangerous for yourself."

"Monte Carlo isn't any more wicked than other places, and it's dangerous
only for born gamblers," Peter argued. "I'm not one. Neither is my
father, except in Wall Street. He plays a little for fun, that's all.
And my cousin Jim Schuyler never goes near the Casino except for a
concert or the opera. But _you_--all alone there--you who know no more
of life than a baby! It doesn't bear thinking of."

"Don't think of it," said Mary, rather dryly. "I have no idea of going
to Monte Carlo."

"Thank goodness! Well, I only wanted to be sure. I couldn't help
worrying. Because, if anything had drawn you there, it would have been
my fault. You would hardly have heard of Monte Carlo if it hadn't been
for my stories. A cloistered saint like you!"

"Is that the way you think of me in these days?" The novice blushed and
smiled, showing her friendly dimples. "I wish I felt a saint."

"You are one. And yet"--Peter gazed at her with sudden keenness--"I
don't believe you were _made_ to be a saint. It's the years here that
have moulded you into what you are. But, there's something different
underneath."

"Nothing very bad, I hope?" Mary looked actually frightened, as if she
did not know herself, and feared an unfavourable opinion, which might be
true.

"No, indeed. But different--quite a different _You_ from what any of us,
even yourself, have ever seen. It will come out. Life will bring it
out."

"You talk," said Mary, "as if you were older than I."

"So I am, in every way except years, and they count least. Oh, Mary, how
I do wish I were going with you!"

"So do I. And yet perhaps it will be good for me to begin alone."

"You won't be alone."

"No. Of course, there will be Lady MacMillan taking me to London. And
afterward there'll be my aunt and cousin. But I've never seen them since
I was too tiny to remember them at all, except that my cousin Elinor had
a lovely big doll she wouldn't let me touch. It's the same as being
alone, going to them. I shall have to get acquainted with them and the
world at the same time."

"Are you terrified?"

"A little. Oh, a good deal! I think now, at the last moment, I'd take
everything back, and stay, if I could."

"No, you wouldn't, if you had the choice, and you saw the gates closing
on you--forever. You'd run out."

"I don't know. Perhaps. But how I shall miss them all! Reverend Mother,
and the sisters, and you, and the garden, and looking out over the lake
far away to the mountains."

"But there'll be other mountains."

"Yes, other mountains."

"Think of the mountains of Italy."

"Oh, I do. When the waves of regret and homesickness come I cheer myself
with thoughts of Italy. Ever since I can remember, I've wanted Italy;
ever since I began to study history and look at maps, and even to read
the lives of the saints, I've cared more about Italy than any other
country. When I expected to spend all my life in a convent, I used to
think that maybe I could go to the mother-house in Italy for a while
some day. You can't realize, Peter--you, who have lived in warm
countries--how I've pined for warmth. I've _never_ been warm enough,
never in my life, for more than a few hours together. Even in summer
it's never really hot here, never hot with the glorious burning heat of
the sun that I long to feel. How I do want to be warm, all through my
veins. I've wanted it always. Even at the most sacred hours, when I
ought to have forgotten that I had a body, I've shivered and yearned to
be warm--warm to the heart. I shall go to Italy and bask in the sun."

"Marie used to say that, too, that she wanted to be warm," Peter
murmured in an odd, hesitating, shamefaced way. And she looked at the
novice intently, as she had looked before. Mary's white cheeks were
faintly stained with rose, and her eyes dilated. Peter had never seen
quite the same expression on her face, or heard quite the same ring in
her voice. The girl felt that the different, unknown self she had
spoken of was beginning already to waken and stir in the nun's soul.

"Marie!" Sister Rose repeated. "It's odd you should have spoken of
Marie. I've been thinking about her lately. I can't get her out of my
head. And I've dreamed of seeing her--meeting her unexpectedly
somewhere."

"Perhaps she's been thinking of you, wherever she is, and you feel her
mind calling to yours. I believe in such things, don't you?"

"I never thought much about them before, I suppose because I've had so
few people outside who were likely to think of me. No one but you. Or
perhaps Marie, if she ever does think of old times. I wish I could meet
her, not in dreams, but really."

"Queerer things have happened. And if you're going to travel you can't
tell but you may run across each other," said Peter. "I've sometimes
caught myself wondering whether I should see her in New York, for there
it's like London and Monte Carlo--the most unexpected people are always
turning up."

"Is Monte Carlo like that?" Mary asked, with the quick, only half-veiled
curiosity which Peter had noticed in her before when relating her own
adventures on the Riviera.

"Yes. More than any other place I've ever been to in the world. Every
one comes--anything can happen--there. But I don't want to talk about
Monte Carlo. You really wouldn't find it half as interesting as your
beloved Italy. And I shouldn't like to think of poor Marie drifting
there, either--Marie as she must be now."

"I used to hope," Mary said, "that she might come back here, after
everything turned out so dreadfully for her, and that she'd decide to
take the vows with me. Reverend Mother would have welcomed her gladly,
in spite of all. She loved Marie. So did the sisters; and though none of
them ever talk about her--at least, to me--I feel sure they haven't
forgotten, or stopped praying for her."

"Do you suppose they guess that we found out what really happened to
Marie, after she ran away?" Peter wanted to know.

"I hardly think so. You see, we couldn't have found out if it hadn't
been for Janet Churchill, the one girl in school who didn't live in the
convent. And Janet wasn't a bit the sort they would expect to know such
things."

"Or about anything else. Her stolidity was a very useful pose. You'd
find it a useful one, too, darling, 'out in the world,' as you call it;
but you'll never be clever in that way, I'm afraid."

"In what way?"

"In hiding things you feel. Or in not feeling things that are
uncomfortable to feel."

"Don't frighten me!" Mary exclaimed. They had walked to the end of the
path, and were standing by the sundial. She turned abruptly, and looked
with a certain eagerness toward the far-off façade of the convent, with
its many windows. On the leaded panes of those in the west wing the sun
still lingered, and struck out glints as of rubies in a gold setting.
All the other windows were in shadow now. "We must go in," Mary said.
"Lady MacMillan will be coming soon, and I have lots to do before I
start."

"What have you to do, except to dress?"

"Oh!--to say goodbye to them all. And it seems as if I could never
finish saying goodbye."

Peter did not meet her friend again after they had gone into the house
until Mary had laid away the habit of Sister Rose the novice and put on
the simple gray travelling frock in which Mary Grant was to go "out into
the world." Peter had been extremely curious to see her in this, for it
was three years ago and more since she had last had a sight of Mary in
"worldly dress." That was on the day when Molly Maxwell had left the
convent as a schoolgirl, to go back to America with her father; and
almost immediately Mary Grant had given up such garments, as she thought
forever, in becoming a postulant.

Not since then had Peter seen Mary's hair, which by this time would have
been cut close to her head if she had not suddenly discovered, just in
time, that she had "lost her vocation." Mary had beautiful hair. All the
girls in school had admired it. Peter had hated to think of its being
cut off; and lately, since the sudden change in Mary's mind, the
American girl had wondered if the peculiar, silvery blond had darkened.
It would be a pity if it had, for her hair had been one of Mary's chief
beauties, and if it had changed she would not be as lovely as of old,
particularly as she had lost the brilliant bloom of colour she had had
as a schoolgirl, her cheeks becoming white instead of pink roses.

It seemed to Peter that she could not remember exactly what Mary had
been like, in those first days, for the novice's habit had changed her
so strangely, seeming to chill her warm humanity, turning a lovely,
glowing young girl into a beautiful marble saint. But under the marble,
warm blood had been flowing, and a hot, rebellious heart throbbing,
after all. Peter delighted in knowing that this was true, though she was
anxious about the statue coming to life and walking out of its sheltered
niche. When she was called to say goodbye formally, with other friends
who had loved Mary as schoolgirl and novice, Peter's own heart was
beating fast.

The instant she caught sight of the tall, slight, youthful-looking
figure in gray, the three years fell away like a crumbling wall, and
gave back the days of the "three Maries." No, the silvery blond hair had
not faded or lost its sparkle.

Mary Grant, in her short gray skirt and coat, with her lovely hair in an
awkwardly done clump at the nape of a slender neck, looked a mere
schoolgirl. She was twenty-four, and nearing her twenty-fifth birthday.
Of late, she had had anxieties and vigils, and the life of a novice of
Saint Ursula-of-the-Lake was not lived on down or roses: but the
tranquil years of simple food, of water-drinking, of garden-work, of
quiet thinking and praying had passed over her like the years in
dreams, which last no longer than moments. They had left her a child,
with a child's soft curves and a child's rose-leaf skin. Yet she looked
to Peter very human now, and no saint. Her large eyes, of that golden
gray rimmed with violet, called hazel, seemed to be asking, "What is
life?"

[Illustration: MARY GRANT]

Peter thought her intensely pathetic; and somehow the fact that new
shoes had been forgotten, and that Mary still wore the stubby,
square-toed abominations of her novitiate, made her piteous in her
friend's eyes. The American girl hotly repented not writing to her
father in New York and telling him that she must leave the convent with
Mary Grant. Probably he would not have consented, but she might have
found some way of persuading him to change his mind. Or she could have
gone without his consent, and made him forgive her afterward. Even now
she might go; but dimly and sadly she felt that Mary did not really wish
for her superior knowledge of the world to lean upon; Mary longed to
find out things for herself.

Peter did not sleep well that night, and when she did sleep she dreamed
a startling dream of Mary at Monte Carlo.

"She'll go there!" the girl said to herself, waking. "I know she'll go.
I don't know why I know it, but I do."

Trying to doze again, she lay with closed eyes; and a procession of
strange, unwished-for thoughts busily pushed sleep away from her brain.
She seemed to see people hurrying from many different parts of the
world, with their minds all bent on the same thing: getting to Monte
Carlo as soon as possible. She saw these people, good and bad, mingling
their lives with Mary's life; and she saw the Fates, like Macbeth's
witches, laughing and pulling the strings which controlled these
people's actions toward Mary, hers toward them, as if they were all
marionettes.




II


Lady MacMillan of Linlochtry Castle, who was a devout Catholic, came
often from her place in the neighbourhood to see her half-sister, Mother
Superior at the Convent of St. Ursula-of-the-Lake. Mary Grant's only
knowledge of the world outside the convent had been given her by Lady
MacMillan, with whom when a schoolgirl she had sometimes spent a few
days, and might have stopped longer if she had not invariably been
seized by pangs of homesickness. Lady MacMillan's household, to be sure,
did not afford many facilities for forming an opinion of the world at
large, though a number of carefully selected young people had been
entertained for Mary's benefit. Its mistress was an elderly widow, and
had been elderly when the child saw her first: but occasionally, before
she became a postulant, Mary had been taken to Perth to help Lady
MacMillan do a little shopping; and once she had actually stayed from
Saturday to Tuesday at Aberdeen, where she had been to the theatre. This
was a memorable event; and the sisters at the convent had never tired of
hearing the fortunate girl describe her exciting experiences, for theirs
was an enclosed order, and it was years since most of them had been
outside the convent gates.

Lady MacMillan was a large, very absent-minded and extremely
near-sighted lady, like her half-sister, Mary's adored Reverend Mother;
but neither so warm-hearted nor so intelligent. Still, Mary was used to
this old friend, and fond of her as well. It was not like going away
irrevocably from all she knew and loved, to be going under Lady
MacMillan's wing. Still, she went weeping, wondering how she had ever
made up her mind to the step, half passionately grateful to Reverend
Mother for not being angry with her weakness and lack of faith, half
regretful that some one in authority had not thought it right to hold
her forcibly back.

There was no railway station within ten miles of the old convent by the
lake. Lady MacMillan came from her little square box of a castle still
farther away, in the old-fashioned carriage which she called a
"barouche," drawn by two satin-smooth, fat animals, more like tightly
covered yet comfortable brown sofas than horses.

It was a great excitement for Lady MacMillan to be going to London, and
a great exertion, but she did not grudge trouble for Mary Grant. Not
that she approved of the girl's leaving the convent. It was Reverend
Mother who had to persuade her half-sister that, if Mary had not the
vocation, it was far better that she should read her own heart in time,
and that the girl was taking with her the blessings and prayers of all
those who had once hoped to keep their dear one with them forever. Still
it was the greatest sensation the convent had known, that Mary should
be going; and Reverend Mother would not let her half-sister even
mention, in that connection, the name of the other Mary--or
Marie--Grant, who also had gone away sensationally. The eldest of the
"three Maries," the three prettiest, most remarkable girls in the
convent school, had left mysteriously, in a black cloud of disgrace. She
had run off to join a lover who had turned out to be a married man,
unable to make her his wife, even if he wished; and sad, vague tidings
of the girl had drifted back to the convent since, as spray from the sea
is blown a long way on the wind.

Reverend Mother would not hear Lady MacMillan say, "Strange that the two
Mary Grants should be the only young women to leave you, except in the
ordinary way," the ordinary way being the end of school days for a girl,
or the end of life for a nun.

"I want dear Mary to be happy in the manner that's best for her,"
answered the good woman, whose outlook was very wide, though her orbit
was limited, "If it had been best for Mary to stay with us, she would
have stayed; or else some day, when she has learned enough to know that
the world can be disappointing, she will return. If that day ever comes,
she'll have a warm welcome, and it will be a great joy to us all; but
the next best thing will be hearing that she is happy in her new life;
and she promises to write often." Then the clever lady proceeded to ask
advice about Mary's wardrobe. Should the girl do such shopping as she
must do in Aberdeen, or should she wait and trust to the taste of Mrs.
Home-Davis, the widowed aunt in London, who had agreed to take charge of
her?

The question had fired Lady MacMillan to excitement, as Reverend Mother
knew it would. Lady MacMillan believed that she had taste in dress. She
was entirely mistaken in this idea; but that was not the point. Nothing
so entranced her as to give advice, and the picture of an unknown aunt
choosing clothes for Mary was unbearable. She made up her mind at once
that she would escort her young friend to London, and stay long enough
at some quiet hotel in Cromwell Road to see Mary "settled." Mrs.
Home-Davis lived in Cromwell Road; and it was an extra incentive to Lady
MacMillan that she would not be too far from the Oratory.

It was evening when the two arrived at King's Cross Station, after the
longest journey Mary had ever made. There was a black fog, cold and
heavy as a dripping fur coat. Out of its folds loomed motor-omnibuses,
monstrous mechanical demons such as Mary had never seen nor pictured.
The noise and rush of traffic stunned her into silence, as she drove
with her old friend in a four-wheeled cab toward Cromwell Road. There,
she imagined, would be peace and quiet; but not so. They stopped before
a house, past which a wild storm of motor-omnibuses and vans and
taxicabs and private cars swept ceaselessly in two directions. It seemed
impossible to Mary that people could live in such a place. She was
supposed to stay for a month or two in London, and then, if she still
wished to see Italy, her aunt and cousin would make it convenient to go
with her. But, before the dark green door behind Corinthian pillars had
opened, the girl was resolving to hurry out of London somehow, anyhow,
with or without her relatives. She decided this with the singular,
silent intensity of purpose that she did not even know to be
characteristic of herself, though it had carried her through a severe
ordeal at the convent; for Mary had never yet studied her own emotions
or her own nature. The instant that the Home-Davises, mother and
daughter, greeted her in their chilly drawing-room, she lost all doubt
as to whether she should leave London with or without them. It would be
without them that she must go. How she was to contrive this, the girl
did not know in the least, but she knew that the thing would have to be
done. She could not see Italy in the company of these women.

Suddenly Mary remembered them both quite well, though they had not met
since a visit the mother and daughter had made to Scotland when she was
seven years old, before convent days. She recalled her aunt's way of
holding out a hand, like an offering of cold fish. And she remembered
how the daughter was patterned after the mother: large, light eyes, long
features of the horse type, prominent teeth, thin, consciously
virtuous-looking figure, and all the rest.

They had the sort of drawing-room that such women might be expected to
have, of the coldest grays and greens, with no individuality of
decoration. The whole house was the same, cheerless and depressing even
to those familiar with London in a November fog, but blighting to one
who knew not London in any weather. Even the servants seemed cold,
mechanical creatures, made of well-oiled steel or iron; and when Lady
MacMillan had driven off to a hotel, Mary cried heartily in her own
bleak room, with motor-omnibuses roaring and snorting under her windows.

At dinner, which was more or less cold, like everything else, there was
talk of the cousin who had left Mary a legacy of fifty thousand pounds;
and it was easy to divine in tone, if not in words, that the
Home-Davises felt deeply aggrieved because the money had not come to
them. This cousin had lived in the Cromwell Road house during the last
invalid years of her life, and had given them to understand that Elinor
was to have almost, if not quite, everything. The poor lady had died, it
seemed, in the room which Mary now occupied, probably in the same bed.
Mary deeply pitied her if she had been long in dying. The wall-paper was
atrocious, with a thousand hideous faces to be worried out of it by
tired eyes. The girl had wondered why the money had been left entirely
to her, but now she guessed in a flash why the Home-Davises had had none
of it. The years in this Cromwell house had been too long.

"We've always imagined that Cousin Katherine must have been in love with
your father, Uncle Basil, before he married," said Elinor, when they
had reached the heavy stage of sweet pudding; "and when the will was
read, we were sure of it. For, of course, mother was just as nearly
related to her as uncle Basil was."

It was difficult for Mary to realize that this Aunt Sara could be a
sister of the handsome, dark-faced man with burning eyes whose features
had remained cameo-clear in her memory since childhood. But Mrs.
Home-Davis was the ugly duckling of a handsome and brilliant family, an
accident of fate which had embittered her youth, and indirectly her
daughter's.

"How shall I get away from them?" Mary asked herself, desperately, that
night. But fate was fighting for her in the form of a man she had never
seen, a man not even in London at the moment.

In a room below Mary's Elinor was asking Mrs. Home-Davis how they could
get rid of the convent cousin.

"She won't do," the young woman said.

"She reminds me of her mother," remarked Mrs. Home-Davis. "I thought she
would grow up like that."

"Yet there's a look in her eyes of Uncle Basil," Elinor amended,
brushing straight hair of a nondescript brown, which she admired because
it was long.

"With such a combination of qualities as she'll probably develop, she'd
much better have stayed in her convent," the elder woman went on.

"I wish to goodness she had," snapped Elinor.

"You are--er--thinking of Doctor Smythe, dear?"

"Ye-es--partly," the younger admitted, reluctantly; for there was
humiliation to her vanity in the admission. "Not that Arthur'd care for
that type of girl, particularly, or that he'd be disloyal to me--if he
were let alone. But you can see for yourself, mother--_is_ she the kind
that will let men alone? At dinner she made eyes even at the footman. I
was watching her."

"She can't have met any men, unless at that old Scotchwoman's house,"
replied Mrs. Home-Davis. "Perhaps even their Romish consciences would
have forced them to show her a few, before she took her vows--Catholic
young men, of course."

"Perhaps one of them decided her to break the vows."

"She hasn't really broken them, you know, Elinor. We must be just."

"Well, anyhow, she hasn't the air of an engaged person. And if she's
here when Arthur gets back to London, I feel in my bones, mother,
there'll be ructions."

"Arthur" was Doctor Smythe, a man not very young, whom Elinor Home-Davis
had known for some time; but it was only lately that she had begun to
hope he might ask her to marry him. She valued him, for he was the one
man she had ever succeeded in attracting seriously, and though she knew
he would not think of proposing if she had not some money which would be
helpful in his career, she was eager to accept him. Had she realized
sooner that there was a chance with Arthur Smythe, she would not have
let her mother make that promise concerning Italy, for she could not be
left alone in London all winter. Arthur Smythe would think that too
strange; yet now she would not go out of England for anything. He was in
Paris attending a medical congress, and planned afterward to visit the
châteaux country with a friend; but he would be back in two or three
weeks. Now that Elinor had seen Mary, she felt that changes must be made
quickly. In other circumstances, it would have been pleasant to loiter
about Italy, stopping at the best hotels at Mary's expense, on money
that ought to have been the Home-Davises; but as it was, Elinor could
think of nothing better to do than to send Mary off by herself, in a
hurry. Or, as Mrs. Home-Davis said, "some one suitable" might be
travelling at the right time, and they could perhaps find an excuse for
stopping at home themselves.

"You can be ill, if necessary," suggested Elinor.

"Yes, I can be ill, if necessary--or you can," replied her mother.

Mary had not known that there could be such noise in the world as the
noise of London. She did not sleep that night; and the fog was blacker
than ever in the morning. Shopping had to be put off for three days; and
then Lady MacMillan was too near-sighted and too absent-minded to be of
much use. She was telegraphed for from her box of a castle, at the end
of the week, because her housekeeper was ailing--an old woman who was
almost as much friend as servant. Mary would have given anything to
return with her, even if to go back must mean retiring into the convent
forever; but the gate of the past had gently shut behind her. She could
not knock upon it for admittance, at least not until she had walked
farther along the path of the future.

When Lady MacMillan had gone, Mrs. Home-Davis and Elinor showed no
interest in the convent cousin. They went about their own concerns as if
she did not exist, leaving her to go about hers, if she chose. They were
both interested, they explained, in the Suffragist movement; also they
had charities to look after. There was no time to bother with Mary's
shopping, but of course she could have their maid, Jennings, to go out
with: in fact, she must not attempt to go alone. Consequently, Mary
bought only necessaries, in the big, confusing shops that glared white
in the foggy twilight, for Jennings as a companion was more depressing
than the cold. She was middle-aged, very pinched and respectable in
appearance, with a red nose, always damp at the end; and she disapproved
of lace and ribbons on underclothing. Mrs. Home-Davis and Miss Elinor
would never think of buying such things as Miss Grant admired. Jennings
would have pioneered Miss Grant to the British and South Kensington
museums if Miss Grant had wished to go, but Mary had no appetite for
museums in the dark and forbidding November, which was the worst that
London had known for years. Her aunt never suggested a theatre, or the
opera, or anything which Mary was likely to find amusing, for a plan
decided upon with Elinor was being faithfully carried out. The convent
cousin was to be disgusted with Cromwell Road, and bored with London, so
that she might be ready to snatch at the first excuse to get away. And
once away, Mrs. Home-Davis promised Elinor to find some pretext for
refusing to receive her back again.

The plan succeeded perfectly, though, had the ladies but guessed, no
complicated manoeuvres would have been necessary, Mary having determined
upon escape in the moment of arrival. She was shut up in her room for a
few days with a cold, after she had been a week in Cromwell Road, and
when she was let out, after all danger of infection for her relatives
had passed, she dared to propose Italy as a cure for herself.

"I know you have important engagements," Mary said, hastily, "and of
course you couldn't go with me at such short notice; but I don't feel as
if I could wait. I may be ill on your hands. I feel as if I should be,
unless I run away where it's warm and bright."

Mrs. Home-Davis, much as she wanted to take the girl at her word, could
not resist retorting: "It's not very bright and warm in Scotland at this
time of year, yet you don't seem to have been ill there."

Mary could have replied that in the convent she had had the warmth and
brightness of love, but she merely mumbled that she had often taken
cold in the autumn.

"It will be impossible for us to leave home at present," her aunt went
on. "If you're determined to go, I must get you some one to travel with,
or you must have an elderly maid-companion. Perhaps that would be best.
One can't always find friends travelling at the time they're wanted."

"Mary isn't such a baby that she ought to need looking after," said
Elinor. "She's nearly twenty-five--as old as I am--and you don't mind my
going to Exeter alone."

Elinor was twenty-eight. When she was a child she had assumed airs of
superiority on the strength of her age, Mary remembered, but now she and
her cousin seemed suddenly to match their years. Mary was glad of this,
however, and bolstered Elinor's argument by admitting her own maturity.
"I don't want a companion-maid, please," she said, with the mingling of
meekness and violent resolution which had ended her novitiate. "It will
be better for my Italian, to get one in Italy. I shall be safe alone
till I arrive. You see, Reverend Mother has given me a letter to the
Superior in the mother-house, and other letters, too. I shall have
friends in Florence and Rome, and lots of places."

"But it wouldn't look well for you to travel alone," Mrs. Home-Davis
objected.

"Nobody will be looking at me. Nobody will know who I am," Mary argued.
Then, desperately, "Rather than you should find me a companion, Aunt
Sara, I won't go to Italy at all. I----"

She could have chosen no more efficacious threat; though if she had been
allowed to finish her sentence, she would have added, "I'll go back to
Scotland to Lady MacMillan's, or stay in the convent."

Thus the sting would have lost its venom for the Home-Davises, but
Elinor, fearing disaster, cut the sentence short. "Oh, for mercy's sake,
mother, let Mary have her own way," she broke in. "You can see she means
to in the end, so why disturb yourself? Nothing can happen to her."

Elinor's eyes anxiously recalled to her mother a letter that had come
from Doctor Smythe that morning announcing his return at the end of the
week. It was providential that Mary should have proposed going, as it
would have been awkward otherwise to get her out of the house in time;
and Elinor was anxious that she should be taken at her word.

"It's more of appearances than danger that I'm thinking," Mrs.
Home-Davis explained, retiring slowly, face to the enemy, yet with no
real desire to win the battle. "Perhaps if I write Mrs. Larkin in
Florence--a nice, responsible woman--to find a family for you to stay
with, it may do. Only in that case, you mustn't stop before you get to
Florence. I'll buy your ticket straight through, by the Mont Cenis."

"No, please," Mary protested, mildly. "Not that way. I've set my heart
on going along the Riviera, not to stop anywhere, but to see the coast
from the train. It must be so lovely: and after this blackness to see
the blue Mediterranean, and the flowers, and oranges, and the red rocks
that run out into the sea; it's a dream of joy to think of it. I've a
friend who has been twice with her father. She told me so much about the
Riviera. It can't be much farther than the other way."

So it was settled, after some perfunctory objections on the part of Mrs.
Home-Davis, who wished it put on record that she had been overruled by
Mary's obstinacy. If undesirable incidents should happen, she wanted to
say, "Mary _would_ go by herself, without waiting for me. She's of age,
and I couldn't coerce her."




III


Mary felt like an escaped prisoner as the train began to move out of
Victoria Station--the train which was taking her toward France and
Italy. It was like passing through a great gray gate, labeled "This way
to warmth and sunshine and beauty." Already, though the gate itself was
not beautiful, Mary seemed to see through it, far ahead, vistas of
lovely places to which it opened. She sat calmly, as the moving carriage
rescued her from Aunt Sara and Elinor on the platform, but her hands
were locked tightly inside the five-year-old squirrel muff, which would
have been given away, with everything of hers, if Sister Rose had not
changed a certain decision at the eleventh hour. She was quivering with
excitement and the wild sense of freedom which she had not tasted in
London.

In leaving the convent she had not felt this sense of escaping, for the
convent had been "home," the goodbyes had drowned her in grief, and she
had often before driven off with Lady MacMillan, in the springy barouche
behind the fat horses. Even the journey to London had not given her the
thrill she hoped for, as rain had fallen heavily, blotting out the
landscape. Besides, she had even then regarded her stay in London with
the Home-Davises only as a stage on the journey which was eventually to
lead her into warmth and sunlight.

This train, with the foreign-looking people who rushed about chattering
French and German, Italian and Arabic on the platform and in the
corridors, seemed to link London mysteriously with other lands. Even the
strong, active porters, who sprang at huge trunks piled on cabs, and
carried them off to the weighing-room, were different from other
porters, more important, part of a great scheme, and their actions added
to her excitement. She liked the way that an alert guard put her into
her compartment, as if he were posting a letter in a hurry, and had
others to post. Then the great and sudden bustle of the train going out
made her heart beat.

Mary had been brought to the station early, for Elinor had been nervous
lest she might miss the train, and Doctor Smythe was coming at four
o'clock that afternoon. But others who were to share the compartment
were late. It was violently exciting to have them dash in at the last
moment, and dispose of bags and thick rugs in straps to be used on the
Channel.

They were two, mother and daughter perhaps; a delicate birdlike girl and
a plump middle-aged woman with an air of extreme self-satisfaction.

In themselves they did not appear interesting, but Mary was interested,
and wondered where they were going. When they took out fashion-papers
and sixpenny novels, however, she felt that they were no longer worth
attention. How could they read, when they were saying goodbye to
England, and when each minute the windows framed charming pictures of
skimming Kentish landscape? The strangely shaped oast-houses puzzled
Mary. She longed to ask what they were, but the woman and the girl
seemed absorbed in their books and papers. Mary thought they must be
dull and stupid; but suddenly it came to her that to many people, these
among others, maybe, this journey was a commonplace, everyday affair.
Even going to France or Italy might not be to them a high adventure.
Extraordinary to reflect that all over the world men and women were
travelling, going to wonderful new places, seeing wonderful new things,
and taking it as a matter of course!

She had never seen the sea; and when the billowing fields and neat
hedges changed to chalky downs, a sudden whiff of salt on the air
blowing through a half-open window made her heart leap. She nearly
cried, "The sea!" but controlled herself because of her prim
fellow-passengers.

Mary would have been surprised if she had known their real feelings
toward her, which were not as remote as she supposed.

She looked, they both thought, like a schoolgirl going abroad for her
Christmas holidays, only it was early for holidays: but if she were a
schoolgirl it was strange that she should be travelling alone. Her furs
were old-fashioned and inexpensive, her gray tweed dress plain and
without style, her hat had a home-made air, but from under the short
skirt peeped smart patent-leather shoes with silver buckles and pointed
toes, and there was a glimpse of silk stockings thin as a mere polished
film. A schoolgirl would not be allowed to have such shoes and
stockings, which, in any case, were most unsuited to travelling. (Poor
Mary had not known this, in replacing the convent abominations which had
struck Peter as pathetic; and Mrs. Home-Davis had not troubled to tell
her); nor would a schoolgirl be likely to have delicate gray suède
gloves, with many buttons, or a lace handkerchief like a morsel of
seafoam. These oddities in Mary's toilet, due to her inexperience and
untutored shopping, puzzled her companions; and often, while she
supposed them occupied with the fashions, they were stealing furtive
glances at her clear, saintly profile, the full rose-red lips which
contradicted its austerity, and the sparkling waves of hair meekly drawn
down over the small ears. Her rapt expression, also, piqued their
curiosity.

They were inclined to believe it a pose, put on to attract attention;
and though they could not help acknowledging her beauty, they were far
from sure that she was a person to be approved. At one instant the
mother of the birdlike girl fancied her neighbour a child. The next, she
was sure that the stranger was much more mature than she looked, or
wished to look. And when, on leaving the train at Dover, Mary spoke
French to a young Frenchman in difficulties with an English porter, the
doubting hearts of her fellow-travellers closed against the offender.
With an accent like that, this was certainly not her first trip abroad,
they decided. With raised eyebrows they telegraphed each other that they
would not be surprised if she had an extremely intimate knowledge of
Paris and Parisian ways.

Even the Frenchman she befriended was ungrateful enough not to know
quite what to think of Mary. He raised his hat, and gave her a look of
passionate gratitude, in case anything were to be got by it: but the
deep meaning of the gaze was lost on the lately emancipated Sister Rose.
She blushed, because it happened to be the first time she had ever
spoken to a young man unchaperoned by Lady MacMillan: but she was
regarding him as a fellow-being, and remembering that she had been
instructed to seize any chance of doing a kindness, no matter how small.
She had never been told that it was not always safe for a girl to treat
a Frenchman as a fellow-being.

Afterward, on the boat, when a porter had placed her in a sheltered
deck-seat with a curved top, the fellow-being ventured again to thank
the English Mees for coming to his rescue. It was a pleasure to Mary to
speak French, which had been taught her by Sister Marie-des-Anges, a
French nun from Paris; and she and the young man plunged into an
animated conversation. Her travelling companions had chairs on deck not
far off, and they knew what to think of the mystery now. They were on
the way to Mentone, but as they intended stopping a day in Paris, and
going on by a cheaper train than the _train de luxe_, Mary did not see
them again during the journey.

She was unconscious of anything in her appearance or conduct to arouse
disapproval. Her one regret concerning the thin silk stockings and
delicate shoes (which she had bought because they were pretty) was that
her ankles were cold. She had no rug; but the Frenchman insisted on
lending her his, tucking it round her knees and under her feet. Then she
was comfortable, and even more grateful to him than he had been to her
for translating him to the porter. He was dark and thin, cynically
intelligent looking, of a type new to Mary; and she thanked him for
being disappointed that she could not stop in Paris. He inquired if, by
chance, she were going to Monte Carlo. When she said no, she was passing
on much farther, he was again disappointed, because, being an artist, he
often ran down to Monte Carlo himself in the winter, and it would have
been a great privilege to renew acquaintance with so charming an English
lady.

Mary had feared that she might be ill in crossing the Channel, as she
had never been on the water before, and could not know whether she were
a good or a bad sailor. Aunt Sara and Elinor had told her unpleasant
anecdotes of voyages; but when Dover Castle on its gray height, and
white Shakespeare Cliff with its memories of "Lear," had faded from her
following eyes, still she would hardly have known that the vessel was
moving. The purring turbines scarcely thrilled the deck; and presently
Mary ate sandwiches and drank a decoction of coffee, brought by her new
friend. He laughed when she started at a mournful hoot of the siren, and
was enormously interested to hear that she had never set eyes upon the
sea until to-day. Mademoiselle, for such an ingenue, was very
courageous, he thought, and looked at Mary closely; but her eyes
wandered from him to the phantom-shapes that loomed out of a pale,
wintry mist: tramps thrashing their way to the North Sea: a vast,
distant liner with tiers of decks one above the other: a darting
torpedo-destroyer which flashed by like a streak of foam.

Everything was so interesting that Mary would far rather not have had to
talk, but she had been brought up in a school of old-fashioned courtesy.
To her, a failure in politeness would have been almost a crime: and as
the sisters had never imagined the possibility of her talking with a
strange young man, they had not cautioned her against doing so.

She had meant to scribble a few notes of her impressions during the
journey, for the benefit of Reverend Mother and the nuns, posting her
letter in Paris; but as the Frenchman appeared surprised at her
travelling alone, and everybody else seemed to be with friends, she
decided not to write until Florence. There, when she could say that she
had reached her journey's end safely, she might confess that she had
left London without her relatives or even the companion-maid they
advised.

"If Reverend Mother saw Aunt Sara, even for five minutes," Mary said to
herself, "she couldn't blame me."

As it happened, there had been such a rush at the last, after the great
decision was made, that Mary had not written to the convent. She had
only telegraphed: "Leaving at once for Florence. Will write."

She was hoping that Reverend Mother would not scold her for what she had
done, when suddenly another cliff, white as the cliffs of Dover,
glimmered through the haze. Then she forgot her sackcloth, for,
according to the Frenchman, this was old Grisnez, pushing its inquiring
nose into the sea; and beyond loomed the tall lighthouse of Calais.

It was absurdly wonderful on landing at Calais to hear every one talking
French. Of course, Mary had known that it would be so, but actually to
hear it, and to think that these people had spoken French since they
were babies, was ridiculously nice. She felt rewarded for all the pains
she had taken to learn verbs and acquire exactly the right accent; and
she half smiled in a friendly way at the dark porters in their blue
blouses, and at the toylike policemen with their swords and capes. Her
porter was a cross-looking, elderly man, but at the smile she had for
him he visibly softened; and, with her dressing-bag slung by a strap
over his broad shoulder, made an aggressive shield of his stout body to
pilot her through the crowd.

Now she left behind the two Englishwomen and her French acquaintance,
for she was a passenger in the _luxe_, which started earlier than the
ordinary first-class train for Paris. The Frenchman hoped and believed
that she would regret his society, but she forgot him before the train
went out, having no premonition of any future meeting.

This, then, was what they called a _wagon lit_! She was delighted with
her quarters, supposing, as the compartment seemed small, that it was
entirely for her use during the journey. She had been told that she
would be provided with a bed, and she wondered how it was to be
arranged.

Darkness fell over France, but Mary felt that she could see through the
black veil, away to the south, where roses were budding in warm
sunshine. She was whole-heartedly glad, for the first time, to be out of
the convent.

If it had not been winter and night, she would perhaps have longed to
stop in Paris, but the sight of the great bleak Gare du Nord chilled
her. The ordeal of the _douane_ had to be gone through there, and Mary
was glad when it was over, and she could go on again, though she was
once more protected by a gallant porter; and a youngish official of the
customs, after a glance at her face, quickly marked crosses on her
luggage without opening it. Other women, older and not attractive, saw
this favouritism, and swelled with resentment, as Elinor Home-Davis had
when saying:

"_Is_ she the kind who can ever let men alone? She makes eyes at the
footman!"

Mary had never heard of "making eyes." One did not use these vulgar
expressions at the convent. But Peter would have known what Elinor
meant; and even Reverend Mother knew instinctively that, if Mary Grant
went out into the world, she would unconsciously influence all sorts and
conditions of men with whom she came in contact, as the moon influences
the tides. And Reverend Mother would have felt it safer for just such
creatures as Mary to live out their lives in the shelter of a convent.
But Mary thought only how kind Frenchmen even of the lower classes were,
and wondered if those of other nations were as polite. Slowly the train
took her round Paris, and, after what seemed a long time, stopped in
another huge station, which shivered under a white, crude flood of
electric light. Its name--Gare du Lyon--sounded warm, however, and sent
her fancy flying southward again. She was growing impatient to get on
when, to her surprise, a porter hovering in the corridor with a large
dressing-bag plumped it into the rack beside her own. Mary started.
Could it be possible that any one else had a right to come in with her?

The question was answered by the appearance of a marvellous lady who
followed the porter. "Which of us is here?" she asked. "Oh, it's you,
Mrs. Collis! That's your bag, I think."

She spoke like an Englishwoman, yet there was a faint roll of the "r"
suggestive of foreign birth or education. Mary had never seen any one
like her before. She was unusually tall, as tall as a man of good
height, and her figure was magnificent. Evidently she was not ashamed of
her stature, for her large black hat had upstanding white wings, and her
heels were high. Her navy blue cloth dress braided with black that had
threads of gold here and there was made to show her form to the best
advantage. Mary had not known that hair could be as black as the heavy
waves which melted into the black velvet of the hat. The level brows
over the long eyes were equally black, and so were the thick short
lashes. Between these inky lines the eyes themselves were as coldly gray
and empty as a northern sea, yet they were attractive, if only by an
almost sinister contrast. The skin was extraordinarily white, and it did
not occur to Mary that Nature alone had not whitened it, or reddened the
large scarlet mouth. Women did not paint at the convent, nor did Lady
MacMillan's guests. Mary did not know anything about paint. She thought
the newcomer very handsome, yet somehow formidable.

In a moment other people trooped into the corridor and grouped round the
door of Mary's compartment. There was a wisp of a woman with neat
features and sallow complexion, who looked the essence of respectability
combined with a small, tidy intelligence. She was in brown from head to
foot, and her hair was brown, too, where it was not turning gray.
Evidently she was Mrs. Collis, for she took a lively interest in the
bag, and said she must have it down, as the stupid people had put it
wrong side up. She spoke like an American, though not with the
delicately sweet drawl that Peter had. Behind her stood a pretty girl
whose features were neatly cut out on somewhat the same design, and
whose eyes and hair were of the same neutral brown. She had a waist of
painful slenderness, and she reminded Mary of a charming wren. Behind
her came another girl, older and of a different type, with hair yellow
as a gold ring, round eyes of opaque, turquoise blue, without
expression, and complexion of incredible pink and white. Her lips, too,
were extremely pink, and her brows and lashes almost as black as those
of the tall woman. She wore pale purple serge, with a hat to match, and
had a big bunch of violets pinned on a fur stole which was bobbing and
pulsing with numberless tiny, grinning heads of dead animals. On her
enormous muff were more of these animals, and tucked under one arm
appeared a miniature dog with a ferocious face. In the wake of these
ladies who surged round the door and sent forth waves of perfume,
presently arrived a man who joined them as if reluctantly, and because
he could think of nothing else to do.

He was much taller than the woman who had come first, and must have been
well over six feet. His clean-shaven, aquiline face was of a dead
pallor. There were dark shadows and a disagreeable fulness under his
gray, wistful eyes, which seemed to appeal for help without any hope of
receiving it. He walked wearily and slouchingly, stooping a little, as
if he were too tired or bored to take the trouble of throwing back his
shoulders.

The ladies talked together, very fast, all but the tall one, who, though
she talked also, did not chatter as the others did, but spoke slowly, in
a low tone which must be listened to, or it could not be heard. The four
laughed a good deal, and when the tall woman smiled she lost something
of her fascination, for she had large, slightly prominent eye-teeth
which went far to spoil her handsome red mouth. The others paid great
attention to her, and to the big man with the sad eyes. In loud voices,
as if they wished people to hear, they constantly addressed these two as
Lord and Lady Dauntrey.

"I--are you quite sure that you're to be here?" Mary ventured, when Mrs.
Collis had whisked into the compartment, and was ringing for some one to
take down her bag, after the train had started. "I thought--I had this
place to myself."

"Why, if you have, there must be a mistake," replied the American. "Have
you taken both berths?"

"No," said Mary. "Only one. Are there two?"

"My, yes, of course. In some there are four. But this is one of the
little ones. I expect"--and she smiled--"that you haven't made many long
journeys?"

"I haven't travelled at all before," Mary answered, blushing under the
eyes turned upon her.

"Well, you'll find it's all right, what I say," the American lady went
on. "But"--and she lost interest in Mary--"aren't we silly? Miss
Wardrobe had better come in here, where there's only one place, and my
daughter and I'll take a compartment together, as the car seems pretty
full."

"Please don't call me Miss Wardrobe!" exclaimed the golden-haired girl.
"That's the eighth time. I've counted." As she spoke, her tiny dog
yapped in a thin voice at the offender, its round eyes goggling.

"I hope you'll excuse me, I'm sure," returned the American, acidly.

"I must say, I really don't think mamma's had occasion to mention your
name as many times as eight since we first had the pleasure of meeting,"
the charming wren flew to her mother's rescue. "But you've got such a
difficult name."

"Anyhow, it isn't like everybody else's, which is _something_," retorted
the girl who had been called "Miss Wardrobe."

Mary began to be curious to know what the real name was. But perhaps she
would find out later, as the young woman was to share her little room.
It would be interesting to learn things about this odd party, yet she
would rather have been alone.

Soon after Paris there was dinner in the dining-car not far away, and
Mary had opposite her the girl with the queer name. No one else was at
the table. At first they did not speak, and Mary remembered the training
of her childhood, never to seem observant of strangers; but she could
not help looking sometimes at her neighbour. The first thing the latter
did on sitting down was to draw off her gloves, and roll them inside
out. She then opened a chain bag of platinum and gold, which looked
rather dirty, and taking out, one after another, eight jewelled rings,
slipped them on affectionately. Several fingers were adorned with two or
three, each ring appearing to have its recognized place. When all were
on, their wearer laid a hand on either side of her plate, and regarded
first one, then the other, contentedly, with a slight movement causing
the pink manicured nails to glitter, and bringing out deep flashes from
diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. Glancing up suddenly, with
self-conscious composure, the young woman saw that her neighbour's eyes
appreciated the exhibition. She smiled, and Mary smiled too.

"If I didn't think my stable-companion was all right, I wouldn't have
dared put them on," remarked "Miss Wardrobe." "But I do feel so--well,
undressed almost, without my rings; don't you?"

"I haven't any," Mary confessed.

"Why--don't you like rings?"

"Yes, on other people. I love jewels. But for myself, I've never thought
of having any--yet."

"I've thought more about it than about anything else," remarked the
girl, smiling a broad, flat smile that showed beautiful white teeth. She
looked curiously unintelligent when she smiled.

"Perhaps I shall begin thinking more about it now."

"That sounds interesting. What will start your mind to working on the
subject? Looking at my rings?" She had an odd, persistent accent which
irritated Mary's ears. If it was like anything the convent-bred girl had
heard, it resembled the accent of a housemaid who "did" her bedroom in
Cromwell Road. This maid had said that she was a London girl. And
somehow Mary imagined that, if she had rings, she would like taking them
out of a gold bag and putting them on at the dinner-table. Because Mary
had never had for a companion any girl or woman not a lady, she did not
know how to account for peculiarities which would not have puzzled one
more experienced.

"Perhaps," she answered, smiling.

"Maybe you mean to win a lot of money at Monte, and buy some?"

"At Monte--does that mean Monte Carlo? Oh, no, I'm going to Florence.
But some money has been left to me lately, so I can do and have things I
shouldn't have thought of before." Mary explained all this frankly, yet
without any real wish to talk of her own affairs.

The four others of the party were at a table opposite; and as there was
a moment's lull in the rush of waiters and clatter of plates for a
change of courses, now and then a few words of conversation at one table
reached another. As Mary mentioned the legacy Lady Dauntrey suddenly
flashed a glance at her, and though the long pale eyes were turned away
immediately, she had the air of listening to catch the rest of the
sentence. By this time the little quarrel over "Miss Wardrobe's" name
had apparently been forgotten. The five were on good terms, and talked
to each other across the gangway. Again the title of the two leading
members of the party was called out conspicuously, and people at other
tables turned their heads or stretched their necks to look at this party
who advertised the "jolly time" they were having. They chattered about
"Monte," and about celebrities supposed to have arrived there already,
though it was still early in the season. Lady Dauntrey told anecdotes of
the "Rooms," as if to show that she was not ignorant of the place; but
Lord Dauntrey said nothing unless he were addressed, and then answered
in as few words as possible. Nevertheless he had something of that
old-world courtesy which Mary had been taught, and she felt an odd,
instinctive sympathy with him. She even found herself pitying the man,
though she did not know why. A man might be taciturn and tired-looking
yet not unhappy.

They sat a long time at dinner before they were allowed to pay and go.
Lord Dauntrey's party smoked, and the girl at Mary's table offered her a
cigarette from a gold case with the name "Dodo" written across it in
diamonds. Mary thanked her, and refused. She had heard girls at school
say that they knew women who smoked, but she had never seen a woman
smoking. It seemed odd that no one looked surprised.

Her neighbour, whom she now heard addressed as Miss Wardropp, did not
come into their compartment at once, but stopped in another of the same
size, where she, with Lord and Lady Dauntrey and Miss Collis, played a
game with a little wheel which they turned. When Mary stood in the
corridor, while the beds were being made, she saw them turning this
wheel, and wondered what the game could be. They had a folding board
with yellow numbers on a dark green ground, and they were playing with
ivory chips of different colours.

Mary had the lower berth, but when she realized how much pleasanter it
would be to sleep in the upper one, she could not bring herself to take
it. She felt that it would be selfish to be found there when Miss
Wardropp came to undress; and when the latter did appear, toward
midnight, it was to see the lower berth left free.

"Why, but you were below. Didn't you know that?" she inquired rather
sharply, as if she expected her room mate to insist on changing.

"Yes," Mary replied meekly. "But I--I left it for you, and your little
dog."

"Well, I do think that's about the most unselfish thing I ever heard of
any one doing!" exclaimed Miss Wardropp. "Thank you very much, I'm sure.
No good my refusing now, as you're already in?"

"No, indeed," Mary laughed.

"I wish you were going with us to the Villa Bella Vista," said the
other. "From what I can see, we don't seem likely to get much
unselfishness there, from anybody."

Then, as she undressed, showing exquisite underclothing, she followed
her ambiguous remark by pouring out information concerning herself, her
companions, and their plans.

She was from Australia, and intimated that her father, lately dead, had
left plenty of money. She had met Lord and Lady Dauntrey a month ago in
Brighton at the Metropole. Where the Dauntreys had "picked up the
Collises," Dodo Wardropp did not know, but they were "late
acquisitions." "Lord and Lady Dauntrey have taken a furnished villa at
Monte for the season," she went on, "a big one, so they can have lots of
guests. I and the Collises are the first instalment, but they're
expecting others: two or three men with titles."

She said this as if "titles" were a disease, like measles. As she rubbed
off the day's powder and paint with cold cream, there was a nice smell
in the little room of the _wagon lit_, like the scent of a theatrical
dressing-room.

"I suppose you're looking forward to a delightful winter," Mary
ventured, from her berth, as Dodo hid a low-necked lace nightgown under
a pink silk kimono embroidered with gold.

"I hope!" exclaimed Miss Wardropp. "I pay for it, anyhow. I don't mind
telling, as you aren't going to Monte, and won't know any of them, that
we're sort of glorified paying-guests. The Collises haven't said to me
they're that, and I haven't said what I am; but we know. I'm paying
fourteen guineas a week for my visit, and I've a sneaking idea her
ladyship's saving up the best room for other friends who'll give more. I
could live at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte Carlo, I expect, for that
price, but you see the catch is that Lord and Lady Dauntrey can
introduce their guests to swell people. I wouldn't meet the right kind
if I lived in a hotel, even with a first-rate chaperon. I know, for I
came to Monte Carlo with an Australian friend, for a few days on my way
to England. It's no use being at a resort if you don't get into the
smart set, is it?"

"I suppose not," said Mary. "But I think I care more about places than
people."

"I don't understand that feeling. I want to get in with the best. And
though Lord Dauntrey's poor, and I imagine disappointed in expectations
of money with her, he must be acquainted with a lot of important titled
people. He's a viscount, you know, and that's pretty high up."

"I didn't know," Mary confessed. "I don't know anything about society."

"You seem to have led a retired sort of life," Miss Wardropp remarked,
though without much curiosity, for she was not really interested in any
woman except herself, or those connected with her affairs. "Surely you
read about their wedding in South Africa last Spring?"

"No. I have never read newspapers."

"I don't bother either, except society news and fashion pages. But there
were pictures of them both everywhere. I expect she got the photographs
in, for he doesn't seem a man to like that sort of thing. Lord Dauntrey
was out in South Africa for years, trying to make his fortune, but it
didn't appear to come off. Friends of mine I knew at Brighton, who took
me there, a rich Jew and his wife who'd lived in Africa, said when the
Dauntreys turned up at the Metropole that he'd been at a pretty low ebb
out there. I believe he studied for a doctor, but I don't know if he
ever practised. Nobody can say exactly who Lady Dauntrey was originally,
but she was a widow when he married her, and supposed to have money. He
doesn't seem to care for society, but she's ambitious to be some one.
She's so good-looking she's sure to succeed. I expect to know everybody
smart at Monte. That's what I've been promised, and Lady Dauntrey'll
entertain a good deal. If that doesn't amuse her husband he can shoot
pigeons, and gamble at the Casino. He's got a system at roulette that
works splendidly on his little wheel. We were playing it this evening.
But I expect I'm boring you. You look sleepy. I'll turn in, and go
bye-bye with Diablette."

For the rest of the night all was silence in the compartment, save for
the gobbling noises made in her sleep by the griffon Diablette. Mary lay
awake in her upper berth, longing to look out, and thrilling to musical
cries of big baritone voices at the few stops the train made: "Di-jon-n,
cinq minutes d'arrêt! Ma-con-n, cinq minutes d'ar-rêt! Ly-on, dix
minutes d'a-rr-êt!"

It was wonderful to hear the names ring like bells out of the mystery
and darkness of night, names she had known all her life since she had
been old enough to study history or read romance. She thought that the
criers must have been chosen for their resonant voices, and in her mind
she pictured faces to match, dark and ruddy, with great southern eyes;
for now the train was booming toward Provence: and though Mary began to
be drowsy, she held herself awake on purpose to hear "Avignon" shouted
through the night.

Very early, almost before it was light, she arose noiselessly, bathed as
well as she could, and dressed, so as to be able to look out at
Marseilles. Miss Wardropp was asleep, and as the train slowed into the
big station in the pale glimmer of the winter morning, Mary walked to
the end of the car. The stop would be twenty minutes, and as the train
gave its last jerk Mary jumped on to the platform.

The sky was of a faint, milky blue, like the blue that moves under the
white cloud in a moonstone, and the first far down ray of morning sun,
coming up with the balmy wind from still, secret places where the youth
of the world slept, shimmered golden as a buttercup held under the
pearly chin of a child. This was only Marseilles, but already the smell
of the south was in the air, the scent of warm salt sea, of eucalyptus
logs burning, and pine trees and invisible orange groves. On the
platform, osier baskets packed full of flowers sent out wafts of
perfume; and as Mary stood gazing over the heads of the crowd at the
lightening sky, she thought the dawn rushed up the east like a
torchbearer, bringing good news. Just for a moment she forgot everybody,
and could have sung for joy of life--a feeling new to her, though
something deep down in herself had whispered that it was there and she
might know it if she would. It was such faint whisperings as this which,
repeated often, had driven her from the convent.

"How young I am!" she thought, for once actively self-conscious. "How
young I am, and how young the world is!"

She let her eyes fall from the sky and plunge into the turmoil of the
station, turmoil of people getting in and out of trains, of porters
running with luggage, of restaurant employés wheeling stands of food
through the crowd, piled oranges and mandarines, and white grapes,
decorated with leaves and a few flowers; soldiers arriving or saying
goodbye, jolly dark youths in red and blue; an Arab trying to sell
scarfs from Algiers; a Turkish family travelling; English men and women
newly landed, with P. & O. labels large on their hand-bags; French
_bonnes_ wearing quaint stiff caps and large floating ribbons; Indian
ayahs wrapped in shawls. Mary gazed at the scene as if it were a
panorama, and scarcely dwelt upon individuals until her eyes were drawn
by the eyes of a man.

It was when she had mounted the steps of her own car, and turned once
more before going in. So she looked down at the man looking up.

She blushed under the eyes, for there was something like adoration in
them, romantic admiration such as a man may feel for the picture of a
lovely saint against a golden background, or the poetic heroine of a
classic legend. They were extraordinarily handsome eyes, dark and
mysterious as only Italian eyes can be, though Mary Grant did not know
this, having gazed into few men's eyes, and none that were Italian.

"Looking up so, his face is like what Romeo's must have been," she said
to herself with an answering romantic impulse. "Surely he is Italian!"

And he, looking up at her, said, "What a picture of Giulietta on the
balcony! Is she French, Italian, Russian?"

The man was a Roman, whose American mother had not robbed him of an
ardent temperament that leaned toward romance; and he had just come back
to the west across the sea, from a romantic mission in the east. He had
not exchanged words with a woman for months, in the desert where he had
been living. For this reason, perhaps, he was the readier to find
romance in any lovely pair of eyes; but it seemed to him that there
never had been such eyes as these. For always, in a man's life, there
must be one pair of eyes which are transcendent stars, even if they are
seen but once, then lost forever.

This was not his train, for the _luxe_ does not take local passengers,
in the season when every place is filled between Paris and Nice; but
because of Mary's face, he wished to travel with her, and look into her
eyes again, in order to make sure if they really held the magic of that
first glance.

He found a train-attendant and spoke with him rapidly, in a low voice,
making at the same time a suggestive chinking of gold and silver with
one hand in his pocket.




IV


Under the golden sunshine, the _luxe_ steamed on: after Toulon no longer
tearing through the country with few pauses, but stopping at many
stations. For the first time Mary saw olive trees, spouting silver like
great fountains, and palms stretching out dark green hands of Fatma
against blue sky and bluer sea. For the first time she saw the
Mediterranean that she had dreamed of in her cold, dim room at the
convent. This was like the dreams and the stories told by Peter, only
better; for nothing could give a true idea of the glimmering olive
groves. Under the silvery branches delicate as smoke-wreaths, and among
the gnarled gray trunks, it seemed that at any moment a band of nymphs
or dryads might pass, streaming away in fear from the noises of
civilization.

At St. Raphael and Fréjus colossal legs of masonry strode across the
green meadows, and Mary knew that they had been built by Romans. Pine
trees like big, open umbrellas were black against a curtain of azure.
Acres of terraces were planted with rows of flowers like straightened
rainbows: young roses, carnations, pinky white stock and blue and purple
hyacinths; and over the coral or gamboge painted walls of little railway
stations bougainvillea poured cataracts of crimson. By and by, the
train ran close to the sea, and miniature waves blue as melted turquoise
curled on amber sands, shafts of gilded light glinting through the crest
of each roller where the crystal arch was shattered into foam.

Then came the wonderful red rocks which Peter had described; ruddy
monsters of incredible shapes which had crawled down to drink, and lay
basking in the clear water, their huge rounded backs bright as copper
where the westerly sun smote them; for by this time it was afternoon. At
Cannes, yachts sat high in the quaint harbour like proud white swans:
mysterious islands slept on the calm surface of the sea, dreaming of
their own reflections; and a company of blue-clad mountains, strangely
crowned, were veiled below their foreheads like harem women with
delicate fabric of cloud, thin as fine muslin.

After Cannes, appeared Antibes, with its peninsula of palms and pines,
its old harbour, town, and white lighthouse; and at last, Nice.

Many people whose faces Mary had seen at dinner the night before, and
again at luncheon, left the train at Nice; and on the platforms, waiting
for local trains, she saw girls in flowery hats, and white or pale
tinted serge dresses, such as they might wear on a cool day of an
English summer. They could not be travelling far, in such frocks and
hats, and Mary wondered where they were going, with their little plump
hand-bags of netted gold or embroidered velvet.

By and by a train moved in, also on its way to Monte Carlo. Women and
men suddenly surged together in a compact wave, and struggled with each
other at the doors of the corridor carriages. Fat men had no hesitation
in pushing themselves in front of thin women; robust females dashed
little men aside, and mounted triumphantly. All were eager, and bent
upon some object in which they refused to be thwarted.

The beauty of the coast was dreamlike to Mary, who had lived ever since
she could remember in the north of Scotland, among moorland and hills
whose only intrinsic brilliance of colour came at the time of heather.
She had loved the browns and cloudy grays, and the deep blue of the lake
and the pensive violet shadows; but this was like a burst of gorgeous
day after an existence in sweet, pale twilight. She rejoiced that she
had persisted in seeing the Riviera before passing into Italy.

It seemed that, after Nice, each stopping-place was prettier and more
flowery than the one before. She had no one to admire them with her, for
since luncheon, which Mary had taken early, Miss Wardropp had been in
another compartment playing the game with the little wheel and spinning
ivory ball. But after passing Villefranche harbour, Beaulieu drowned in
olives, and Eze under its old hill-village on a horn of rock, the
Australian girl came back, to exchange a cap of purple suède for her
cartwheel of a hat.

"The next station where the train stops will be Monaco," she announced.

"Oh, then you'll be getting out almost at once?" And Mary prepared to
say goodbye.

"Not yet. The station after Monaco: Monte Carlo--darling place! But the
principality begins at Monaco of course. I told you how I stayed three
days before I went to England. Almost everybody who lands at Marseilles
wants to run on to Monte for a flutter, in season or out."

Miss Wardropp put away a novel, and dusted a little powder over her
face, with the aid of a gold vanity-box. The train plunged through a
tunnel or two, and flashed out, giving a glimpse of Monaco's high red
rock with the Prince's palace half girdled by ruinous gray walls and
towers of ancient feudal days. Dodo was ready to go. She bade her
companion goodbye, and good luck in Florence. "Too bad you're not
getting out here!" she said, as they shook hands. And then Mary forgot
her in gazing at the Rock of Hercules, the red rock crowned with walls
as old as history, and jewelled with flowers. Close to shore the water
was green and clear as beryl, and iridescent blue as a peacock's breast
where the sea flowed past the breakwater. In the harbour were yachts
large and small, a trading ship or two, and fishing boats drawn up on a
narrow strip of beach. Across from the Rock, and joined to it by the
low-lying Condamine, was Monte Carlo, with the white Casino towers
pointing high above roofs and feathery banks of trees, like the horns of
a great animal crouched basking in the gay sunlight.

Mary remembered how Peter had told her the tale of Hercules landing
here: how he had come in a small boat, and claimed the rock and the
lovely semi-circle of coast for his own. "The guests of Hercules, going
to pay him a visit," she said to herself now, as passengers began to
push their way along the corridor, in order to be the first ones down.
The girl's heart began suddenly to beat very fast, she did not know why.

"What is there to be excited about?" she asked herself. No answer came.
Yet the fact remained. She was intensely excited.

"If I were getting out, like all these other people," she thought,
"there'd be an excuse. But as it is----"

Then, far down within herself, a tiny voice said: "Why shouldn't you get
out--now, quickly, while there's time?"

It was a voice which seemed quite separate from herself, and she could
feel it as if her body were a cage in which a tiny bird sang a small
song in a sweet voice that must be listened to intently.

There was no strong reason, when she came to think of it, why she should
not listen, although to listen gave her a sensation of childish guilt.
She was her own mistress. She had never promised Peter, nor any one
else, not to come to Monte Carlo. Peter had advised her against coming,
that was all. And Peter, though dear and kind, had no right----

Why not obey the bird voice, and get out quickly while there was time?

It was beautiful here, and this was the best season. Florence could be
very cold, people said, and so could Rome. But on the Riviera, in
December, roses and a thousand flowers were in bloom.

To dash out of the train unexpectedly, as a surprise to herself, would
be a great adventure. To come another time, according to a plan, would
not be an adventure at all.

Never in her whole past life had she had an adventure. What fun to land
at Monte Carlo with only hand-luggage! The rest would go on to Florence,
but somehow she could retrieve it sooner or later, and meanwhile how
amusing to spend a little part of her legacy in fitting herself out with
new things, clothes which would give her a place in the picture! And she
needn't stay long. What were a few days more or less?

There was only a minute to make up her mind. The train was slowing into
the station, a large attractive station, adorned with posters of
dream-places painted in rich dream-colours, like those of stained glass.
On the platform, to the left of the station building, stood a boy twelve
or fourteen years old, dressed in livery. He had a bullet head, with
hair so black as to seem more like a thick, shining coat of varnish than
hair. His eyes were very large and expressed a burning energy, as if he
were nerving himself to a great feat, and the moment of action had
arrived. Mary watched him, in a sudden flash of curious interest, as if
she must at all costs see what he was going to do, and then make her
decision. This was a ridiculous idea, but she could not take her eyes
off the child, as the train slowly approached him on its way into the
station. He drew in a great breath, which empurpled the brown of his
face, and then emitted a single word, "As-cen-s-e-u-r!" in a singing
roar, into which he threw his whole soul, as a young tiger does. As the
train passed the boy, Mary, gazing out of the corridor window, looked
straight down the deep round tunnel that was his open mouth, and caught
his strained eye. He suddenly looked self-conscious, and broke into a
foolish yet pleasant smile. Mary smiled too, like a child, showing her
dimples. Then she knew that she would get out at Monte Carlo no matter
what happened.

At this instant, as the train stopped with a slight jerk, the attendant
in his neat brown uniform whisked past Mary into her compartment, to
snatch Miss Wardropp's bag and earn his fee. By this time the passengers
who were alighting at Monte Carlo had pressed down the corridor in a
procession, treading on each others' heels.

"If I should get out here, could I use my ticket afterward on to
Florence?" Mary hastily inquired in French. But whatever the answer
might be, her mind was obstinately set on the adventure she wanted.

"But yes, certainly, Mademoiselle," replied the man.

"Then will you take my bag, too, please?"

The porter's tired eyes dwelt on her for an instant understandingly,
sympathetically, even pityingly. Perhaps he had seen other passengers
make up their minds at the last minute to stop at Monte Carlo. He said
nothing, but seized the bag; and with her heart beating as if this
decision had changed the whole face of the world, Mary hurried after the
stout brown figure, and joined the end of the procession as it poured
from the _wagon lit_ on to the platform.




V


Mary followed the other people who had left the train. Lord and Lady
Dauntrey, with their party, were far ahead, and she could not have
spoken to them if she had wished, without running to catch them up; but
she did not wish to speak. She had taken no dislike to them; on the
contrary, she was interested, but she did not feel inclined to ask
advice, or attach herself to any one. She enjoyed the idea of a
wonderful new independence.

The sunshine made her feel energetic, and full of courage and
enterprise, which had been crushed out of her in London by the chilly
manner of her relatives, and the weight of the black fog.

Passing through the station, after having part of her ticket torn from
its book, she reached the front of the building, where a great many
hotel omnibuses and a few private motors were in waiting. A station
porter was following her now, with the one dressing-bag which remained
of her abandoned luggage. "Quel hôtel, Mademoiselle?" he inquired.

Mary hesitated, her eyes roaming over the omnibuses. One was
conspicuous, drawn by four splendid horses, driven by a big man with a
shining conical hat, and a wide expanse of scarlet waistcoat.

No other omnibus looked quite so important. On it, in gold letters, Mary
read "Hôtel de Paris." The name sounded vaguely familiar. Where had she
lately heard this hotel mentioned! Oh, yes! by Miss Wardropp.

"Hôtel de Paris, s'il vous plaît," she answered.

In another moment her bag was in the omnibus, and she was climbing in
after it in the wake of other persons, enough to fill the roomy vehicle.
As she settled into her corner she saw a man walk slowly by at a
distance. He was not looking at her for the moment, and she had no more
than a glimpse of a dark, clearly drawn profile; yet she received a
curious impression that he had just turned away from looking at her; and
she was almost sure it was the man she had noticed at Marseilles. Now
her Romeo idea of him struck her as sentimental. She wondered why she
had connected such a thought with a man in modern clothes, in a noisy
railway station. The morning and its impressions seemed long ago. She
felt older and more experienced, almost like a woman of the world, as
the big horses trotted up a hill, leaving all the other omnibuses
behind. From under the large hat of a large German lady, she peered
eagerly, to lose no detail in approaching Monte Carlo.

High at the right rose a terrace like a hanging garden, attached to a
huge white hotel. In front of the building, and also very high, ran a
long covered gallery where there appeared to be restaurants and shops.
At the left were gardens; and then in a moment more, coming out into an
open square, all Monte Carlo seemed made of gardens with extraordinary,
ornate white buildings in their midst, sugar-cake buildings made for
pleasure and amusement, all glass windows and plaster figures and
irrelevant towers, the whole ringed in by a semi-circle of high, gray
mountains. It was a fantastic fairyland, this place of palms and bosky
lawns, with grass far too green to seem real, and beds of incredibly
brilliant flowers.

One section of the garden ran straight and long, like a gayly patterned
carpet, toward a middle background of climbing houses with red roofs;
and it began to spread almost from the steps of the cream white building
with jewelled and gilded horns, which Mary had seen in Peter's Riviera
snapshots: the Casino. As the omnibus swung round a generous half
circle, slowly now to avoid loitering groups of people, Mary saw many
men and women arriving in motors or on foot, to go up the shallow flight
of carpeted marble steps which led into the horned building. She thought
again of an immense animal face under these erect, glittering horns; a
face with quantities of intelligent, bright glass eyes that watched, and
a wide-open, smiling mouth into which the figures walked confidently. It
looked a kind, friendly animal basking in the gardens, and the big clock
above its forehead, round which pigeons wheeled, added to its air of
comfortable good nature. Mary was suddenly smitten with a keen curiosity
to see exactly what all these people would see who allowed themselves
to be swallowed by the mouth which smiled in receiving them. Most of the
women were smartly dressed and had gold or embroidered bags in their
hands, like those she had seen at Nice station. They went in looking
straight ahead, and men ran up the steps quickly. Surely this was more
than a mere building. There was something alive and vital and
mysteriously attractive about it, though it was not beautiful at all
architecturally, only rich looking and extraordinary, with its bronze
youths sitting on the cornice and plaster figures starting out of the
walls, laughing and beckoning. It had a personality which subtly
contrived to dominate and make everything else in the little fairyland
of flowers subservient to it, almost as if the emotions and passions of
thousands and tens of thousands of souls from all over the world had
saturated the materials of its construction.

As this fancy came to Mary's mind, the sun in its last look over the
gray Tête de Chien struck her full in the eyes as with a flung golden
gauntlet, then dropped behind the mountain, setting the sky on fire. An
unreal light illumined the buildings in the fairy gardens, and Mary
became conscious of an invisible tide of burning life all around her
which caught her in its rushing flood. She was impelled to float on a
swift and shining stream which she knew was carrying many others besides
herself in the same direction toward an unseen but definite end. She was
like a leaf snatched from a quiet corner by the wind and forced to join
the whirl of its fellow-dancers. It was a feeling that warmed her veins
with excitement, and made her reckless.

The omnibus passed the Casino, and a little farther on stopped in front
of the Hôtel de Paris. It too was fantastically ornate, surely the most
extraordinary hotel on earth, with a high roof of a gray severity which
ironically frowned down upon gilded balconies and nude plaster women who
supported them, robustly voluptuous creatures who faded into foliage
below the waist, like plump nymphs escaping the rude pursuit of gods.
Their bareness and boldness startled the convent-bred girl, even
horrified her. She was the last to leave the omnibus, and then, instead
of pushing in with her fellow-passengers to secure a room before others
could snap up everything, she lingered a moment on the steps.

Still that magical light illumined the _Place_, under the sky's rosy
fire. The long glass façade of the restaurant sent out diamond flashes.
The pigeons strutting in the open space in front of the Casino were
jewels moving on sticks of coral. As they walked, tiny purple shadows
followed them, as if their little red legs were tangled in pansies.
Across the _Place_, on the other side of the garden and opposite the
hotel, was an absurd yet gay collection of bubbly Moorish domes, and
open or glassed-in galleries, evidently a café. Music was playing there,
and in front of the balconies were many chairs and little tables where
people drank tea and fed the strutting pigeons. Beyond the bubbly domes
shimmered a panorama of beauty which by force of its magnificence
redeemed the frivolous fairyland from vulgarity, rather than rebuked it.
Under the rain of rose and gold, as if seen through opaline gauze, shone
sea and hills and distant mountains. On a green height a ruined castle
and its vassal rock-village seemed to have fallen from the top and been
arrested by some miracle halfway down. Beneath, a peninsula of pines
silvered with olives floated on a sea of burnished gold; and above
soared mountains that went billowing away to the east and to Italy, deep
purple-red in the wine of sunset.

Mary forgot that people do not come to hotels for the sole purpose of
standing on the steps to admire a view. It was a liveried servant who
politely reminded her of her duty by holding the glass door open and
murmuring a suggestion that Mademoiselle should give herself the pain of
entering. Then, slightly dazed by new impressions and the magnitude of
her independence, Mary walked humbly into an immense hall, marble paved
and marble columned. She had never seen anything half so gorgeous, and
though she did not know yet whether she liked or disliked the
bewildering decorations of mermaids and sea animals and flowers, she was
struck by their magnificent audacity into a sense of her own
insignificance. Before she could dare to walk here as by right, or seat
herself in one of those great gilded and brocaded chairs, she must buy
clothes which suited Monte Carlo as all this florid splendour of
ornamentation suited it. She did not put this in words, but like all
women possessed of "temperament," had in her something of the
chameleon, and instinctively wished to match her tints with her
environment.

Suddenly she recalled a solemn warning from Mrs. Home-Davis that some
hotels refused to receive women travelling alone, and her heart was
inclined to fail as she asked for a room. But fortunately this was not
one of those cruel hotels Aunt Sara had heard about. Mary was received
civilly and without surprise. A view of the sea? Certainly Mademoiselle
could have a room with a view of the sea. It would be at the price of
from thirty to fifty francs a day. Mary said that she would like to see
a room for thirty francs, and felt economical and virtuous as she did
so. She had been brought up to consider economy a good thing in the
abstract, but she knew practically nothing of the value of money, as she
had never bought anything for herself until she went to London. It
seemed to her now that, with fifty thousand pounds, she was so rich that
she could have anything she wanted in the world, but she had nebulous
ideas as to what to want.

A pretty little pink and gray room was shown her, so pretty that it
seemed cheap until she heard that food and everything else was "extra";
but the view decided her to take it. The large window looked southwest,
with the harbour and rock of Monaco to the right, and to the left an
exquisite group of palms on the Casino terrace, which gave an almost
mysterious value to a background of violet sky melting into deeper
violet sea. As she stood looking out, silver voices of bells chimed
melodiously across the water, from the great Byzantine cathedral on the
Rock. It was all beautiful and poetic. Mary would have taken the room if
it had been a hundred instead of a paltry thirty francs a day. But she
could not afford to stop and look at the violet sea, still haunted by
the red wreckage of sunset. She had her shopping to do, for she must
somehow find exactly the right hat and dress, ready to put on, or she
would have to dine in her room, and that would be imprisonment on the
first night at Monte Carlo.

She ran quickly downstairs again, not in the least tired after her
journey, and changed a thousand-franc note, which perhaps inspired
official confidence in the young English lady with only a hand-bag for
luggage. Also, she inquired where she could buy the prettiest things to
wear, and was directed to the Galerie Charles Trois, which turned out to
be that covered gallery with shops and restaurants that she had noticed
when driving up the hill.

By this time, though it was not yet dark, lights gleamed everywhere like
great diamonds scintillating among the palms, or stars shining on the
hills. The grass and trees and flowers in the _Place_ of the Casino
looked twice as unreal as before, all theatrically vivid in colour, and
extraordinarily flat, as if cut out of painted cardboard against a
background of gauze.

The ruined castle and old rock-town tumbling down the far-off hillside
still smouldered in after-sunset fire, windows glittering like the
rubies in some lost crown, dropped by a forgotten king in battle. But
the red of the sky was paling to hyacinth, a strange and lovely tint
that was neither rose nor blue. As Mary went to buy herself pretty
things, walking through a scene of beauty beyond her convent dreams, she
murmured a small prayer of thanksgiving that she had been guided to this
heavenly place.

She must write to Reverend Mother and Peter, she thought, explaining why
she was here, and how glad she was that she had happened to come. Then
it struck her suddenly, though more humorously than disagreeably, that
it would be rather difficult to explain, especially in a way to satisfy
Peter. Perhaps dear Reverend Mother would be anxious for her safety, if
Peter said any of those rather silly things of Monte Carlo which at the
last she had said to her--Mary. After all, maybe it would be better to
keep to the first plan and not write until she could date a letter
Florence. Then she put the little worry out of her mind and gave her
soul to the shop-windows in the Galerie Charles Trois.

It was a fascinating gallery, where lovely ladies walked, wonderfully
dressed, pointing out dazzling jewellery in plate glass windows, to
slightly bored men who were with them. Nearly everybody who passed sent
out wafts of peculiarly luscious perfume. Mary walked the length of the
gallery, so as to see all the shops there were to see, before deciding
upon anything. She passed brilliantly lighted restaurants where people
were having tea, some of them at little tables out of doors, protected
by glass screens; and as she walked, people stared at her a good deal,
especially the men who were with the lovely ladies; and the bored look
went out of their eyes. Mary noticed that she was stared at, and was
uncomfortable, because she imagined that her gray tweed and travelling
hat drew unfavourable attention.

But she intended to change all this. She would soon be as well dressed
as anybody, and no one would stare any more. In one window there were
displayed, not only gowns, but hats and cloaks, and exquisite furs, all
shown on wax models with fashionably dressed hair and coquettish faces.
One pink and white creature with a startlingly perfect figure wore a
filmy robe of that intense indigo just taken on by the sea. Underneath a
shadowlike tunic of dark blue chiffon there was a glint of pale gold, a
sort of gold and silver sheath which encased the form of the waxen lady.

"My hair is that colour," Mary thought, and imagined herself in the
dress. The next thing was to walk in and ask a very agreeable
Frenchwoman if the gown were likely to fit her without alteration. "I
must have something at once," Mary explained. "My luggage has gone to
Italy."

The agreeable Frenchwoman was sympathetic. But yes, the dress would fit
to perfection, not a doubt of it, for Mademoiselle had the ideal figure
for model robes. And if, unfortunately, the trunks had all gone,
Mademoiselle would want not only one dress but several? And hats? Yes,
naturally. Other things also, of the same importance. The house made a
speciality of trousseaux. Had Mademoiselle but the time to look? She
need not buy anything, or fear giving trouble. Then Madame added a few
compliments against which Mary, unaccustomed to such food, was not
proof.

She bought the blue chiffon over pale gold, which was hastily tried on
behind a gilded screen; and the wax lady was robbed of gold embroidered
stockings and golden shoes to match. There was a hat of dark blue with a
crown of silver-threaded golden gauze, which was indispensable with the
dress. To wear over this a long cloak of white satin with a wide collar
of swansdown, was the _dernier cri_ of Paris, Madame assured her
customer. There were other dresses and hats too, for morning and
afternoon, and even more extravagant _dessous_ than those Jennings had
tabooed in London.

After the first, Mary forgot to ask prices. She was lost in a delirium
of buying, and ordered whatever she liked, until her brain was tired.

She then thanked Madame charmingly for her politeness and asked to have
the things sent home at once.

But yes, they should go on the moment. And would Mademoiselle pay now,
or at her hotel?

Mary laughed at herself, because she had forgotten about paying. It
might as well be now, as she wished to go farther and get some gloves.
Deftly Madame made out the account. It came to three thousand eight
hundred and ninety francs.

When Mary had mentally turned francs into pounds she was a little
startled; but luckily, against her aunt's advice, she had come away with
a good deal of ready money, English, French, and Italian. It took nearly
all she had to settle the bill, but, as Madame remarked gayly,
Mademoiselle had left herself enough for an evening game at the Casino.
This was, of course, true, as more could somehow be obtained to-morrow.
For the moment Mary had forgotten her curiosity about the pleasant,
basking animal in the garden, but she decided that, after dinner--which
she must have soon, as she was already beginning to be hungry--she would
walk into the monster's smiling mouth.




VI


Prince Giovanni Della Robbia, known to his friends in Rome as Vanno,
went down early to dinner at the Paris. This, not because he was hungry,
but having come to the hotel because he knew that his Juliet of
Marseilles was there, he had no intention of missing a chance to look at
her. If she did not appear early, he would go on dining until it was
late, no matter how late.

Such a resolution, and just such an adventure as this into which he had
flung himself with characteristic impulsiveness and passion, were
strange for Prince Vanno, because since a first unhappy love, when he
was a mere boy, he had avoided women. Adventure and romance were in his
blood, the Italian blood of his father, the Irish-American blood of his
beautiful mother. But his adventures had not been love adventures, since
that first agony had driven him for comfort to the silence of the
desert. Since then he had gone back to the desert for desire of great
empty spaces, and the fire of eastern stars, needing comfort no longer
for a lost love. That had passed out of his heart years ago, leaving no
scar of which he was conscious.

He had just come back from the desert now, and an Arab astrologer who
was a friend of his had told him that December of this year would be
for him a month of good luck and great happenings, the star of his birth
being in the ascendant. Almost it began to look as if there might be
something in the prophecy; and Prince Vanno, laughing at himself (with
the dry sense of humour that came from the Irish-American side of his
parentage), was half inclined to be superstitious. Astronomy was his
love at present, not astrology, and last year he had discovered a small
blue planet which had been named after him and whose sapphire beauty had
been much admired. Still, because he had always had a passion for the
stars, and went to the east to see them at their brightest, he was
tolerant of those who believed in their influence upon earth-dwellers;
therefore he was ready to yield with confident ardour to sudden impulses
in this the month of his star. Mary Grant's eyes had looked to him like
stars, and he had followed them. Already he had had one stroke of luck
in the adventure, for he had been bound to Monte Carlo from Marseilles,
before he saw her, not to try his fortune at the tables, but to meet his
elder brother and sister-in-law who were to finish their honeymoon close
by, at Cap Martin, and to stay for an aviation week at Nice, when an
invention of his would be tried for the first time. But if Mary had gone
on beyond Monte Carlo, he too would have gone on. Having plunged into
the adventure, for a pair of eyes, he was prepared to pursue it to the
end wherever the end might be, even if he missed the flying week and
broke an engagement with the bride and bridegroom. But it was luck that
she should be getting out at the place where he had meant to stop for
his own reasons.

He supposed, of course, that she was travelling with relatives or
friends. Although he had seen her mounting the steps of a _wagon lit_
apparently alone, this did not argue that some one who belonged to her
was not inside. And when, from the window of the train whence he leaned
at every station, he saw her again at Monte Carlo, she was surrounded by
a crowd. One of the ladies shoulder to shoulder with her might be a
mother or aunt, one of the men a father or uncle; and it had been the
same when he followed, just in time to see her get into the Hôtel de
Paris omnibus. Already the vehicle was full. She was the last in. His
idea was that, being the youngest of her party, she had waited for them
to be placed before taking a seat herself.

He knew of her now, having examined the visitors' book at the Paris,
that she was "Miss M. Grant"; that the name was written in a very
pretty, rather old-fashioned hand; that after it came "London" in the
same writing. He was sure the name must be hers, because it was last on
the page before he wrote his own; and she had gone in last, after
everybody else, leaving the people she was with to do their name-signing
before her. Also, the other women on the page were all "Madame" or
"Frau" or "Mrs." He was rather surprised, somehow, to learn that she was
English. In spite of her unusually fair hair he had fancied that she
would turn out to be French, her type was so _spirituelle_, yet so
suggestive of "temperament."

If he had not been following a pair of eyes, Prince Vanno would have
gone to a quiet hotel in the Condamine, to be near the aviation ground,
for, being utterly unsnobbish, like all Italians of great families, he
rather disliked "smart" crowds, rich food, and gorgeous decorations. But
the only way not to lose the stars he followed was to keep near them. He
would not for a great deal have questioned the hotel people about "Miss
M. Grant," otherwise he might have learned for how long a time her room
was engaged, and, incidentally, that she was alone. But as it was, he
had to find out things for himself, and to do this must be in the same
hotel.

It was only seven o'clock when he came down from his little room at the
top of the house, not nearly as expensive as Mary's, and stopped at the
foot of the marble stairs, which he liked better than the lift, to look
round the big hall. There was no great crowd, for most people who had
come in from the Casino were dressing for dinner, and Prince Vanno saw
at a glance that Miss M. Grant was not there. He went on slowly through
the Louis Seize tea-room, to the gorgeous restaurant with its domed and
gilded ceiling, its immense wall paintings, and glass front.

At one of these window tables--a very small one--sat a lovely creature,
alone. A good many heads were turning to look at her, so probably she
had not long ago arrived. For an instant Vanno's eyes were fixed upon
the glittering figure, and the bowed face shadowed by an eccentric hat,
without recognizing it. But it was only for an instant. Then, with a
shock of surprise which was almost horror, he realized that this lovely,
low-necked bird of Paradise creature was the same gentle girl he had
followed.

"Dio!" he said to himself, and bit his lip. He felt the blood rush up to
his face, as if some one had given him an insulting blow, which he could
not avenge because his hands were tied.

There were two or three other young and beautiful women alone, dressed
with equal extravagance, their gowns as low, their hats as big; only
she, his Juliet, was more beautiful than any. That was the difference
between them. But was it the only difference? The young man, whose eyes
still reflected the golden light of vast desert spaces, asked himself
the question with a sick sinking of the heart. He had followed an angel,
and found her--what? Because about those two or three others there was
no question at all. And why was she here alone, dressed like them,
if--but he would not finish the sentence in his mind. He resolved to
study the girl, and give her the full benefit of the doubt, so long as
there was a ray of hope.

Vanno had not gone so far as to fall in love at first sight; yet coming
back from the desert with his heart open to beauty and romance, he had
been willing to let himself go to the brink, or over it, if it were
worth while, else he would not have followed Juliet's eyes. But he
wished to have nothing to do with the white angel if she were a fallen
angel. Such a one would be easy to know, to walk with and talk with,
whereas he might have found it difficult to make the acquaintance of a
conventionally brought up girl. Some men might have been glad to find
the heroine of a romantic adventure dining alone at a fashionable hotel
at Monte Carlo, in a sheath-like, low-cut dress and a hat of to-morrow's
fashion. But Prince Vanno Della Robbia was sick at heart, and dazed as
by a blow.

His father, Duca di Rienzi, had a strain of stern asceticism in his
nature, and even the impulsive, warm-hearted American mother could not
wholly redeem from gloom the cold palace in Rome and the dark fourteenth
century castle at Monte Della Robbia. Each of these natures had given
something to Vanno, and the differences were so strongly marked that his
elder brother had said, "to know Vanno was like knowing two men of
entirely opposite characters, each struggling for mastery over the
other." But even in his asceticism he was ardent. Whatever he did, he
did with passion and fervour, which he could laugh at as if from a
distance sometimes, but could not change. And his ideas of the right
life for women were not unlike the ideas of eastern men. Women should be
guarded, kept apart from all that was evil or even unpleasant. So the
lovely American mother had been guarded, somewhat against her will, by
the Duke, and she had died while she was still young. She had never
talked to Vanno of women's life and girls' life in her own country, for
she had gone to the unseen land while he was still a boy. If she had
stayed, perhaps he would not have had to go to the desert for comfort,
when he at twenty loved a woman of twenty-eight, who flirted with him
until he was half mad, and then married an American millionaire.

The table nearest Mary was not engaged, for it was too early in the
evening for a crowd in the Paris restaurant. Vanno signified to a waiter
his desire for this table, and was taken to it. He sat down facing Mary,
and pretended to study the menu. He hardly knew what he ordered. A
waiter was bringing the girl a small bottle of champagne, in an
ice-pail. The man cut the wires, and extracted the cork neatly, but with
a slight popping sound. Mary started a little, and glancing up at the
waiter smiled at him gayly, with a dimple in each cheek. Her big hat was
placed jauntily on one side, and the deep blue velvet brim, with the
gauzy gold of the soft crown, was extremely striking on the silver-gold
waves of her hair. In her wonderful dress, which showed a good deal of
white neck, she looked so fashionably sophisticated that Vanno feared
the start she gave at the popping of the cork might be affected. He
gazed across at her with mingled disapproval and admiration which gave
singular intensity to his deep-set, romantic eyes as Mary met them.

She was in a mood to be delighted with everything that happened, and it
seemed a charming happening that the handsome young man from Marseilles
should have chanced to come to this hotel. It did not occur to her that
his coming might not be an accident, and she was pleased to see him
again.

Her bringing up, in all that concerned her treatment of men, had been
neglected; rather, it had not been given at all. As a schoolgirl she had
never met any men except a few mild youths when visiting Lady MacMillan,
and then she had never seen them alone. She had thought herself a child,
and had behaved as a child, in those days. Then had come her years as a
postulant and as a novice. Men had ceased to exist as influences in her
life. It had not been necessary to teach her what to do when in their
society, for it had seemed improbable that she ever would be. When, at
the last moment, she had decided that after all she "had not the
vocation," there had been little or no time to prepare her for the
world. And she had come out of the convent with no social wisdom except
the wisdom of kindness and courtesy to all fellow-beings.

Man was decidedly a fellow-being, and Mary, to whom he was interesting
because entirely new, was inclined to be very kind to him, especially
when he had the handsome, almost tragic dark face of a Romeo or a young
Dante, and eyes like wells of ink into which diamonds had fallen.

She was feeling childishly pleased with herself in her new dress, for
she loved beautiful things, and knew next to nothing of suitability,
provided the colours were right. By day, one had blouses and skirts,
and high-necked frocks. At night, if one were in the world, one wore low
gowns. She had learned this from Peter and other girls at school, and
also from Lady MacMillan. When there were entertainments at the convent
for the pupils, as there were several times each year, the girls put on
their prettiest clothes. They had low-necked gowns for the dances, at
which their partners were, of course, invariably girls, and they said
that, when they "came out," they would have their dresses cut lower and
made more fashionably. Of this, the sisters quite approved for their
girls, whom they trusted never to do, never to wear, anything immodest.
At Lady MacMillan's, Mary had worn simple evening dress, before she
resolved to become a nun; and in London even Aunt Sara and Elinor, with
their thin necks, had considered it necessary to display more than their
collarbones each night at dinner.

Mary, having little money in her schoolgirl days, had never owned
anything very pretty, and now she thought it right and pleasant to make
up for lost time. The "Madame" of the shop in the Galerie Charles Trois
had earnestly recommended this gown and this hat for dinner and the
Casino; therefore Mary was sure that her costume must be as suitable as
it was beautiful, and that she was quite "in the picture," in this
magnificent room. She admired the lovely, perfumed ladies with wonderful
complexions and clothes, at neighbouring tables, and was thankful that
she looked not too unlike them. She hoped that she might become
acquainted with at least one or two of the prettiest before long,
because it must be pleasant to make friends in hotels with other people
who were alone like one's self. Peter also had admired the lovely ladies
with wonderful complexions and clothes who chose to live in the best
hotels at Monte Carlo; but she admired them in a different way, with a
kind of fearful fascination. And she had never talked of them to Mary.
One did not talk to Sister Rose of such things.

Mary was glad that the Dante young man (she began to call him thus, for
his profile really was like the poet's, and after all too stern for
Romeo) could see her in this dress and hat, after having a sight of her
first in the tweed, which she had now grown to detest. It really did
seem as if he remembered, for he looked at her with a straight look,
almost as if he were asking a grave, important question. She was afraid
that he must be unhappy, for certainly his eyes were tragic, if they
were not reproachful; and of course they couldn't be reproachful, as he
didn't know her, and had nothing to be reproachful about.

The waiter who served her was a charming person, with delightful
manners, almost like those of the Frenchman who had been kind to her on
the way to Paris. He recommended things on the menu, which turned out to
be exquisite. They were the most expensive, also, but Mary did not know
that. It seemed quite odd that one should have to pay for food at all,
for always it had appeared to come as a matter of course, like the air
one breathed. When he advised her sympathetically to try a little
champagne, refreshed with ice, she would have been grieved to hurt his
feelings by refusing, even if she had not rather wanted to know what
champagne was like. People in books drank it when they wished to be
merry and enjoy themselves, and it made their eyes bright and their
cheeks red. Mary had had the chance of reading very few novels, but she
recalled this bit of useful knowledge concerning champagne.

She tasted it, and found it nice, deliciously cold and sparkling. No
wonder it made the eyes bright! But after all, she could not drink much,
though it seemed a shame to waste anything so good. "You can have the
rest," she said to the waiter, when she had finished her first glass. He
was surprised, for most ladies, he noticed, could finish two or three
glasses, or even more.

Again the man with the profile of a young Dante was looking at her with
the grave, anxious look that puzzled her. She met his eyes for the third
or fourth time, and was so sorry for his apparent unhappiness where
every one else seemed merry, that she half smiled, very sweetly and
gently, as one would smile at a gloomy child.

The man did not return her kindness. An angry flash lit his eyes, and he
looked extremely haughty and unapproachable, no longer a lonely figure
needing sympathy, but a high personage. Mary lowered her lashes,
abashed; and when she did this Vanno, who was on the point of hating
her because she was not the white angel he had thought, doubted again,
and was more bewildered than ever. Her friendly smile had been sweet,
and he, who was here only because of her, had quenched its light! He
regretted passionately his own ungraciousness, no matter what the girl
might be. And she looked so young, her eyes so full of sea and heaven!
On what errand had she come alone to this place? He determined that he
would know, and soon.




VII


Mary ordered coffee in the hall, because something of her delight in the
gay restaurant had been crushed out by Vanno's snub. She was no longer
at peace under his eyes, and wished to avoid meeting them again, so it
was pleasanter to go away. But even in the hall she could not forget
him, as she had forgotten him after Marseilles. When he too came out
from the restaurant, not long after, she saw him, though he was at a
distance, saw him without even turning her eyes; and she thought how
tall he was, and how much a man, although slender to the point of
leanness. He sat on a sofa in the hall, and ordered coffee. Mary knew,
though she did not look at him again, and interested herself instead in
other people.

All those who came from dinner, except the Prince, drank their coffee
and went out. Some went by the front door, taking the direction of the
Casino. Others disappeared into an unknown part of the hotel; and so
many chose this way, that Mary inquired of a passing waiter where they
were all going. "To the Casino, Mademoiselle, by the underground
passage, to avoid the night air," the servant answered.

To the Casino. Everybody was going to the Casino. It was time that Mary
should go to the Casino, too. She had brought down her new white cloak
with the swansdown collar, and asked a liveried man to put it aside for
her while she dined. Now she claimed it again, and having no fear of the
"night air," walked out into the azure flood which had overflowed the
fantastic fairyland like deep, blue water. The gardens lay drowned in
this translucent, magic sea, and the coolness of the sunset hour had
been mysteriously followed by a balmy warmth, like the temperature of a
summer night in England.

There were as many people in the _Place_ as there had been in the
afternoon, and all those who were not sitting on garden seats looking at
the Casino were walking toward the Casino, or just coming out of the
Casino. The eyes of the big, horned animal were blazing with light, and
glared in the blue dusk with the hard, bright stare of the gold eyes in
a peacock's tail. Windows of the Riviera Palace on the hill above were
like orange-coloured lanterns hung against an indigo curtain; and in the
_Place_ itself bunches of vivid yellow lights, in globes like
illuminated fruit set on tall lamp posts, lit the foreground of the
strange picture with unnatural brilliance. Grass and trees were a vivid,
arsenical green, almost vicious yet beautiful, and the flowers gleamed
like resting butterflies. The summer warmth of the air had a curiously
tonic and exciting quality. It seemed to have gathered into its breath
the sea's salt, the luscious sweetness of heavy white datura bells
dangling among dark leaves in the gardens, an aromatic tang of pepper
trees and eucalyptus, and a vague, haunting perfume of women's hair and
laces. These mingling odours, suggested to the senses rather than
apprehended by them, mounted to Mary's brain, and set her heartstrings
quivering with unknown emotions sweet as pleasure and keen as pain.

As she went slowly down the hotel steps to walk across the _Place_ her
eyes held a new expression. When she had first told herself that she
could not stay at the convent, they had asked, looking toward the world,
"What is life?" Now they said, "I have begun to live, and I will go on,
on, no matter where, because I must know what life means."

Her cheeks were burning still from the first champagne she had ever
tasted, and the sweet air cooled them pleasantly. Seeing a number of
people on benches opposite the Casino, she decided to sit down for a few
minutes before going in. None of these benches was empty, but one was
unoccupied save for a young man and a girl, who sat at one end. Mary
rather timidly took the other corner, but the couple, after giving her a
long stare, returned to their conversation as if she were no more than a
shadow.

"This is the last, last straw!" the man grumbled, in English. "I thought
there was one missing."

"They never forget to add it to the rest," said the girl.

"Not they," he echoed. "And I wasn't doing so badly at one time. I've a
mind to apply for the _viatique_."

"I shouldn't have the courage."

"Oh, I should. I'd like to get something out of them. I hate the
Riviera, anyhow. There's too much scenery all over the place. No rest
for the eye."

"But supposing you change your mind, and want come back and try your
luck? You couldn't, if you'd taken the _viatique_."

"Yes I could--when I'd paid it back. It's supposed to be a loan, you
know, which you have to repay before you're allowed to play again."

"Oh, I didn't know!"

A group of young men walked past, laughing. "Never saw such a run of
luck," said one. "Seventeen on red and I was on it from the first.
Glorious place, Monte! Let's drink its health!"

They turned, stared with interest at Mary, and passed on, lowering their
voices. She caught the words "something new," but there was no sense in
them for her ears. She saw the Dauntreys hurrying to the Casino, with
Mrs. Collis and her daughter, and Dodo Wardropp. Two men were with them,
both young, and one rather distinguished looking. All were too deeply
absorbed in themselves and each other to notice her. The ladies were
charmingly dressed, and so were most of the women who passed, all going
quickly like the figures of a cinematograph; but some were of the
strangest possible types. Mary said to herself that they must be
infinitely more interesting in their own secret selves than lookers on
could ever know. The hidden realities in all these passionately
egotistic selves came to her as she sat watching, in attractive or
repellent flashes of light. Then she lost the secret again, and they
became mere puppets in a moving show. The only real thing was the
Casino, and she began to study the large bright face of it.

Although Mary had never travelled till now, she knew something of
architecture from beautiful pictures of ancient Greece and Rome, and
Egypt, and of the world's noblest cathedrals, which decorated the
schoolroom walls at St. Ursula's-of-the-Lake. This building, it seemed
to her, was of no recognized type of architecture. It was neither
classic nor Gothic: not Renaissance, Egyptian, nor Moorish. It gave the
impression of being a mere fantastic creation of a gay and irresponsible
brain. If a confectioner accustomed to work in coloured sugars were to
dream of a superlative masterpiece, his exalted fancy might take some
such shape as this.

The irregular, cream-coloured façade was broken up into many separate
parts by pillars and frenzied ornaments of plaster, and there had been
addition after addition, stretching away long and low to the left. A row
of large windows, discreetly veiled so that no shadows could be cast
from within, glowed with warm yellow light. Their refusal to betray any
hint of what passed on the other side suggested a hidden crowd busy
with some exciting, secret pleasure. Along the cornice of the newer
portions at the left of the original Casino were perched bronze youths
with golden wings, their hands holding aloft bunches of golden flowers.
Two towers meretriciously mosaiced with coloured tiles balanced the
centre of the higher and middle building, and a portico of iron and
glass, ornate yet banal as the architecture of a railway station,
protected the carpeted steps and the three large doors which were
grouped closely together, doors through which people constantly passed
in and out like bees at the entrance to a hive. In the pensive sweetness
of the semi-tropical night, this fantastic erection in plaster and
gilding and coloured ornaments seemed an outrage, a taunt, a purposeful
affront; and yet--the very violence of the contrast, its outrageousness,
gave it a kind of obsessing charm.

Unseen from where Mary sat, the Mediterranean sighed upon its ancient
rocks. A faint breath of the mysteriously perfumed air stirred the
exotic palms over her head and made their fronds rub against each other
gratingly, as if some secret signal were being carried on from one to
another. Turning to right, to left, or to look behind her, dimly seen
mountains soared toward a sky that deepened from asphodel to the dark
indigo of a star-powdered zenith. Eastward in the distance ran a linked
chain of lights along the high road that led to Italy; and a bright
cluster like a knot of fireflies, pulsing on the breast of a mountain,
marked the old hill-village of Roquebrune. Kindly enveloping nature was
so sane and wholesome in her vast wisdom and stillness that the
sugar-cake Casino and all its attendant artificialities struck into the
brooding peace a shrill note of challenging incongruity. The little
sparkling patch of light and colour that was Monte Carlo proclaimed that
it was there for some extraordinary and powerful purpose, that its
bizarre beauty was dedicated to exceptional uses; and it occurred to
Mary that the temple of Chance must after all diverge from every rule of
architecture in order to stamp its meaning on the mind. The feverish
decorations began to express to her the fever of gambling, and even to
create a desire for it. She felt this longing grow more insistent, like
strains of exciting music that swelled louder and louder; and suddenly
in the midst she seemed to hear Peter's voice saying, "What if it should
be true, the thing your father was afraid of?"

What if it were true? How could she tell? In his last terrible letter he
had reminded her that she had wild blood in her veins, and told her to
"be careful."

She had thought when hearing Peter's descriptions of the Riviera that
the gambling part of life there would interest her least of all, but
already she was under the spell of the Casino. It drew her toward it, as
if Fate sat hiding behind the veiled bright windows, just as Monte Carlo
had called irresistibly, forcing her to get out of the train when she
had meant to go on. She began to doubt her own nature, her own courage
and strength of will. She thought of what was passing on the other side
of the cream-white walls as if it were a battle into which she was
compelled to plunge, and she imagined that thus a young soldier might
feel in a first engagement--tremulous, and almost sick with anxiety
which was not quite fear.

Her heart beating fast, she jumped up, and crossing the road resolutely
mounted the steps which were guarded by tall, fine men in blue livery.
Inside the doors which she had watched so long she found herself
entering an outer lobby. Beyond was another, also kept by liveried men.
A room led off this, and Mary could see people leaving their wraps with
attendants who stood behind counters. She parted with her cloak, and was
given a metal disc bearing a number. Near by, a French couple, who
looked like bride and groom, were examining their discs, and telling
each other that it would be tempting Providence not to stake money on
such numbers as _onze_ and _dix-sept_. At this, Mary glanced again at
her bit of metal. Its number was 124. She remembered hearing from Peter
that in the game of roulette it was a favourite "tip" to bet on the
number representing your age. Peter spurned the idea as silly and
childish; but Mary thought it might do to begin with, as she knew
nothing better. Her age being twenty-four, she decided to adopt the
French bride's suggestion, and bet on the last two numbers cut into her
cloak-ticket.

Beyond the second lobby, she passed into a vast pillared hall, where
men and women, not all in evening dress, were strolling up and down,
smoking and chatting, or sitting on leather-covered benches, to stare
aimlessly at the promenaders, as if they were tired, or waiting for
something to happen.

This hall puzzled Mary, for she had imagined that beyond the two lobbies
she would pass directly into the gambling-rooms. Here were no tables
such as Peter had described; and the fact that she must go still farther
seemed to increase the mystery or secrecy of the place. Mary hesitated,
not knowing which way to turn, for there were several doors under the
high galleries that ran the whole length of the hall. This must be the
atrium, where, Peter had said, the "guests of Hercules" were accustomed
to make rendezvous. It was cool and classic, a hall for reflection
rather than excitement, as if it were intended for those who wished to
plan a new way of playing, or to rest in, between games.

Suddenly a man in livery with a peaked cap threw open a door at the back
and past the middle of the hall. From it instantly began to pour a
stream of people in evening dress, and as they separated themselves from
the tide, they divided into knots of twos and fours.

"Perhaps they gamble in groups, or batches," Mary thought, and her heart
sank lest she, being alone, might not be allowed to play. She could not
recall anything said by Peter about this; but she went timidly to the
door, and asked the man in livery if this were the way "into the
Casino."

"It is the way into the theatre," he informed her. "The first act of the
opera is just over. Mademoiselle is a stranger then? Those people will
go to the roulette and trente et quarante rooms to amuse themselves for
half an hour till the beginning of the next act."

"It is the roulette I want, not the opera," Mary heard herself say, as
if some one else were speaking.

"Ah, Mademoiselle has her ticket of admission?"

She showed him her _vestiaire_ ticket, and the servant of the Casino was
too polite to smile, as he explained that something else was necessary
before she would be allowed to enter the gambling-rooms. He pointed
toward three swing-doors at the far end of the hall, to the left.
Through two of these, people were going into a room beyond. Through the
middle one they were coming out into the atrium; and as the big doors
swung rapidly back and forth there were glimpses on the other side of a
vast space full of rich yellow light.

"Those messieurs stationed there would stop Mademoiselle, seeing she was
a stranger, and demand her ticket. It is better that she return to the
bureau, a room opposite the _vestiaire_ where she has left her cloak."

This was an anticlimax, after summoning courage for the plunge into
battle; but Mary returned whence she had come, to take her place behind
others who waited for tickets of admission. She listened intently to
what passed, so that she might know what to do; but it was disconcerting
when her turn came, to be asked for a visiting-card. The lately
emancipated Sister Rose possessed no such thing, and expected to be sent
away defeated. Yet a path out of the difficulty was quickly found by the
alert, frock-coated, black-necktied official behind the long desk. This
charming young woman, beautifully and expensively dressed, was not one
who deserved to be discouraged from entering the Casino. All she need do
was to give her full name and nationality, also her place of residence.
Gladly she obeyed; and holding in her hand a _carte du jour_ on which
she had written her own name, at last she had the right of entrance.

There was still one more mistake to make, however, and she promptly made
it, attempting to pass through the right-hand swing-door. But no! It was
for season-ticket holders. She must go to the left. The middle door was
for those coming out. A fat man, hurrying brusquely in before her, let
the swing-door slam in her face. "Le joueur n'a ni politesse, ni sexe,"
was a proverb of the "Rooms" which Mary Grant had never heard, but would
come to understand.

She was on the threshold of an enormous room, magnificently
proportioned, hung with lustrous chandeliers, and divided by an archway
into two sections. The farther part was much larger than that which she
had entered, and more sumptuous in decoration; but the whole was flooded
with a peculiar radiance which turned everything to gold. It was far
mellower than the light of the atrium, or the splendid rooms of the
hotel. It had actual colour like honey, or the pinky-golden skin of
apricots. It was bright, yet the impression it made on the mind was of
softness rather than brilliance; and the shining atmosphere of the room,
instead of being clear, seemed charged with infinitesimal particles of
floating gold, like motes in rays of sunshine. The tables, under darkly
shaded, low-hanging lamps, gave the effect of sending a yellow smoke,
like incense, up to the height of the great dazzling chandeliers. It was
almost as if the hands of players in fingering gold pieces day after
day, year after year for generations, had rubbed off minute flakes which
hung like a golden haze in the air.

It appeared to Mary's eyes, taking in the whole and not dwelling upon
details, that everything in the farther part of the vast domed room was
of gold: different shades of gold; dark, old gold, the richer for being
tarnished: bright, glittering, guinea gold: greenish gold, and gold of
copper red.

No other colour could have been as appropriate here.

The air was not offensively dead, but it was langorously asleep. Many
different perfumes haunted and weighed it down; but there was some
underlying, distinctive odour which excited the nerves mysteriously, and
sent the blood racing through the veins.

"It is the smell of money," Mary said to herself.

Just inside the entrance doors, on either side, was a large table round
which people sat or stood. Those standing behind the chairs of the
seated ones were at least two rows deep, crowded tightly together.
Beyond were many other tables, thronged even more densely; and ringed
thus with closely packed figures, they were like islands on a shining
golden sea, an archipelago of little islands, all of exactly the same
size, and placed at equal distances.

Mary, hardly knowing what to expect from Peter's rather vague and
disjointed descriptions, had dimly fancied clamour and confusion
bursting upon eyes and ears on the instant of entering the
gambling-rooms. But the silence of the place was as haunting and
mystery-suggesting as the indefinable odour, and more thrilling to the
imagination than the loudest noise.

She who had been Sister Rose was horrified to find herself thinking of a
cathedral lighted for a midnight mass. Almost, she expected organ music
to peal out.

Slowly she moved down the room, past the first tables, and, as she
walked, the muffled, characteristic sounds she began to hear seemed but
to punctuate and emphasize the silence, like echoes in a cave: a faint
rattle of rakes, like the rustle of leaves, and a delicate chink-chink
of gold, like the chirping of young birds just awakened by dawn.

A voice at each table as she drew near or passed made some announcement.
She caught the words distinctly yet not loudly pronounced: "Faites vos
jeux, messieurs.... Rien n'va plus. Onze, noir, impair et manque."

"_Onze_" was one of the numbers the French couple had decided to play.
Mary wondered if it had come at their bidding, and she wished intensely
to see what was going on at the tables inside those close circles of
women's hats and men's shoulders. But to see, meant to push. She was not
bold enough to do that, and kept moving on observantly, hoping always to
discover some island less populous than others.

Now she began to pick individuals out of the crowd. The number of types
seemed countless. It was as if each country on earth had been called
upon to contribute as many as it could spare of unusual and striking,
even astonishing, specimens of humanity, on purpose to provide eccentric
or ornamental features of this strange, world's variety show.

There were some lovely, and a few singularly beautiful, women from
northern and southern lands. Peter had said that one could "tell
Americans by their chins," which were firmer and more expressive of
energy than other chins, and Englishwomen by their straight noses, which
looked as if they had been handed down as precious heirlooms from
aristocratic ancestresses. The mellow light gilded many such chins and
such noses, and shone into soft dark eyes such as only the Latin races
have. Mary fancied she could tell French from Italian women, Spanish
from Austrian, Hungarian from Russian or German types. Almost invariably
the pretty women and the good-looking men were well dressed. Only the
plain and ugly ones seemed not to care for appearances. But there were
more plain people than handsome ones; and dowdy forms strove jealously
to hide the charming figures, as dark clouds swallow up shining stars.
All faces, however, no matter how beautiful or how repulsive, how old or
how young, had a strange family likeness in their expression, it seemed
to Mary; a tense eagerness, such as before her novitiate she had seen on
the faces of Lady MacMillan's guests sometimes when they had settled
down seriously to play bridge.

She had expected to see unhappy and wildly excited faces, because, Peter
said, people often lost or won fortunes in these rooms in a single
night; but no one in this moving crowd looked either very miserable or
very radiant. They did not even appear to be greatly excited, yet most
of them seemed absorbed, as if they listened for a sound which would
mean something of vital importance; or else they had an air of fearing
that they had missed the all-essential signal which might never come
again.

It was not the "high season" yet, Mary's waiter at the Paris had said,
and the "_vrai monde_" would not come in its greatest rush until after
Christmas and the New Year; yet the Casino was filled with a throng of
persons many of whom looked immensely rich and important, and none of
whom, at worst, was shabby. Even those who were dowdy appeared
well-to-do. Mary saw that it was not necessary to gamble in groups. Men
and even women, all alone, pushed their way through the thick wall of
hats and shoulders round the table, sometimes being lost altogether, or
sometimes emerging again in three or four minutes to scurry across the
shining expanse of floor to another table. By and by, when she began to
feel calmer, Mary ventured near a table in the middle of the room,
within full sight of doors which led to other rooms: a long vista
straight ahead, where all the decorations seemed new and fresh, and a
light white as silver streamed from hanging lamps like diamond pendants
and necklaces for giantesses or goddesses of fortune. So different was
the colour of this light from that of the first great _salle_, that a
silver wall seemed built against a wall of gold.

Standing outside the circle at the table, new sounds in the silence
struck Mary's ear, not emphasizing the heavy silence, as did the
delicate chinking of coins and the announcements of roulette numbers,
but jarring and ruffling its smooth surface: little sudden rustlings and
squabblings, disputes between players in French or German, sharp and
mean, yet insignificant as the quarrelling of a nestful of birds in the
ample peace of a spreading beech tree.

Now and then there seemed a chance that Mary might find a place in the
back row at a table, but some one else, also watching, invariably darted
in ahead of her. Each time the hope came, her heart gave a bound, and
the blood sang in her ears. She was astonished at her excitement, which
seemed exaggerated beyond reason, and ridiculous, yet she could not
conquer it; and the trembling that ran through her body made her knees
feel very weak, after she had stood for perhaps half an hour. Looking
round, she noticed that there were a good many brown leather-covered
seats along the mirrored and gilded walls. Most of these were fully
occupied by resting men and women, some very old and tired looking,
others eagerly counting money, or jotting down notes in little books or
on cards. As she looked, an extraordinary woman much bejewelled, with a
face a century old under bright red hair, and a hat for a lovely young
girl, jumped abruptly up from the seat nearest Mary, and almost ran to
one of the tables, where she flung herself into the crowd, like a diver
into a wave. Her place on the bench was left empty, and Mary took it, to
follow the example of others and count her money while resting.

Sitting down, she had on one side a young and pretty woman in a charming
dress and hat, more suitable for a past June than a present December,
even a Riviera December. Her face, too, which she turned with a gaze of
interest on Mary and her costume, was slightly, pathetically faded, like
the petals of a white rose gathered while in bud and pressed between the
pages of a book. She was like a charming wax doll which had lost its
colour by being placed too near a warm fire.

On the other side was a very old man, gray as a ghost, who showed no
sign of knowing that he had a new neighbour. Everything about him was
gray: his thin, concave face, his expressionless eyes, his sparse hair
and straggling moustache, his clothes, and his hands, knotted on the
back like the roots of trees. His grayness and the bleak remoteness of
his air made him seem unreal as a spirit come back to haunt the scene of
long-ago triumphs or defeats. Mary could almost have persuaded herself
that he did not exist, and that the pale form and glassy eyes were
visible to her alone.

She took her purse from a bag of gold and silver beads she had bought in
the Galerie Charles Trois, and counted her money. She had a little more
than five hundred francs, and wondered what could be done with that sum
at roulette. Even the sound of tinkling gold and silver did not attract
the dead gray eyes to Mary; but perhaps it broke some dreary dream, for
the old man got up stiffly as if in protest, and walked away with the
gait of an automaton.

"Heaven be praised!" murmured in French the weary white rose on Mary's
other side; "he brings bad luck. But perhaps he will take it away with
him."

Mary realized that her neighbour was speaking to her, and turned with a
smile of encouragement, thankful to find some one who looked kind, and
would perhaps tell her things.

The pretty woman went on, without waiting to be answered: "He is like a
galvanized corpse; and indeed, he may be one, for he ought to have died
long ago. Have you ever heard his story?"

"No," Mary said. "I have only just come here."

"For the first time?" The other's face brightened oddly.

"Yes, it is my first time."

"And you are alone?"

"Quite alone."

"Poor little one! But that will not be for long."

"I don't know yet how long I shall stay."

"Oh! I did not mean quite that. But let it pass. Shall I tell you the
story of the old man? It will interest you, if you don't know Monte
Carlo. Nothing is too strange to happen here. It is only ordinary things
which never happen in this place, Mademoiselle."

"I have a friend who said something like that. Please tell me the
story."

"I'll make it short, because you will wish to play, is it not? And if
you like, I will teach you the game. That old ghost is an Englishman.
Some day he will come into money and a title. Meanwhile he is supported
by the Casino. Always, morning, noon and night, year in and year out, he
is in these rooms; but he is not allowed to play. If he put one
five-franc piece on the tables, biff! would go his pension. Twenty-five
years it is since he came, they say. I have been here myself but three,
and it is a lifetime! It spoils one for other things, somehow. He lost
everything at the tables one night, all those years ago; so he crept
down to a lonely place on the shore, and cutting his throat, at the same
instant threw himself into the sea. But he could not die. The salt
water brought him to life. He was found and nursed by a fisherman. When
the Casino people heard what had happened they had pity for the
unfortunate one. They are not without hearts, these messieurs! Ever
since they have supported him. When he comes into his fortune, perhaps
he will pay them--who knows? But in any case, he will disappear and be
no more seen. We think he is a spy."

"A spy?" Mary repeated. "What would a spy do here?"

"My poor amateur! There are many. For one thing, they watch for thieves:
people who claim the money of others as their own, at the tables. That
is quite a way of living. Sometimes it goes very well. But it is a
little dangerous. Do you want to play, Mademoiselle? You are sure to
have luck on your first night. Even I used to have luck at first."

"Have you none now?" Mary asked, pityingly.

"Oh, I have no longer even the money to try my luck--to see whether it
has come back. Yet once I won twenty thousand francs, all from one louis
at trente et quarante, and at one séance. That was a night! a memory to
live on. And at present it is well I have it to live on, as there is
nothing else."

"Oh, how sad, how sad!" exclaimed Mary. "If only you would let me help
you a little--in some way."

"You are very good, but of course I could not accept charity," said the
pale rose, looking down at her faded lace and muslin finery. "Still, if
I bring you luck at the game, and you win, I shall feel I have earned
something, is it not?"

"Yes, indeed," Mary assured her, delighted with the simple solution.
"But it seems impossible to get near a table."

"It is not impossible," said the other, a gleam bright as the flash of a
needle darting from her jade gray eyes. "Many of those people are only
watching. They must give way to serious players. You will see! Shall it
be trente et quarante or roulette? Roulette, you can tell by the name,
is played with a wheel. Trente et quarante with cards--and for that you
must go to another room, for all is roulette here. In the card game a
louis is the smallest stake. At roulette it is five francs."

"I have only five hundred francs," Mary announced.

"Then I advise roulette. Besides, it is more amusing. Never can one tire
of seeing the wheel go round, and wondering where the dear little white
ball will come to rest."

"Yes, I feel I shall like roulette better," Mary decided.

"That is right. You have temperament, Mademoiselle. Already you listen
to your feelings. I too, have a strong feeling. It is, that we shall be
friends. My name is Madame d'Ambre--Madeleine d'Ambre. And yours?"

"Mary Grant."

"Madame or Mademoiselle?"

"Mademoiselle, of course." Mary blushed.

It seemed almost shocking that any one could even fancy she might be
married, she who was just out of the cloister, almost a nun.

"Ah, here one is so often Madame while still quite young. Now, let us
follow that tall, _chic_ Monsieur who has but one eye and one ear. If we
can play what he plays, we are sure to win. Often, when near him, I have
prayed that even one five-franc piece might come my way, for since he
lost an eye and an ear he never loses money. It was different when he
was here a few years ago, before he went out to the east, where he had
his mysterious bereavement, no one knows quite what, but it is said that
he loved an eastern girl, and was smuggled into a harem. In old days he
did nothing but lose, lose."

Mary glanced at the person indicated--a tall man in evening dress, whose
features would have been agreeable if it had not been for a black patch
over one eye and, on the same side of the head, a black pad over the
ear, fastened on by a thin elastic cord. Then she glanced away again,
feeling faintly sick. "No, I can't follow him," she said. "Not to win a
thousand pounds."

The lady with the pretty name smiled her sad, tired little smile. "You
must not turn pale for so small a thing," she laughed. "There are a
hundred people in these rooms to-night far stranger than he. I could
tell you things! But see, three Germans are going from the table in
front of us. When three Germans move, they leave much room. Keep close
to me; that is all you need do."

Mary obeyed in silence. She was grateful to her guide, yet somehow she
was unable to like her as well as at first. Fragile as Madame d'Ambre
appeared, she must have had a metallic strength of will, if not of
muscle, for quietly yet relentlessly she insinuated herself in front of
other people grouped round the table. Mary would have retreated,
abashed, if she had not feared to hurt her new friend's feelings; but
rather than be ungracious, she clung, soon finding herself wedged behind
a chair and in front of two German ladies.




VIII


"It is a triumph to seize an advantage from a German!" whispered the
Frenchwoman, beginning to look flushed and expectant. "You see that
woman in the chair you are touching? She was one of the greatest
actresses of the world, Madame Rachel Berenger. Now she is too old and
large to act, so she lives in a beautiful villa, across the Italian
frontier. She is always coming to Monte Carlo to do this."

"This" was scattering gold pieces all over the table, as if she were
sowing peas, then changing her mind about them, and reaching wildly out
to place them somewhere else. She was dressed in deep mourning, and had
a very white face which might once have been beautiful. Now she was like
a dissipated Greek statue draped in black.

"Faites vos jeux, Messieurs," said one of the six extraordinarily
respectable and intelligent-looking men who Mary saw at a glance were
employés of the Casino. They were in neat black clothes, with black
neckties. Peter had told her that the four who spun the roulette wheel
and paid the players were called croupiers, and that they were allowed
to have no pockets in the clothes they wore when at work, lest they
should be tempted to secrete money. But perhaps this was a fable. And
there was so much money! In all her life Mary had not seen as much money
as lay on this one expanse of green baize.

The man who called on the gamblers to begin staking put out his hand to
a large wheel sunk into the middle of the oblong table. This wheel was
the same, in immensely exaggerated form, as the toy with which the
Dauntreys had played in the train. It was a big disc of shiny metal, set
in a shallow well, rimmed with rosewood. All around its edge went a row
of little pockets, each coloured alternately red and black. The expanse
of green baize was marked off with yellow lines into squares, numbered
with yellow figures. The two lengths of yellow patterns going outward
from the wheel were facsimiles of each other, and only sixteen players
could sit round the table, but eight or ten times that number crowded in
double or treble ranks behind the seated ones. The high chairs of the
two inspectors who sat opposite one another were usurped by tired women
who leaned against them, or tried to perch on the edges; and as the
croupier leaned forward to turn the wheel, arms were stretched out
everywhere, scrabbling like spiders' legs, staking money selected from
piles of notes or gold and silver.

The statuelike woman in black dashed on twenty or thirty louis, some on
numbers, some on a red lozenge, some on the words _Pair_ and _Manque_.

"She cannot possibly win," mumbled Madame d'Ambre. "She has lost her
head and staked on so many chances that if one wins she must lose much
more on the others. It is absurd. Watch her this time, and next spin I
will tell you what to do for yourself."

The croupier had picked a little ivory ball out of one of the pockets
before setting the wheel in motion. Then, as it began to revolve, with a
deft turn of the wrist he launched the ball in a whizzing rush along a
narrow shelf inside the rosewood rim, and in a direction contrary to the
whirl of the disc.

For several seconds, which seemed long and tense to Mary, the wheel
revolved, the ivory ball dashing wildly around until the croupier
proclaimed in his calm, impersonal voice: "Rien ne va plus!" Some people
reluctantly ceased their feverish staking of louis, notes, and
five-franc pieces, but others dashed on money up to the last instant.
The wheel slackened speed; the ball lost momentum, and, rolling down the
slope, struck one of a lozenge-shaped row of obstacles. It rebounded,
almost sprang out of the wheel, hesitated over a pocket, and leaped into
the next, where it lay still.

"Vingt-quatre, noir, pair et passe," announced the calm voice.

"Twenty-four! My age and my ticket number! I meant to stake on it!" Mary
cried out aloud in her excitement. "Now it is too late."

Her regret was so keen as to be agonizing. It seemed that a serious
misfortune had befallen her. Something in her head was going round with
the ball. She felt as if she ought to have won all the money lying
there on the table, as if she had a right to it.

People who had won and were having their winnings paid to them were too
busy to notice what went on behind their backs; but some of those who
had lost and had nothing to do till the time to stake again, tittered
faintly and craned their heads round to look at the girl who was almost
crying because she had not staked on twenty-four, her age. But Mary did
not realize that she was the object of any one's attention, for the
statuelike woman in black was shrilly insisting that she had had the
maximum, nine louis, on the number 24. "_En plein_, I tell you, _en
plein_!"

"But no, excuse me, Madame, you had money on black and the second dozen,
on pair, and on the _carré_ of twenty-four; but nothing on the number
itself. Your maximum was on twenty-six," the croupier explained firmly.

"I tell you it was on twenty-four!" shrieked the actress.

"Madame is mistaken. You staked in so many different places, it is
impossible for you to remember."

"It is still more impossible for you. Do you intend to pay me?"

"But certainly, for everything you won."

"And the maximum on twenty-four?"

"Not that, Madame."

"I will complain to the management!"

"As Madame pleases."

"I will stop the game till I am paid!"

One of the two inspectors left his high chair, came to the enraged lady
and attempted to soothe her. She looked magnificent in her passion, ten
years having fallen like a mask from the marble face.

The croupier, who had paid her for several bets won, attempted to go on
with his duties. People, some delighting in the "row," others annoyed at
the delay, placed their stakes, but she, a lioness at bay, stared
furiously without putting a piece on the table. As the disc turned,
however, she pounced. She threw a louis into the wheel. But the
croupier, without changing countenance, took out the coin, pushed it
back to her, and began spinning again. In went another louis and again
the croupier stopped the wheel. Voices rose in complaint: Russian
voices, German voices, English voices. "Is this going on all night?"

"Pay Madame," said one of the inspectors.

Quietly and with incredible quickness nine times thirty-five louis were
counted out, payment for a maximum on a number. As the croupier pushed
the notes and gold across the table, a beautiful white hand, blazing
with rings, thrust it proudly back again. "That is all I wanted," the
actress said, with the air of Lady Macbeth. "The acknowledgment that I
was right. Keep the money."

The croupier shrugged his shoulders, and spun the wheel, with a bored
air.

"Faites vos jeux, Messieurs."

"Shall I put something for you on twenty-four?" hastily asked Madame
d'Ambre.

"But it has just come."

"It may come again. Often a number repeats. Shall I or not? An instant,
and it will be too late."

With her heart in her throat, Mary handed the Frenchwoman a
hundred-franc note crushed in a ball. Madame d'Ambre asked a croupier
near where she stood to stake the money. He did so, just in time. The
ball slipped into the pocket of number 21. "Too bad! But better luck
next time. Will you try a simple chance, red or black, for instance? Or
one of the dozens?"

"No, twenty-four again," answered a voice that Mary hardly knew as her
own. "I must!" With a trembling hand, she gave her friend nine louis.
"That's the maximum for a number, you said," she faltered. "Please put
it on."

"But all your money will soon be gone at this rate. A louis would bring
you thirty-five----"

"No, no, the maximum!"

Madame d'Ambre, aided by her croupier-neighbour, obeyed.

A strange golden haze floated before Mary's eyes. She could not see
through it. She tried to tell herself, as the big wheel spun, that this
was not important at all; that it did not really matter what happened:
yet something inside her said, "It's the most important thing in the
world, to win, to win, to make all these people envy you. It isn't the
money, it's the joy, the triumph, the ecstasy."

The ball dropped. Mary could not look, could not have seen if she had
looked: but her whole soul listened for the croupier's announcement.

"Vingt-quatre, noir, pair et passe."

She trembled all over, as if she were going to fall. She could hardly
believe that she had heard aright, until Madame d'Ambre exclaimed close
to her ear: "You have won! I told you that I would bring you luck!"

The actress, petulant with persistent ill fortune, got up muttering, and
pushed back her chair. Mechanically Mary dropped into it. A pile of
money, notes and gold, was moved toward her by the croupier's rake.
People were staring. She was young and beautiful, and evidently half
fainting with excitement. Besides, she had won a large sum. It was
always a good thing to win on a number _en plein_. But to win the
maximum on a number! That somehow did not often happen except to Russian
grand dukes and American millionaires.

Mary, confused, and quivering like a struck violin, took her winnings,
but, supposing all the money on her side of the table to be hers also,
earned by the nine louis, began gayly to gather in with small,
white-gloved hands everything within reach.

A cry of protest went up, half laughing, half indignant. Groups of
non-players who had been chatting or strolling round the rooms hurried
to the table to see "what was the row," any sensation, big or small,
being an event to receive thankfully.

"Mais, Mademoiselle!"

The small, predatory hands were arrested: quickly it was explained that
when a player wins he has not won all the money on the table. There are
others also in luck. Mary, abashed, but too excited to be deeply shamed,
apologized in pretty French. Those she would unwittingly have robbed
were disarmed by soft eyes and the appeal of dimples. Even hawklike old
women ceased to glare. "It is her first séance," was the forgiving
whisper. The neat piles of money which she had reduced to ruin and
confusion were sorted out again between croupiers and players, while the
game obligingly waited. If the offender had been old and dowdy, every
one would have grumbled angrily at the bother and delay, but as it was,
men grinned and women were tolerant. After three minutes' halt play was
ready to begin again.

"Better come away now, Mademoiselle. It is I who counsel you," advised
Madame d'Ambre. "It is not well to trust such luck too far. Or else,
play with a few five-franc pieces to amuse yourself. If you win, so much
to the good. If you lose, what matter? You have still the _gros lot_."

"I couldn't do that. I must trust my luck. I am going on. I shall play
on twenty-four again. I wish there were more ways than one for me to
back it, and I would," Mary cried, her cheeks red bonfires of
excitement.

Madame d'Ambre shrugged her thin shoulders, seeing her own profits
diminished. But, a woman of the world, she knew when it was useless to
protest. And perhaps this wild amateur was indeed inspired. "There are
seven ways in which to back your number for one spin," she said, carried
away a little by Mary's spirit. "_En plein_--that is, full on the number
as before; _à cheval_--the number and its neighbour; your own and two
others--_transversale plain_; the _carré_--four in a square; six--the
_transversale simple_: the dozen in which your number is; its column;
also the colour. Twenty-four is black. If your number loses, you may win
on something else."

"Very well. Maximums on all, please."

"Impossible! You may not have money enough. On other chances the
maximums are much larger."

Mary, confused and fearful of being too late, did not stop to reflect or
argue. "Nine louis on each of the chances, then," she panted.

Madame d'Ambre, reflecting selfishly that even if all stakes lost there
would still be a good sum to divide from the last winnings, began
placing money in desperate haste, the croupier delaying for an instant
his _rien ne va plus_, while one of his fellows helped in putting on the
gold. Others, who had finished staking over each other's hats and
shoulders, and the whole ring of watchers outside, awaited the decision
of Mary's destiny with almost as keen interest as if it were their own.

"Vingt-quatre, noir, pair et passe."

A murmur rose, and went to Mary's head like wine. This seemed a miracle,
performed for her. Unconscious of irreverence, she thought that surely
the saints had worked this wonder. She forgot that, because she won,
others must lose.

"It is marvellous! But these blessed amateurs! It is always they who
have the great luck. Twice running--and after twenty-four had been spun
just before twenty-one."

The numbers were all marked in their right colours with roulette pencils
on little cards, or in well-kept notebooks by the players. Every one
knew what had "come out" at the table for many past coups.

"If you'll back twenty-four again, I'll go on it, too," said, in
English, a young man in the chair at Mary's right. He was a brown,
well-groomed, clean-shaven youth, whose hair was so light that it looked
straw-coloured in contrast with his sunburnt skin. "It's _en chaleur_,
as they say of numbers when they keep coming up. It may come a third
time running. I've seen it happen. Five repetitions is the record. What
do you say?"

"I meant to play twenty-four again, anyway," Mary answered, with the
peculiar soft obstinacy which had opened the gates of Saint
Ursula-of-the-Lake and brought her to Monte Carlo.

"You are plucky!"

"This time, surely, I've money enough for maximums on everything," Mary
said to the Frenchwoman behind her, who was now becoming superstitious
concerning the luck of her _petite dinde_.

Without protest, Madame d'Ambre selected from the piles of gold and
notes now ranged in front of Mary the stakes indicated, and, with a hand
not quite steady, placed those within her reach. The neighbouring
croupier, faintly smiling, obligingly did the rest, noting without
surprise that many players were sportingly, yet timidly, risking fat
five-franc pieces on the amateur's number. It was the sort of thing they
generally did, the _imbeciles_, when a player was having a sensational
run of luck. But certainly there was something magnetic and fatal about
this pretty young woman, who was new to the game and the place,
something curiously inspiring. Not only he as well as the gamblers felt
it, but the croupier at the wheel. The spinner felt in his bones that
whether he wished it or not he was certain to spin a third twenty-four.

A round of applause went up from perhaps fifty pairs of hands when the
ball was seen to lie once more in the pocket numbered 24. Mary,
realizing that the applause was meant for her, felt like a spirit
released from its body. She was a goddess on a pinnacle. This was life:
the wine of life. It was not the money she thought of. All the gold and
paper which had suddenly become hers was nothing in itself, but what it
represented was victory extending over the forces of nature. This
mysterious game, whose next turn none could foretell, seemed to be
yielding its secret to her. She had the conviction that Something was
telling her what to do, what would happen with the spin of the wheel.
It would be madness and a kind of vile ingratitude to stop now, while
the Something was there.

Hearing the applause, which meant a coup of uncommon interest, people
came hurrying from every direction, some even running, with a peculiar
step which kept them from slipping on the polished floor. Many had
learned this from long practice in running in with the early gamblers at
the morning opening of the Casino, when it is "first come, first
served," at the chairs.

Those who had been watching the play at other tables, or those who had
been losing, joined the rush.

"What is she going to do now, _cette petite sorcière_?" was the
question. Hearing it, Mary was flattered to a higher pitch of excitement
and self-confidence. She must, she must do something to justify
everybody's expectation. The Casino was hers, and there was no world
outside--nothing but this magic place of golden light and golden coins.

"What next?" inquired Madame d'Ambre, late mentor, now courtier.

"I'll do whatever you do," said the brown young man, who was English or
American.

She looked at the disc as a seeress looks at a crystal. The spinner had
his hand on the cross-piece of metal which turns the wheel.

"What does that 0 mean, on the little brown square between the red and
black numbers?" she asked her neighbour gravely.

"That's what they call 'zero.' You can bet on it like any number; but
when it comes, if you're not on it, all your stakes go--biff!--except on
the simple chances, when you are put in 'prison,' or else you can take
back half. Lots of people like zero better than anything, because they
think the croupiers try to spin it, for the good of the bank. It's
called _l'ami de la maison_."

"How nice and friendly," said Mary. "I'll put money on zero. What's the
maximum?"

"The same as on the other numbers _en plein_: nine louis."

"Then I'll have that on zero," said Mary.

Many players followed her lead, and every one was calling out "zero" and
pushing or throwing coins to the croupiers to be staked on that chance.

"Zero!"

Mary was paid nine times thirty-five louis, six thousand three hundred
francs, and the others who, superstitiously following her lead, had
risked five-franc pieces and louis on _l'ami de la maison_, shared her
luck in different degrees.

"Zero once more, please, Madame," said Mary to her companion.

"But no! impossible! It will be something else."

"Perhaps. Still--I will try."

She was right. Zero came again, followed by louder rounds of applause.
By this time the whole Casino knew what was going on. A glorified
amateur, an English girl, was winning maximums on numbers again and
again, in succession, at the table nearest the wall-portrait of the
architect, in the Salle Schmidt. Non-players or discouraged losers bore
down upon the "architect's table," running even from the distant
trente-et-quarante room.

The story sounded rather like a fairy tale, but the enormous crowd round
the centre of interest, and the comparatively slack business being done
at other tables, proved its truth. None of the newcomers, even the
tallest, could see, but they could hear, and they could feel the thrill
from the inner circle.

"And now, Mademoiselle? What will you do? Remember, your luck can't go
on forever," murmured Madame d'Ambre, anxious to divide the spoil, which
might yet vanish like fairy gold.

"I--I will take twenty-four again, and everything round it."

Many players who had money left, and could reach to put on their stakes,
also chose twenty-four. And twenty-four came up. This was historic! No
one but the Grand Duke Michael and the few famous punters of the world
had such persistent and consecutive luck.

A chef de table in a high chair stood up and unobtrusively beckoned a
footman hovering on the far fringe of the crowd. Three minutes later,
with equal unobtrusiveness, more money was brought, lest the supply of
the table should run low. Few noticed, or knew that anything unusual had
happened, with the exception of the play; but Madame d'Ambre had been
hoping for and expecting something of the sort.

"They are afraid you will break the bank," she said, in a stage-whisper
not meant to be wasted. Those near her who understood French glanced up
quickly. Croupiers smiled and said nothing. A murmur went round the
table, and flowed like the rippling circles from a stone dropped in a
pond, to the crowd which ringed it in.

"What do you mean?" asked Mary.

"Oh, the bank does not really break! They do not even stop play in these
days. But they send for more money lest it be needed. Ah, the colossal
compliment!"

The pride in Mary's heart was like a stab of pain, almost unbearable in
its intensity. But suddenly, as if the current of her thought had been
broken, her inspiration seemed gone. The Something was no longer there,
telling her where to stake. She wished to play again, but felt at sea,
without a rudder. Her unconscious vanity rebelled against risking loss
at this table of which she had been the queen, the idol.

She rose, pale and suddenly tired. "I won't play any more," she said, in
a little voice, like a child's.

"Oh, why?" asked the young man with the straw-coloured hair.

"I don't know why," she answered. "Only I don't want to."

"Your money!" exclaimed Madame d'Ambre. "We must have all the gold put
into _mille_ notes, or you cannot carry it."

For an instant Mary had forgotten the money and the necessity of taking
it away, but Madame d'Ambre, who had now firmly identified her own
interests with those of her protégée, attended to the practical duties
of the partnership. She was somewhat disagreeably conscious that the
young man's eyes were fixed upon her as she collected her friend's
enormous winnings. As people made way for the Frenchwoman and her
starlike companion to pass, this man gathered up his small store of gold
and silver, and followed. On the outskirts of the crowd stood the
Dauntreys and their party. Mary and Madame d'Ambre passed close to them,
but the heroine of the moment was too intensely excited to recognize any
one. She walked as if on air, her hands full of notes, some of which she
was stuffing into her gold-beaded bag.

"Why, it's the girl in the train who said she was going to Florence,"
exclaimed Dodo Wardropp. "Can she be the one who's made the sensation?"

"Yes, it's she," said Lady Dauntrey. "See how they're looking at her,
and pointing her out. I wonder if it's true she's won thousands of
pounds?"

No one answered. Lord Dauntrey had slipped quietly away from the others,
and found a place at a table near enough to play over some one's head.
This was the first time he had found a chance to test his new system,
except on the toy roulette wheel. He began staking five-franc pieces,
and writing down notes in a small book. The bored look was burned out of
his weary eyes. They brightened, and a more healthful colour slowly
drove away his unnatural paleness.

The others, who had been playing in the new rooms, did not follow or
look for him. They stared at every one who seemed worth staring at. The
two Americans and Dodo expected Lady Dauntrey to know everybody. It was
for this, partly, that they were paying large sums to her, and they felt
a depressed need of getting their money's worth. So far the arrangements
for their comfort at the Villa Bella Vista were disappointing. Still,
two young men of title were there, and that was something, although one
of them was only an Austrian count, and the other no better than a
baronet. But Lord Dauntrey promised for to-morrow morning Dom Ferdinand
de Trevanna, the Pretender to an historic throne.

Dodo, according to Miss Collis, had "grabbed" the English baronet, and
left her only the Austrian count, who looked younger than any man could
really be, and had a wasp-waist which, when he bowed--as he did
irritatingly often--seemed liable to snap in two. It was if anything
more slender than her own, and she disliked him for it. Lady Dauntrey
had Mrs. Collis on her hands, and looked sombrely discontented. But she
waked up at sight of Mary. The long, pale eyes between black fringes
followed the blue and silver-gold figure with silent interest. Then the
handsome face became subtle and greedy.

As Mary was piloted outside the crowd by Madame d'Ambre, four young
women separated themselves hastily from the group round the table, and
bore down upon the pair. They were young, or else clinging desperately
to the ragged edges of their youth, and all four were dressed in clothes
which had been beautiful. They knew Madame d'Ambre, knew her very well
indeed, for they called her "Madeleine" or "Chère Lena." Nevertheless,
she did not appear pleased to see them.

"Bon soir, mes amies," she said evasively, and would have passed on,
but, laughingly, they stopped her. One, who had a marvellous complexion,
large black eyes, and bright golden hair, exclaimed, with a charming
Parisian accent, that they could not let their Madeleine leave them like
that. They had been waiting to congratulate her friend.

"We pray that thou wilt introduce us, dear one," the spokeswoman
suggested. "Surely Mademoiselle wishes to add to her happiness by making
others happy?" She turned a swimming gaze upon Mary. "Figure to
yourself, Mademoiselle; we are unlucky; four companions in misery. It is
our bad luck which has united us. Our jewels are all pawned. Not one of
us has eaten anything since the first _déjeuner_. And we have a hunger!"

Mary stared, disconcerted by this tale of misfortune suddenly flung at
her head, and scarcely sure if it were not a practical joke. The four
young women were so charmingly dressed, their hair was so carefully
waved, their complexions so pink and white, that it was impossible to
believe in their poverty. Besides, they could evidently afford perfume,
so luscious that it must be expensive. Mary thought that they smelled
very good; then, a little too good; then, far, far too good, and at last
almost unbearable.

"You are joking," she said, timidly.

"Indeed we are not," replied another of the group, a red-haired girl
with brown, almond-shaped eyes. "We so hope that you will be an angel,
and invite us all to supper."

"What nonsense, Clotilde!" exclaimed Madame d'Ambre. "We have already an
engagement for supper."

"Ah, then surely, Mademoiselle, you will share your luck with us in some
way? Otherwise, you can't hope to keep it."

"I should be glad to share it," Mary said, warmly. "What can I do?"

The red-haired lady broke into gestures. "She who has won a fortune asks
us who have nothing what she can do for us? How she is amusing, this
pretty English one!"

"Would you--might I--that is----" Mary began to stammer.

"We would--you might!" Clotilde finished for her, laughing.

"I wonder you have not more pride!" Madame d'Ambre reproached the four,
her white-rose cheeks flushing with annoyance.

"Pride does not buy us supper, or new hats," the girl with golden hair
reminded her.

"Oh, please take these, and do whatever you like with them," Mary said
hastily, her voice quivering with shyness and compassion. She began
dealing out her thousand-franc notes, and did not stop until she had
given one to each of the four.

It was at this moment that Prince Giovanni Della Robbia, unable to
resist his desire to follow Mary to the Casino, came within sight of
her. This was the picture he saw: the strikingly dressed girl,
bright-eyed, carmine-cheeked, feverishly distributing notes to a crowd
of young women more showily dressed than herself.

He turned away instantly, chilled and disgusted.




IX


Others were less fastidious than Vanno.

The calm-faced man with black pads over the left eye and ear joined
Madame d'Ambre, with a lazy yet determined air, and a glance of interest
at Mary. Seeing the brown youth who had been at her table, the elder man
nodded to him. This gave Mary's late neighbour an excuse which he had
wanted. He stopped, and held out his hand. "How are you, Captain
Hannaford?" he asked.

"Hullo, Carleton!" returned the other. "Here for the Nice flying week?"

"Yes," said Carleton, who, beside Hannaford the Englishman, showed by
contrast his American origin. His chin was all that Peter had said an
American's chin ought to be, and he had keen, brilliant blue eyes.
Hannaford, though taller than he, was stouter as well as older, and
therefore appeared less tall. He was of a more stolid type, and it
seemed incredible that such an adventure as that sketched by Madame
d'Ambre could approach such a man. Yet for once, gossip and truth were
one. The thing had happened. Hannaford had lately retired from the army,
after being stationed for two years in Egypt. For months he had lingered
aimlessly in Monte Carlo. Life seemed over for him. But time remained,
and must be killed, unless he preferred to kill himself. He had met Dick
Carleton in Egypt last year, where the youngest American aeronaut was
making experiments with a new monoplane in a convenient tract of desert.
At that time Captain Hannaford had not worn the little black silk pads.
He was grateful to the American for not seeming to look at them now.

"I'm here for the flying, with a hydro-aeroplane I'm rather proud of,"
Carleton went on, "but I'm not staying at Monte. I'm visiting Jim
Schuyler, at his place between here and Cabbé-Roquebrune. Lovely place
it is. No wonder he never bothers with the Casino, except for concerts
and opera. Have you met him?"

"No. But I know him by name, of course. The names of these American
millionaires are all-pervading, like microbes. Why does he pitch his
tent on the threshold of Monte, if not for the Casino?"

"He says lots of people live about here who never play: and there are
other attractions. He has all the gambling he wants in Wall Street:
comes here for beauty and music. He gets plenty of both; doesn't go in
for society any more than for roulette, but seems to enjoy himself, the
two or three months he does the hermit act in his gorgeous garden. He's
at the opera to-night. Motored me over. We'll meet, and go back together
to Stellamare. Meanwhile----"

"Meanwhile, I rather guess, as you'd say, that you'd like to meet my
charming--er--acquaintance, and her friend."

"I _never_ say 'guess,' nor does anybody else, except in books or plays,
but I should like to meet the ladies."

"Madame d'Ambre is so busy regretting she didn't get smaller change for
her _protégée's_ unforeseen charities that she's forgotten us. I was
watching the fun at your table, toward the last."

At the sound of her name, the Frenchwoman turned. Four thousand francs
was gone forever, but there was as little use in wailing over money
wasted as in crying for spilt milk, so she smiled her pathetic,
turned-down smile at Captain Hannaford, and looked wistfully at Dick
Carleton. Then quickly, lest further irrevocable things should happen,
she laid her hand on Mary's arm. It was a gloved hand, and the glove had
been mended many times. Soon, it must be thrown away; but perhaps that
need not matter now. There might be a path leading to new gloves and
other things. She introduced Captain Hannaford to Mademoiselle Grant,
and he in turn introduced "Mr. Richard Carleton, the well-known airman,"
to them both. Madeleine could speak a little English, but with
difficulty, and preferred French. Still, it would have been unwise to
tell secrets in English when she was near.

Seeing that she had no intention of passing on the introduction,
Clotilde et Cie. retired gracefully, each of the four a thousand francs
richer and a thousand times happier than she had been five minutes
before.

"What about supper?" said Hannaford. "Gambling always makes me hungry.
I'm in luck to-night. Won't you three be my guests at Ciro's?"

"You are always in luck nowadays," sighed Madame d'Ambre. A shadow
seemed to pass over the stolid face of the man, but she did not see it.
"Naturally we accept the kind invitation, is it not so, dear
Mademoiselle?"

"I must be at Ciro's anyhow, about midnight," said Carleton, "for
Schuyler asked me to meet him there for a Welsh rabbit after the opera.
But I'll be delighted to go over and sit with you till he comes." He had
the pleasant drawl of a Southerner.

"Oh, you're very, very kind," stammered Mary. "But I"--she hesitated,
and glanced appealingly at Madame d'Ambre--"I think it's rather late,
and I shall have to go home."

"Home?" echoed Hannaford, questioningly.

"My hotel," she explained.

As Madame d'Ambre drew her friend aside for a murmur of advice, the two
men looked at each other, Carleton puzzled, Hannaford with raised
eyebrows. "I think they're both charming," the American remarked in a
low voice. "That little Madame d'Ambre isn't nearly as pretty as Miss
Grant, but she's fetching, and looks a bit down on her luck, as if she'd
had trouble."

"Perhaps she has," said Hannaford.

"But, dear Mademoiselle," Madeleine was pleading at a little distance,
"why won't you go to supper? Do! It would be so pleasant. I have so
little happiness; and this would at least give me an hour of
distraction."

"You can go without me," said Mary. "Captain Hannaford is your friend,
isn't he?"

"Ah, I see! The sight of the poor afflicted man disgusts you. If you
refuse, he will know why. It will be ungracious--cruel."

"Don't say that," Mary implored, much distressed. "I wouldn't hurt his
feelings for the world. It's true I _can't_ bear to look at him, though
he hasn't a bad face. But it isn't only that. I could try to get over
it. The other reason is, I never met him or Mr. Carleton before,
and--and I don't know anything about society, or what is done; but I
have a sort of feeling----"

"Mais mon Dieu!" murmured Madame d'Ambre. "Quelle petite sotte! No
matter. It is a pretty pose, and suits you well. I am the last to find
fault with it. Yet listen. These gentlemen are distinguished. Captain
Hannaford is an English officer who has been of a courage incredible. He
can wear many medals if he chooses. Now he is very sad, despite his luck
in the Casino. He needs cheering. And this young Monsieur Carleton, the
American, I have read of him in the papers. He is widely known as a man
who flies, and these airmen are of a nobility of character! I am your
chaperon. What more do you ask? I am the widow of a naval officer. Do
you not owe me something for the good turn I have done you to-night?"

"Yes, indeed, I owe you a great deal," Mary admitted.

It was quite certain that what Madame d'Ambre considered as owing to her
would be paid.

Prince Vanno saw the four leaving the Casino together, Mary and Carleton
walking behind the other two. He had met both the Englishman and the
American in Egypt once or twice, and had not thought of them since. Now
he would forget neither. The story about Hannaford and his retirement
from the army, Vanno knew. He had heard nothing of Carleton except what
was to his credit, but somehow this fact made it no less unpleasant for
Vanno that the aeronaut should be talking with Mary. He did not believe
they had met before to-night.

The Galerie Charles Trois was brilliantly lighted, and supper was
beginning behind immense glass windows at Ciro's and the glittering
white and gold restaurant of the Metropole. At Ciro's there had been a
dinner in honour of two celebrated airmen, and the decorations remained.
There were suspended monoplanes and biplanes made of flowers, and when
the great Ciro himself saw Carleton, he came forward, inviting the young
man to take a window-table.

Carleton explained that he was only a guest; but this made no
difference. Except the King of Sweden's table, and that of the Grand
Duke Cyril, Mr. Carleton and his friends must have the best.

"My dear friend," said Hannaford, as they sat down, letting his eyes
dwell on Madame d'Ambre's costume, "it's lucky for us that we are with a
celebrity, or the fatted calf would not have been prepared for us. No
use disguising the truth: you and I are a little the worse for wear.
Only with you, the damage is temporary. Put you into a new frock and
hat, and you'll revive like a flower in fresh water. Nothing can revive
me. You see, I look facts in the face."

"Could one not make facts pleasant to see, if one must look them in the
face?" Mary ventured, gently.

"I'm sure you will make them so for Madame," said Hannaford.

"It is only those who are very happy, or very miserable, who can joke
forever, as you do," said Madame d'Ambre. "I can understand you now, or
I could, at my worst. But for the moment I have new life. I try to
forget the future."

As they ate a delicious and well-chosen supper she revived, delicately,
and regarded her misfortunes from a distance. "To think, if I had not
met you all, and if I had kept my resolve," she said, "by now I should
have found out the great secret."

As she spoke, a tall, thin man came to the table, and laid his hand on
Dick Carleton's shoulder. So doing, he stood looking straight into
Madame d'Ambre's face. She started a little, and blushed deeply. Blushes
were a great stock-in-trade with Madame d'Ambre. They proved that,
unlike Clotilde et Cie., she did not paint her face: that she was
altogether a different order of being. But this blush was less
successful than usual. It was a flush of annoyance, and showed that she
was vexed.

The man was more American in type than Carleton, though indefinably so.
If a critic had been asked how he would know this person to be a New
Yorker, even if met wrapped in bearskins at the North Pole, he might
have been at a loss to explain. Nevertheless, the dark face with its
twinkling, heavily black-lashed blue eyes, its short, wavy black hair
turning gray at the temples, its prominent nose and chin, lips and jaws
slightly aggressive in their firmness, was the distilled essence of New
York. So were the strong, lean figure, and the nervous, virile hands.

"Hello, Jim!" exclaimed Carleton, turning quickly at the touch on his
shoulder. "I've only played with a dish or two. I was waiting for you,
really." He got up, and rather shyly introduced the party to his host of
the celebrated Stellamare.

"I have the pleasure of knowing this lady slightly, already," said
Schuyler, still fixing Madeleine with his straight, disconcerting gaze.

"Madame d'Ambre?"

"I don't think we knew each other's name. I had the honour of doing a
small--a very small--service for Madame, such a service as any man may
be allowed to do for a lady at Monte Carlo."

If he laid an emphasis on the last two words, it was hardly strong
enough to be noticed, unless by the person most concerned.

"Do sit down with us, and eat the Welsh rabbit Carleton has been talking
about," said Hannaford. "This is my show. I shall be delighted, and I'm
sure I speak for the ladies."

Madame d'Ambre murmured something, and Mary smiled a more than
ordinarily friendly smile; for she knew that this was the distant cousin
of whom she had heard from Peter, the "Jim" who, in Molly Maxwell's
eyes, was an heroic figure. Peter never tired of telling anecdotes of
Jim's wonderful feats of finance, his coolness and daring in times of
black panic or perilous uncertainty in Wall Street, his scholarly
attainments, of which he never spoke; his passion for music and gardens,
and other contradictory traits such as no one would have expected in a
keen business man. Sometimes Mary had fancied that Peter was a little
inclined to fall in love with Jim Schuyler, perhaps because he was one
of the few men she knew who did not grovel at her feet. Now Mary looked
at the man with intense interest, and could imagine a girl like Molly
Maxwell making him her hero, in spite of the difference between their
ages. Molly was not twenty-one. He must be thirty-eight or forty, and
would have looked hard if it had not been for the blue eyes which might
soften dangerously under certain influences.

Mary's first impulse on hearing his name was to cry out, "Why, your
cousin Molly Maxwell is my best friend!" But something imperatively
stopped her. Deep down under the excitement and pleasure of this
adventure into which fate had plunged her, murmured a little voice,
saying, "You ought not to have come to this place alone, when they all
trusted you to go straight to Florence." And if she were doing wrong and
meant to keep on doing wrong, she must not associate herself with Saint
Ursula-of-the-Lake, in the minds of people here. It would not be fair to
the convent and Reverend Mother, not even fair to Aunt Sara and Elinor,
who believed her to be journeying obediently toward Florence. Thinking
thus, she determined to say nothing of her own life to those she might
meet at Monte Carlo. Soon she would go away, and no real harm would have
been done to any one. As for this supper, if she had lingering doubts
that it was not quite "the thing" to have accepted, the name of Jim
Schuyler chased them away like clouds before the sun. It was like being
with an old friend to have Peter's cousin there; and Dick Carleton was
staying with him. Mr. Carleton and Captain Hannaford were friends, and
Mr. Schuyler evidently knew Madame d'Ambre, so everything had turned out
delightfully. Also it was exciting to see how people who came in looked
at her and whispered. She could not help knowing that they said,
"There's the girl who won so much in the Casino that everybody rushed to
her table and applauded."

It was wonderful, intoxicating, to be the heroine of such a place, to
have experienced players envy her. She longed for to-morrow morning, so
that she might go back to the same table at the Casino, and play on zero
and twenty-four again. "I think I shall always make that my game, and go
to the same table," she said to herself, with the unconscious egotism
and vanity of a child.

"What was that I caught as I arrived, about 'finding out the great
secret?'" Schuyler asked, when he sat down at a place made for him on
Madame d'Ambre's right hand. Again he fixed his eyes on her, this time
with polite interest. "I thought the words sounded familiar. I remember
your saying something of the sort, I'm sure, the evening of our first
meeting."

"I do not recall it, Monsieur," replied Madeleine.

"It was on the Casino terrace," he went on, reflectively. "I was walking
there between the first and second acts of an opera, about a fortnight
ago. We met, and you seemed depressed, Madame. It was then I was able to
do you that small service."

"I did not think of it as a service," she said, bitterly.

"Ah, now the occasion has come back to you. What, not a service when a
lady has a little bottle of poison stuck into her belt, and a man drinks
it himself rather than she should keep her threat and swallow it!"

"It was not a threat. I would have drunk the poison and ended
everything," she insisted.

"If I hadn't been so selfish and greedy as to take it out of your hand
and sample it. Strange it did me no harm. I had a presentiment it
wouldn't, somehow. But of course my system may be poison-proof. By the
way, isn't that the same pretty little bottle I see now, tucked into
your belt! And were you thinking of trying its effect again to-night, if
these friends hadn't come in time to cheer you up, and so put off the
evil day?"

"You are very cruel to make sport of my tragedy, Monsieur!" Madame
d'Ambre exclaimed, her soft wistfulness flashing into anger. "These
sympathetic ones have saved me from myself by their generosity. They
have made me happy. Why do you go out of your way to remind me of
misery?"

Schuyler's blue eyes twinkled cynically, yet not unkindly. "I quite
understand that you can be saved from yourself only by sufficient
generosity, Madame," he said. "The question is, what is sufficient? Too
much sometimes goes to the head. Far be it from me to upset your cup of
happiness. But drink wisely, Madame, in little sips, not in great gulps.
It's better for the health--of all concerned. And the contents of your
bottle will no doubt be just as efficacious another time."

"I know what you mean," she flung at him, viperishly. "You have heard of
Mademoiselle's luck to-night. You think I mean to take advantage of her.
I would not----"

"Of course not, Madame. You, the widow of a naval officer! Have I
accused you of anything?" Schuyler cut her short, with sudden gayety of
manner. "I've heard of Mademoiselle's luck. She was pointed out to me
by a man I know, as I came in, just before joining you. But as I'm aware
that you're a good business woman, my idea is that the advantage you'll
take won't amount to more than 5 per cent. More would be usury, and give
Mademoiselle an unfavourable idea of Monte Carlo manners."

He spoke with deliberation, allotting each word its full value; and
before Madame d'Ambre could leash her rage, he turned to Mary. "Talking
of Monte Carlo manners," he took up the theme again, "you mustn't judge
hastily. There isn't _one_ Monte Carlo. There are many. I don't suppose
you ever saw a cocktail of any sort, much less one called the 'rainbow?'
It's in several different coloured layers of liquid, each distinct from
the other, as far as taste and appearance are concerned, though they
blend together as you drink. It wouldn't do to sip the top layer, and
say what the decoction was like, before you absorbed the whole--with
discrimination. Well, that cocktail's something like Monte Carlo. Only
you begin the cocktail at the top. In the Monte Carlo rainbow you
sometimes begin at the bottom."

He looked steadily at Mary as he finished his simile. Then he lifted the
silver cover of a dish which had just arrived, and gave his whole
attention to a noble Welsh rabbit, an odd dainty for a Riviera
supper--but Ciro prided himself on gratifying any whim of any customer,
at five minutes' notice.

Captain Hannaford had listened in silence, with a light of malicious
amusement in his eyes, which travelled from Madeleine to Mary, from Mary
to Madeleine, and occasionally to Dick Carleton.

Mary, despite her blank ignorance of the world and its ways, was far
from stupid or slow of understanding. She realized that Schuyler's
harangue to Madame d'Ambre was all, or almost all, for her: and she
caught his meaning in the last sentence of the rainbow allegory. He
wanted her to know that she had "begun at the bottom," and must beware.
She was half vexed, half grateful; vexed for Madeleine, and grateful for
herself, because, being Peter's hero, he must be a good man, who would
not be cruel to a woman for sheer love of cruelty. But her shamed pity
for Madeleine was stronger than her gratitude; and instead of giving
less out of her winnings than she had planned to give, she impulsively
decided to give more; this, not because she believed in or liked
Madeleine d'Ambre, but because she winced under a sister woman's
humiliation. The ugly flash in the eyes that had been wistful, shocked
her. She saw that they were cat-coloured eyes, and Jim Schuyler scored
as he meant to score, in her resolve to pay Madame d'Ambre well, then
gently to slip out of her friendship.

"When we finish supper, she can go with me to my hotel, and we'll divide
the money into three parts," Mary said to herself. "I'll give her two,
and keep one. Even one will be like a little fortune; and whatever
happens I'll keep enough to get away with; but I _must_ play again
to-morrow. It's too wonderful to stop yet."

But she was reckoning without Jim Schuyler.

When he saw the eyes of Madeleine hint that it was time to go, he said
quickly, "Well, Mademoiselle, have you counted your winnings, and do you
know exactly what they amount to?"

"No," said Mary, "not yet. I thought Madame d'Ambre and I might do that
afterward."

"Can't we save you the trouble?" he asked. "Why not spread your store
here on the table, and let us all work out the calculation? Everybody
knows you broke the bank, so there's no imprudence or ostentation in
displaying your wealth."

Without a word, Mary accepted the suggestion, since not to do so would
have seemed ungrateful.

"She's given away a lot already," said Carleton. "I saw her distributing
_mille_ notes to lovely but unfortunate gamblers, as if she were dealing
out biscuits."

"Oh, I gave away only four," Mary excused herself. "They were nothing."

Everybody laughed except Madeleine.

The fat stacks of French banknotes were extracted with some effort from
the hand-bag into which they had been stuffed. Captain Hannaford and
Schuyler counted while the others watched, Carleton with amused
interest, Mary with comparative indifference, because the actual money
meant less to her than the thrill of winning it, and Madame d'Ambre on
the verge of tears. She considered that she was being robbed of her
rights, for she knew that this merciless man with the hard jaw and
pleasant blue eyes intended to keep her hands off the money.

"One hundred and nine thousand francs!" Schuyler announced at last. "I
congratulate you, Mademoiselle. And I wish you'd let me advise you."

"If I did, what would you say?" Mary smiled.

"I should say: 'Go home to-morrow.'"

"But I've just come away from home. I don't want to go back."

"Well, then, go to some other place, a place without a Casino."

"I suppose that's good advice," said Mary. "But--I can't take it yet."

"I'm sorry," returned Peter's cousin.

The whole conversation had been in French from the first, as Madame
d'Ambre knew little English; and Mary's accent was so perfect that to an
American or English ear it passed as Parisian. Neither Hannaford,
Schuyler, nor Carleton supposed that she had just arrived from England,
though her name--if they had caught it correctly--was English or Scotch.
"Mademoiselle" they called her, and wondering who and what she was,
vaguely associated her with France, probably Paris.

"How long shall you stay?" asked Carleton, in the pause that followed.

"I don't know," Mary said. "A few days, perhaps."

"Will you come down to the Condamine and see my hydro-aeroplane
to-morrow? I'm keeping her there, and practising a bit in the harbour,
before taking her to Nice."

"Oh, I should love to! I've never seen any sort of aeroplane, not even a
picture of one."

"That's clever and original of you, anyhow. Where have you been, to
avoid them? What time to-morrow? Is ten o'clock too early?"

Mary blushed. "Would afternoon suit you? I feel as if I should have luck
again, if I played in the morning."

"Afternoon, of course," Carleton assented politely, though he was
disappointed; for in giving the invitation he had been following his
friend's lead in trying to save the moth from the candle. "Shall we say
three o'clock? I'll call for you."

"We'll both call, with my car," said Schuyler. "But what about that 5
per cent. which I suppose you want to give your roulette teacher?" he
went on, with apparent carelessness.

"I want to give her more," Mary confessed, with that soft obstinacy
which people found difficult to combat.

But Schuyler had weapons for padded barricades. He turned to Madeleine.
"I'm certain that Madame will refuse to accept more," he said.

She faced him defiantly. Then her eyes fell. She dared not make him an
active enemy. Though he never gambled, he was a man of influence at the
Casino, for he was a friend of those highest in authority, and had
power "on the Rock," also, for the Prince and he were on visiting terms,
Madeleine d'Ambre had learned these details since the evening on the
terrace when he had tested her "poison."

"Yes, I--should refuse to accept," she echoed, morosely.

"Virtue is its own reward; and there may be others," Schuyler said as he
deducted a sum equal to 5 per cent. from Mary's winnings and pushed it
across the table.

But even this was not the end of his interference. When Madeleine rose
and Mary sprang up obediently, he proposed that they, the three men,
should see the ladies home. This plan was carried out; and when Mary had
been left at the door of the Hôtel de Paris, they insisted on taking
Madame d'Ambre at once down the hill to her lodgings in the Condamine.
The penance was made only a little lighter to the victim by a lift in
Schuyler's automobile. She was far from grateful to its owner, and made
no answer except a twist of the shoulders to his last words: "Remember
not to change your mind. It isn't safe in this climate."

When they had dropped Hannaford at his hotel, also in the Condamine,
Carleton lost no time in satisfying his curiosity. "I never saw you take
so much trouble, Jim, over a woman. Is it a case of love at first sight,
old man?"

"Bosh!" said Schuyler, "Don't you know me better? That girl puzzles me.
There's something very odd about her. I'm conceited enough to think I
can generally size people up pretty well at first sight, but she beats
me. I can't make her out. And besides----"

"Besides--what?"

"I know I never saw her before, yet her face seems familiar. I associate
her with--it's idiotic--but with the person I care for most in the
world. Heaven knows why. I don't."

"Do I know who that person is?" Carleton ventured, unable to resist the
temptation.

"No, you don't know," the older man returned, rather gruffly. "And I'm
pretty sure you never will, because the less I talk or think about that
person the better for me. That part of the story has nothing to do with
the case. There's only this queer impression of mine. And I had a weird
feeling as if it were my bounden duty to see that this little girl
wasn't victimized by an unscrupulous woman. So I did what I could."

"I should think you did!" exclaimed the other. "I couldn't have done as
much. Poor Madame d'Ambre."

"Her real name's probably the French for Smith, without a 'de' in it,
unless it's to spell devil. If she's a widow, she's a grassy one. Her
game is to be found crying on the Casino terrace by moonlight,
preparatory to drinking poison, because she's tired of life and its
temptations. If it's a young lieutenant just off his ship for a flutter
at Monte, or some other lamb of that fleeciness, he's soon shorn.
There's quite a good living in it, I understand. She always contrives to
make the youngsters believe her an innocent angel, whom they must try to
save."

"But you seem to have been on in that act. Was it a moonlight scene?"

"Plenty of moonshine--and clear enough for me to see through the
angelhood to the designing minxhood. The poison was water, coloured, I
should think, with cochineal, and pleasantly flavoured with a little
bitter almond. But--well, one sees through people sometimes, as if they
were jelly-fish, and yet is a little sorry for them just because they
_are_ jelly-fish, stranded on the beach."

"I see," said Carleton.

They were spinning along the white way that winds between mountain and
sea, out of the principality, and so toward Cap Martin, Mentone, and on
to Italy. The tramcars had ceased to run; the endless daytime procession
of motor-cars and carriages was broken by the hours of sleep, and the
glimmering road was empty save for immense, white-covered carts which
had come from distant Lombardy, and over Alpine passes, bringing eggs
and vegetables for the guests of Hercules. Slowly, yet steadily,
shambled the tired mules, and would shamble on till dawn. There were
often no lights on the carts, which moved silently, like mammoth ghosts,
great lumbering vehicle after vehicle, each drawn by three or four mules
or horses. As the lamps of Schuyler's powerful car flashed on them
round sharp rock-corners, tearing the veil of shadow, they loomed up
unexpectedly in the night, like some mystery suddenly revealed in a
place of peace.

Schuyler liked motoring at night on the Riviera; for he never tired of
the dark forms of mountains, cut out black in the creamy foam of
star-spattered clouds, or the salt smell of the sea and its murmur,
singing the same song Greeks and Romans had heard on these shores. He
never tired of meeting the huge carts from Italy, travelling slowly
through the dark. He always had the same keen, foolish wish to know
whence they came, and what were the thoughts behind the bright eyes
which waked from sleep and stared for an instant, as his lamps pried
under the great quaking canopies: and more than all he enjoyed arriving
at his own gate, seeing the pale shimmer of his marble statues against
backgrounds of ivy and ilex, and drawing in the sweetness of his orange
blossoms and roses. Because he never tired of these things the two
months at Stellamare, often spent alone except for servants, were the
best months of his year. Through stress and strain he thought of them,
as a thirsty man thinks of a long draught of cool water; and he spent
them quietly, living in each moment: not complicating his leisure with
many acquaintances or amusements, and neither vexed nor pleased because
people called him selfish, and gossipped about his palace in a garden as
a place mysterious and secret. He was not quite in Paradise in his
retreat there, because he was not a perfectly happy man; but he did not
expect perfect happiness, and hoped for nothing better on earth than his
lonely holidays at Stellamare.

Descending a steep hill toward the sea as the big car slipped between
tall marble gate-posts, a perfume as of all the sweetest flowers of the
world, gathered in a bouquet, was flung into the two men's faces. In the
distance, beyond the house whose windows suddenly lit up as if by magic,
a wide semi-circle of marble columns glimmered pale against the sea's
deep indigo. And away across the stretch of quiet water glittered the
amazing jewels of Monte Carlo.

"By Jove! no Roman emperor could have had a lovelier garden, or a more
splendid palace on this coast," said Carleton, as he stood on the steps
of the house modelled after the description of Pliny's villa at
Laurentum. "Your greatest wish must be fulfilled."

"My greatest wish," Schuyler echoed, with a faint sigh. And in the
starlight his face lost its hard lines. But Carleton did not see.

The door was thrown open by an old Italian servant, who had the profile
of a captive Saracen king.

They went in together, and left the night full of perfume, and the song
of little waves fringed with starlight, that broke on the rocks like
fairy-gold--the vanishing fairy-gold of the Casino across the water.

And at the same moment (for it was very late) the dazzling illumination
of the Casino terrace was dimmed, as if half the diamonds had been shut
up in velvet cases.

A great peace fell upon the night, as though the throbbing of a
passionate heart had ceased.




X


Vanno Della Robbia wished to think no more of the false stars that he
had followed; for there was every reason now to believe them false
stars. Yet something deep down in him refused to believe this; and he
could not help thinking of them as before. But he would not give way to
what seemed like weakness, and so he fought against the memory.

If he had come to Monte Carlo only for the sake of the girl, he would
have left again next morning. Having come for other things, however, it
would have been weaker to go than stay. His brother and sister-in-law
had not arrived yet at their villa at Cap Martin, and were not due for
some days, as Angelo had taken his bride to Ireland, to show her to a
much loved cousin, the Duchess of Clare. Also there was the week of
aviation, to which Vanno had been looking forward with interest during
the voyage from Alexandria to Marseilles. A parachute which he had
invented was to be used for the first time.

Though he could not help thinking of the eyes which haunted him with
their lure of purity and innocence, he would not concern himself further
with the comings and goings of Miss M. Grant of London. He went instead
about his own affairs. He slept badly; but Vanno was accustomed to
taking little sleep, therefore it did not occur to him to be tired
because he woke finally at seven, after having lain awake till the
ringing of Ste. Devote's five o'clock bells, down in the ravine.
Instead, he felt a kind of burning energy which forced him to activity
of some sort. After his cold bath he dressed quickly, and went out to
walk, wishing himself back in the Libyan desert, where he had not seen
or thought of any woman.

It was only half-past seven, and the sun was still low in the east, just
rising above the mountains of Italy. It shone through a slit in two long
purple clouds, and its shining lit the sea. Vanno ran down the steps to
the Casino terrace, coming upon it near the clump of nymphlike palms,
and the marble bust of Berlioz that Mary could see from her window.
Hercules' Rock was on fire with sunrise, and the Prince's palace looked
in the magic flame like a strange Valhalla.

Not a soul was to be seen, not even a gardener employed by the Casino,
and all the watching eyes of the horned animal were asleep. Vanno stared
at the great cream-white building with a brooding resentment, because of
the influence which he believed it to exert over his clouded star. He
fancied that she had been drawn here by its extraordinary magnetism
which pulsed like electricity across Europe; and that, if she had not
already been swept off her feet, soon she would be, and her soul
drowned. To his own surprise, he could himself feel the mysterious
power of the place. As he looked at the long windows framed in rose-red
marble he remembered what his Arab friend, the astrologer in the desert,
had said to him about this month of December.

"Could it be possible, if there were anything in the science of
astrology," Vanno asked himself, "that the stars could rule the chances
in a game of chance?" Vaguely he thought, with the mystic side of his
nature, that to study, and prove or disprove this idea, might be
interesting. But the side that was stern and ascetic thrust away the
suggestion. He remembered the thousands of people who drifted here from
all over the world, hoping for one reason or other to get the gold
guarded by this big white dragon. Some perhaps believed in their stars;
others had studied systems, and tried them on little roulette wheels at
home; but nearly all went away defeated. The form of the long, high
mountain called the Tête de Chien looked to Vanno like a giant man lying
face down in despair, the shape of his head, his back, and supine legs
tragic in desperate abandon. "That's a symbol," Vanno said, half aloud,
and felt no longer the strange pulling at his heartstrings which for a
moment had drawn him, too, under the influence. He thought of himself as
one of the few, the very few, people within a wide range of Monte Carlo
for whom the Casino meant nothing. For surely there were few indeed.
Even the peasants among the mountains owed their living indirectly to
the Casino. Because of its existence they were able to command large
prices for their fruit and flowers and vegetables, or anything they
could produce which pleasure-lovers drawn by the Casino could possibly
want. Over there on the Rock, where red roofs of houses crowded closely
together, everybody lived in one way or other by the Casino. No one,
Vanno had been told, who was not Monegasque by birth or nationalization
was allowed to live on the Rock. Probably many of the croupiers in the
Casino and their families had houses there, and perhaps many were
shopkeepers down in the Condamine, where the cheap hotels and
lodging-houses were. Few of those hotels, or the more luxurious ones at
Monte Carlo itself, would exist if it were not for the Casino, and the
whole Riviera would be less prosperous. But Vanno was persuaded that he
cared nothing for the gold of the dragon.

Once before, when he was almost a boy, he had come here with his brother
Angelo for a few days. They had gone to see the Prince, whose ancient
family, the Grimaldis, was older and more important even than the house
of Rienzi. Vanno had promised Angelo that he would call at the palace
this time, and he decided to do so formally in the afternoon; the
morning he resolved to spend in walking up to La Turbie and down again.
The exercise would clear his brain; and he fancied that he remembered
the way well enough to find it again without asking directions.

There was something else he might do also, if there were time. A priest
whom, as a boy, he had known well at Monte Della Robbia was now curé at
Roquebrune. They corresponded, and in coming to the Riviera, Vanno had
planned to look him up. He was in a mood to want a full day's programme.

In a few moments' walking he left Monte Carlo behind and came out upon
the open hillside, where, above him, he saw the path leading skyward
like an interminable staircase. Often as he mounted, bareheaded, his hat
in his hand, he caught himself mentally trespassing on forbidden ground,
thinking of his lost Giulietta, and wondering what she had been doing,
every day and hour of her life since she was a child. He had never felt
this pressing, insistent curiosity about any human being before. His
thoughts followed the girl everywhere, wherever she might be; and
something--the same Something which refused to disbelieve in her--seemed
to know where she was at that moment, even how she looked, and what was
in her soul, though his outer intelligence could see nothing. That
rebellious Something longed to turn back toward Monte Carlo, to keep
near her and guard her. It cried out strongly to do this, but Vanno
would not listen. He sang to himself as he walked up the mule path among
olive trees; and peasants coming down from the mountains, their nailed
boots rattling on the cobblestones, were singing, too, strange wordless
songs without tune, songs neither French nor Italian, but with a wild
eastern lilt leaping out of their monotony, reminiscent of the days
when Saracens ruled the coast. Some faces, too, were like the faces of
eastern men, high featured, with enormous, flashing eyes. Here and there
was one of a bold yet dreamy, gray-eyed, brown-haired type Vanno had not
met before in any of his travels. He remembered that this country had
belonged to the Ligurians before his ancestors, the Romans, took it
after two hundred years' hard fighting: and types are persistent. He had
heard that there were ruined Ligurian forts to be traced still, among
the higher hills and mountains; and the monument of La Turbie, whither
he was bound, was Augustus Cæsar's emblem of triumph over the Ligurian
tribes.

The funicular was not running at this hour, and the white lacings of the
Upper Corniche were empty save for a cart or two, bringing down loads of
wallflower-tinted stone from some mountain quarry, for the building of a
villa. Vanno had easily found his way on to a mule path, rough yet well
kept, and ancient perhaps as the hidden Ligurian forts. Round him was
the gray-green shimmer of olive trees, and their old, thick roots that
crawled and climbed the rocks were like knotted snakes asleep. Bands of
pines marched and mourned along the skyline, and in the midst of
glittering laurels cypress trees stood up straight and black as
burnt-out torches.

Clouds that had darkened the east when Vanno started veiled the sun now,
like lazy eyelids. The gay glitter was gone from the world, and the sea
was of a dull velvety gray, dappled with silver-gleams that sifted
through holes in the clouds, making the water look like scales on a
fish's back. Far below lay the strip of frivolous fairyland, all that
most strangers know of the Riviera: the pleasure towns with their palms
and tropical flowers, the decorated villas, to live in which Vanno
thought would be like living in hollowed-out birthday cakes. And the
soft, thoughtful grayness which was dimming the sunshine suited this
different, higher world as well as it suited his mood. The loveliness of
trees, and the pale splendour of mountain peaks carved in bas-relief
against the pearl-gray sky, rang out to his soul like a chime of bells
from a cathedral tower, giving him back the mastery of himself. It was
good to be here, where there were no sounds except the voice of Nature,
singing her eternal song, in the universal language, and where the life
of man seemed as distant as the far-down windows that glittered
mysteriously out of shadows, as the eyes of a cat glitter at night.

Inarticulate, enchanting whispers of the love and joy which have been in
the world and may be again floated up to Vanno's imagination like the
chanting of mermaids heard under the sea. He felt that, if he should
meet his Giulietta now, he would believe in her, and his belief would
make her worthy of itself, if she were not already worthy. "May the
wings of our souls never fail us," he said aloud, as if it were a
prayer.

Almost before the time when Vanno Della Robbia had known words enough
to clothe his most childish thoughts, he had possessed an unknown land,
a kingdom and a castle of his own more beautiful than sunset clouds. To
this land he always travelled when he was alone, and often at night in
dreams. It had been around him in the desert where his errand had been
to study the eastern stars; and the observatory at Monte Della Robbia,
built with money left him by his mother, was one gateway to that land.
When he was in this secret kingdom he was brother to the stars. All
knowledge came echoing through his soul, as if whispered to him by past
selves, other incarnations of himself, who had gleaned it in their
lives, from days when the world was young. He had a thousand souls,
which had known great sorrows and joys and adventures. His blood seemed
to smoke gold, like spray on rushing surf in sunshine. Never had he
admitted any one he had known (except the people his own mind created
for inhabitants of that kingdom) into his land; but now the girl whose
name he scarcely knew stood at the door of the castle, asking to come
in, saying with her eyes, which he had likened to stars, that she was
the princess who had a right to live there. Hers was the face of his
dream. She was the song of the mermaids. The voice he had heard--would
always hear in the sea--spoke of her. She was the light of the morning.
Hers the face in the sunrise, and the twilight. If he lost her, still
her spirit would haunt him, in music, in all beauty, for she was the one
woman, the ideal which is the heart of a man's heart. She must be
worthy, because there was no other princess for this kingdom of his,
east of the sun and west of the moon; and without her the rooms of the
castle would hold only echoes.

Vanno would have died rather than speak out such thoughts to any one on
earth, for they were the property of that self which his brother Angelo
said was at war with the other self, the self which the world knew.

Now and then, as he walked up the mule path with a step which became
lighter with the lightness of the air, he threw a word in Italian to a
passing peasant, some Ligurian-looking man who drove a bright-coloured
market garden ending in a donkey's head and tail. Eyes and teeth flashed
comprehension, but the answer was in a queer _patois_, a hotch-potch of
Latin, Italian, French, and Arabic.

On the top of the mountain Vanno breakfasted, at a pink hotel
fantastically built in hybrid Moorish style. From his window-table he
could see the Tour de Supplice on a height below; a broken column of
stone said to mark the place where Romans tortured and executed their
prisoners. Far beneath lay the Rock of Hercules and Monte Carlo, the
four unequal horns of the great white animal springing saliently to the
eye even at this height. To the right, the great iron-gray bulk of the
Tête de Chien hid the promontories which, like immense prehistoric
reptiles, swam out to sea beyond Beaulieu; but to the left were the
mountains of Italy, their highest ridges marbled with dazzling snow;
and Cap Martin's green length was frilled with silver ripples.

Still Vanno was happy, as he had not been since he saw Mary dining alone
in the restaurant of the Hôtel de Paris. He had made a plan for the next
hours, which gave him hope for the future.

After breakfast, he walked into the gray and ancient mountain-village of
La Turbie, whose old houses and walls of tunnelled streets were built
from the wreckage of Cæsar's Trophy. Jewish faces peered at him from
high, dark windows, for here it was that, in the Middle Ages, Jews fled
from persecution, and made La Turbie a Jewish settlement. Even in the
newer town of pink and blue and yellow houses there were Jewish faces to
be seen in dusky shops where fruit was displayed for sale, in heaps like
many-coloured jewels.

Just beyond the oldest outskirts Vanno came to the foot of the monument,
unspeakably majestic still, though long ago stripped of its splendid
marbles, and its statues that commemorated Cæsar's triumph. Men were
working in the shadow of the vast column of stone and crumbling Roman
brick, digging for lost knowledge in the form of broken inscriptions,
hands and heads of statues, bits of carved cornice, and a hundred buried
treasures by means of which the historical puzzle-picture might
gradually be matched together. Vanno became interested, and spent an
hour watching and talking to the superintendent of the work, a cultured
archæologist. When he began his descent of the mountain, a train on the
funicular railroad was feeling its way cautiously down the steep
mountainside, like a child on tiptoe. A little weak, irritable sniff
came up from its engine as the toy train paused at one of the three
stopping places below La Turbie. It was like a very young girl blowing
her nose after crying.

Vanno did not go down to the low levels; but asking the way of an old
peasant whose head was wrapped in a red handkerchief, he learned how to
find the hill-village of Roquebrune, keeping to the mule paths. He had
made up his mind to invite himself to lunch with his old friend the
curé.

This was another world from the world of the Casino and shops and
hotels. The very air was different; nimble, and crystal clean. All the
perfumes were aromatic; balsam of pine, and the country sweetness of
thyme and mint, the pure breath of nature. Sloping down the mountains
eastward toward Italy and descending more than halfway from La Turbie,
Vanno came to the rock-town with the ruined castle which Mary had looked
up to from Monte Carlo in last night's sunset. It seemed to have slid
from a taller height above, and to have been arrested by miracle before
much harm was done; and Vanno remembered the curé's first letter which
had told him the legend of the place: how Roquebrune in punishment for
the sins of its inhabitants was shaken off its high eyrie by a great
earthquake, but stopped on the shoulder of the mountain through
intercession of the Virgin, the special patron _sainte vierge_ of the
district. The town and its dominating castle seen from below showed as
if flattened against the mountain's breast; but coming into the place on
foot, the mountain retired into the background, and the huge mediæval
ruin was sovereign lord of all.

The whole village had been made by robbing the castle of brick and
stone, as La Turbie was built of the Trophy. The castle itself grew out
of the rock, so that it was difficult to see where nature's work ended
or men's began; and the old, old houses crowding up to and huddled
against its foundations had cramped themselves into ledges and boulders
like men making their last stand in a mountain battle. The streets were
tunnels, with vistas of long, dark stone stairways running up and down
into mystery. Here and there above secretive doorways were beautiful
carvings set into the thick stone walls, relics of the castle's
decorations. At sharp corners were tiny shops with dark interiors, and
strange assortments of golden oranges, big pearly onions, ruby beets,
and bright green, peasant pottery in low-browed windows and on uneven
doorsteps. Dark Saracen eyes gleamed out of the cold shadows in
tunnelled streets, seeming to warm them with their light; and as Vanno
reached the tiny _Place_ where towered a large, old church, the pavement
was flooded by a wave of brown-faced boys and girls, laughing and
shouting. School was just out; and behind the children followed a man in
the black cassock of a priest. He was walking slowly, reading from a
little book. Vanno stood still, with eagerness and affection in his
eyes, and willed him to look up.

This man had been the Prince's tutor, after Vanno was six, until he had
passed his tenth birthday. It was years now since they had seen each
other, eight perhaps, for it must be as long ago that the curé had come
back to visit Rome. But the cheery, intelligent dark face had not
changed much, except that it was less round, and the silvering of the
once black hair had spiritualized it strangely.

The wave of children, after glances thrown at the newcomer, had ebbed
away in different directions. The little cobble-paved _Place_ became
suddenly still. The priest moved leisurely, reading his book. Then, when
he was quite near Vanno, he suddenly lifted his thick black lashes as if
a voice had called his name. His good brown eyes and sunburned face lit
up as though in a flash of sunlight.

"Principino!" he exclaimed.

Vanno grasped both his hands, book and all.

"What a happy surprise!" cried the curé, in Italian, and Vanno answered
in the same language.

"But you knew I was coming one of these days. You got my letter? And
perhaps Angelo has written?"

"Yes. He has written. I am to take the second breakfast with him and his
bride one day soon after they arrive at Cap Martin, and bless their
villa for them. You see, he too remembers the poor old friend!" and the
curé smiled, a charming smile, showing beautiful teeth, strong and white
as a boy's. "He said you would meet him, for the week of the flying men,
but that is not quite yet. And your letter said the same. I did not look
for you till some days later."

"Well, here I am," cried Vanno. "I came only yesterday afternoon, and my
first thought is for you, Father. You look just the same. It might be
months instead of years since we saw each other last! Will you give me
lunch? I had only a cup of coffee and a croissant at La Turbie, and I'm
as hungry as a wolf."

"A wolf this shepherd is not afraid to let into his fold. Will I _not_
give you lunch? Though, alas! not being prepared for an honoured guest,
it will hardly be worth your eating. If you have changed, my Principino,
it is for the better. From a youth you have become a man."

They walked together across the _Place_, Vanno very slim and tall beside
the shorter, squarer figure of the man of fifty. Into the church the
curé led the Prince, and through the cool, incense-laden dusk to a door
standing wide open. Outside was a green brightness, which made the
doorway in the twilit church look like a huge block of flawed emerald
set into the wall.

"My garden," said the priest, speaking affectionately, as of a loved
child. "I think, Principino, you would like your _déjeuner_ in the grape
arbour. It is only a little arbour, and the garden is small. But wait,
you will see it has a charm that many grander gardens lack."

They stepped from the brown dusk of the church out into the bright
picture of a garden, which seemed unreal, a little garden in a dream, as
complete and perfect in its way, Vanno thought, as an old Persian prayer
rug.

It was a tangle of orange and lemon trees, looped with garlands of roses
and flowering creepers, carpeted with a thousand fragrant, old-fashioned
flowers, and arboured with grapevines, whose last year's leaves, though
sparse, were still russet and gold: altogether a mere bright ribbon of
beauty pinned like a lover's knot on a high shoulder of jutting rock.
Below fell a precipice, overhanging steep slopes of vineyard, or orange
plantations that went sliding down toward the far-off level of the sea,
and the world of the strangers. Above, towered the ruined castle,
immensely tall, its foundation-stones bedded in dark rock and draped in
ivy. In the little garden, the hum of bees among the flowers was like an
echo of far off, fairy harps.

"I think I am dreaming this," said Vanno. And he added, to himself:
"It's part of my kingdom, that I never saw before."

The curé laughed, delighted. "Luckily for me it is real," he said. "And
now that you are in it, my Principino--my one-time pupil, my all-time
friend--it is perfect. I should like you to love it. I should like--yes,
I should like some great happiness to come into your life here. That is
an odd fancy, isn't it? for the great happiness seems likely to be mine
in having you with me. But the idea sprang into my mind."

"It is a good idea," said Vanno. "I should like it to come true. I have
a favour to ask you, and perhaps--who knows?--your granting it may
somehow bring the wish to pass."

A tiny figure of a woman--so old, so fragile as to look as if she were
made of transparent porcelain--appeared as he spoke from an arbour at
the far end of the little garden, an arbour whose grapevines hung
bannerlike over the precipice. She had a dish in her minute, wrinkled
hands, and was so surprised at sight of the tall young stranger that she
nearly dropped it.

"My little housekeeper," explained the curé. "She comes to me for a few
hours every day, to keep me fed and tidy; and she brings my meals here
to the arbour when the weather is fine; for I never tire of the view,
and it gives me an appetite that nothing else does."

"I see now why your letters have always been so happy," Vanno said, "and
why, when it was offered, you refused promotion in order to stay here."

"Oh, yes, I am very happy, thank Heaven, and I do my best to make others
so. God loves mirth. Dulness is of the devil! I love the place and the
people, and the people love me, I trust," the curé answered, with a
bright and curiously spiritual smile which transfigured the sunburned
face. "You have no idea, my Principino, of the thousand interests we
have here in this little mountain village. Once it was of great
importance. An English king came in the fourteenth century to visit the
Lascaris family at the castle. Those down below hardly know of its
existence, even those who come back year after year, but Roquebrune and
my garden are world enough for me. Is breakfast ready, Mademoiselle
Luciola? Thanks; we will begin as soon as you have brought things to lay
another place. Is that not a good name for the wee body--Firefly? Oh,
but you should see our fireflies here in May, when the Riviera is
supposed to be wiped off the map, not existent till winter. And the
glow-worms. I have three in my garden. No garden is complete without at
least one glow-worm. I had to beg my first from a neighbour."

"I should like to live up here, and be your neighbour, and cultivate
glow-worms," said Vanno, as his host guided him along a narrow path
which led between flower-beds to the arbour.

"Why not?" cried the priest, enraptured. "You could buy beautiful land,
a plateau of orange trees and olives, carpeted with violets--the petite
campagne I spoke of. You could build a villa, small enough to shut up
and put to sleep when you tired of it. We would be your caretakers, the
old Mademoiselle and I."

"Would you have me live in my villa alone?" Vanno smiled.

The curé looked merrily sly. "Why not with a bride?" he ventured. "Why
not follow your brother Angelo's example?"

"I must see his bride first, to judge whether his example is worth
following. We haven't met yet."

"Ah," exclaimed the priest, "that reminds me of rather a strange thing!
There came a lady here--but I will tell you, Principino, while we
lunch."

Beaming with pleasure in his hospitality, the curé ushered his guest
into the arbour, which, like a seabird's nest, almost overhung the
cliff. Under shelter of the thick old grapevine and a pink cataract of
roses, a common deal table was spread with coarse but spotless damask.
In a green saucer of peasant ware, one huge pink rose floated in water.
The effect was more charming than any bouquet. There was nothing to eat
but brown bread with creamy cheese, and grapes of a curious colour like
amber and amethysts melted and run together; yet to Vanno it seemed a
feast.

The curé explained that the grapes had been grown on this arbour, and
that he had them to eat and to give away, all winter. When the porcelain
doll of a woman came back, she brought a bottle of home-made wine for
Vanno, and some little sponge cakes. But when the Prince said that in
England such cakes were named "lady fingers," the curé laughed gayly,
and pretended to be horrified. This brought him back to his story,
which, in the excitement of helping his guest to food, he had almost
forgotten.

"I was going to tell you," he went on, "of a strange thing, and a lady
unknown to me, who called here. She was from England, I should say."

Vanno's heart gave a quick throb. "Could it be possible?" he wondered,
"Was she young and beautiful?" he asked aloud. But the answer dashed his
rather childish hope.

"Not beautiful, and not a girl, but young still. 'Striking' would be the
word to express her. And her age, about thirty."

Vanno lost interest. "Why was it so strange that she should call?" he
inquired. "People must find their way here sometimes; even those who
haven't you for a friend."

"Yes, sometimes; and I am glad to see them. This was strange only
because the lady knew that I was a friend of your family. She came
because of that, and put a great many questions; but she refused to tell
her name. She said it was not necessary to mention it."

Interest came back again in a degree. "What was she like?" the Prince
wanted to know.

The curé thought for a moment, and answered slowly. "I can see her
still," he said, "because there was something different about her from
any one else I ever saw. As she came toward me in the _Place_, where you
and I met, she looked like a statue moving, her face was so white, and
her eyes seemed to be white, too, like the eyes of a statue. But when
she drew nearer, I saw that they were a pale, whitish blue, rimmed with
thin lines of black. There was very little colour in her lips or in her
light brown hair, and she had on a gray hat and travelling dress."

"Idina Bland!" Vanno exclaimed.

"You recognize the lady from my description?"

"Yes. What you say about her eyes is unmistakable. She's a distant
cousin of ours--on our mother's side: Irish, from the north of Ireland;
but she has lived a good deal in America with my mother's brother and
sister. She has no nearer relatives than ourselves, and for three
winters she was in Rome--oh, long after you went away. I thought she was
in America now. I wonder----" He broke off abruptly, and his face was
troubled. "What questions did she ask you?" he went on. "Were they
about--my brother?"

"Yes. She wished to know if I could tell her just when he was expected
with his bride, and what would be their address when they arrived. I had
the impression from something she said that she had heard about me from
you."

"I don't remember," said Vanno. "I may have mentioned to her that we had
a friend, a curé near Monte Carlo. She has a singularly good memory. She
never forgets--or forgives," he added, half under his breath. "When did
she come here?"

"The day before yesterday it was, Principino."

"Did she say whether she was staying in the neighbourhood?"

"No, she said nothing about herself, except that she had known your
family well for years."

"And about Angelo--what?"

"Nothing, except the questions. She wanted me to tell her whether I had
ever met or heard anything of his bride."

"I suppose you didn't give her much satisfaction?"

"Not much, my Principino. I could not, if I would. But I did say that I
believed they were expected in ten days or a fortnight. I hope I was not
indiscreet?"

"Not at all. Only--but it doesn't matter."

"Then, if it doesn't matter, let us turn to a subject nearer our hearts.
The favour you wished to ask? Which you may consider granted."

After all, it was not quite as easy to explain as Vanno had thought, in
his moments of exaltation on the mountain. But he was still determined
to carry out his plan.

"You know, Father, when I was a little boy I used to talk with you about
what I should do when I grew up, and how I should never fall in love
with any girl, no matter how beautiful, unless she had eyes like my
favourite stars? How you used to laugh about those 'eyes like stars!'
Yesterday I saw a girl in a train at Marseilles. I got into the train,
meaning to follow her, no matter how far. It was not like me to do
that."

"Pardon me. I think it was," chuckled the curé. "You would always act on
impulse, you man of fire--and ice."

"Well, she got off at Monte Carlo, where I myself wanted to stop. I
thought that was great luck, at first. I turned over in my mind ways of
making her acquaintance. I believed it would be hard to do, but I meant
to do it. Now, I'm not sure--not sure of anything about her. I'm not
even sure whether I want to know her or not. The favour I have to ask
is, that you help me to judge--and help her, if you have to judge
harshly."

"I?"

"Yes, you, Father. If she needs help, I'm not the one to help her. But
you could do it." And Vanno plunged deeper into explanations, warming
with his story and forgetting his first shy stiffness.

As he talked, the curé's gaze dwelt on him affectionately,
appreciatively. He admired the clear look and its fire of noble purity,
not often seen, he feared, on the face of a young man brought up to
believe the world at his feet. He admired the dark eyes, profound as the
African nights they had loved. He noted the rich brown of the swarthy
young face, clear as the profile on old Roman coins, and thought, as he
had thought before, that Murillo would have liked to paint that
colouring. He approved his Prince's way of speaking, when he lost
self-consciousness and his gestures became free and winged. "How his
mother would have loved him as he is now, if she had lived," the priest
thought, remembering the warm-hearted Irish-American girl, whose
impulses had been held down by the sombre asceticism of her husband,
which increased with years. No wonder Prince Vanno was his father's
favourite! Angelo had written that the duke disapproved his marriage,
but that Vanno when he had met the bride would "somehow make it all
come right." It would be a terrible thing if this younger son should
fall in love with the wrong woman; but it was too early yet to begin
preachings and warnings. The curé's kind heart gave him great tact.

"I am to go downstairs and look at this lady, then?" he said.

"Downstairs?"

"Only my expression for going down _there_. I always say that I live
upstairs, here at Roquebrune. And I like the upstairs life best."

"Well, you must come down and dine with me, anyhow. Then you will see
her, and tell me what you think."

The curé broke into a laugh, like a boy's. "Me dine at your Hôtel de
Paris, my son? That is a funny thought. You're inconsistent. If you
think it unsuitable for a lady alone, what about me, a poor country
priest from the mountains?"

"You wouldn't be alone. And you're a man. Besides, it's a good object.
When you've seen her, you must make acquaintance with her somehow. _I_
won't do it. Not while I doubt her."

"Hm! My Principino, you don't know what you are asking me. I am a
priest."

"That's why I ask you. She's--I'll tell you, Father, if she goes on
winning money, you can write to beg for your poor. Then, if she's
charitable, she'll give, and come up to see your church."

"And you think the rest is simple! Well, for your sake I will do what I
can."

"Will you dine with me to-night?"

"Impossible. I cannot leave the village for so much as an hour for the
present. I am shepherd of a mountain flock, remember, and my first duty
is to them. At any moment I may have a summons to one who is dying. A
black sheep he has been perhaps, but all the more should he be washed
white at the last. And I must hold myself ready to give him the extreme
unction when I am sent for, if it be now or not till next week."

Vanno had set his heart upon his plan, and could hardly bear to have it
indefinitely postponed; but he had learned through old experience that
his good friend was not one to be persuaded from duty.

"You'll let me know the moment you're free, in any case," he urged.

"That very moment. But, meanwhile, something may happen that will help
you to judge the lady for yourself--something definite."

"I should have judged her already, if it weren't for her eyes," Vanno
said, with a sigh. "They have a look as if she'd just seen heaven! I can
hardly tell you how, but they are different from all other women's eyes.
They send out a ray of light, like an arrow to your heart."

"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed the priest.

"Don't laugh, Father. It's true, or I wouldn't have felt about her as I
did from the first moment we looked at each other. She's beautiful, but
I assure you it wasn't her beauty that made me follow her. It was
something more mysterious than that. I swear to you, it was as if her
eyes said to me, 'Why, here you are at last, you whom I've known since
the beginning of things. I am the one you've waited for all your life.'"

"All your life! Twenty-seven years, is it not?"

"Twenty-nine this month, Father. I'm not a boy, and I've cared very much
only for one woman. I wasn't twenty then, and it's partly her fault that
it's hard for me to believe in others."

"That's scarcely fair to the others. One woman isn't all womanhood."

"Ah, it's odd you should have said that, for the thought in my mind has
been that this girl--this girl who has a child's face, I tell you,
Father--seems somehow to represent womanhood, the woman of all time: the
type, you know, that no man can resist. There's a kind of divine
softness about her which calls to all there is in one of manhood--or
romance. I can't describe it."

"You have made me understand," the curé answered quietly. "And you have
made me--for your sake--want to find out as soon as I possibly can what
truth is under all this sweetness."




XI


The first question Mary asked on coming downstairs in the morning was,
"At what hour does the Casino open?"

Ten o'clock, she was told.

It was not yet nine. A long time to wait!

Most people at the Paris breakfasted in their rooms, but never in her
life had Mary eaten breakfast in her bedroom. She went to last night's
table in the great glass window of the restaurant, and was hardly sure
whether she felt relieved or disappointed not to see the young man with
the Dante profile. She did not now think him in the least like Romeo.

From the window, to her surprise, she saw a crowd collecting in front of
the Casino, whose doors were still closed.

"What is the matter?" she asked, almost alarmed, lest there had been an
accident.

"It is the early ones waiting for the doors to open," her waiter
explained. He brought her a poached egg on toast, but a superlative egg,
poached and adorned according to the conception of a French _chef_. The
air with which the silver cover was taken off and the dish shown to Mary
made her feel there was nothing she could do to show her appreciation,
without disappointing the man, unless she bent down and kissed the egg
passionately. Her smile seemed inadequate, and she ate with a worried
fear of seeming ungrateful, especially as she was impelled to hurry,
lest those people in front of the Casino should take all the places at
the tables. She wanted to sit down to gamble, for the strenuous game she
had played last night, with many stakes, would be impossible when
stretching over people's heads.

By half-past nine she was in the crowd, all her money, with the
exception of two hundred pounds she had put by, crushed into her big
beaded hand-bag. She remembered how at Aberdeen the night she went to
the theatre people stood like this, patiently waiting for the pit-door
to open. What did she not remember about that, her first and only visit
to a theatre?

At last the Casino doors yawned, as if they disliked waking up. The
procession rolled toward them, like a determined and vigorous python.
Mary was carried ahead with the rush. She had forgotten that she ought
to have renewed her ticket, but fortunately she was not asked for it;
and as she had come without a wrap, there was nothing to turn her aside
from the rooms.

Once across the threshold of the big Salle Schmidt, the struggle began.
It was not only the young and agile who raced each other to the tables.
Men who looked as if they might have pulled one foot from the grave in
order to reach the Casino, hobbled wildly across the slippery floor.
Fat elderly ladies waddled with indomitable speed, like women tied up in
bags for an obstacle race; and an invalid gentleman, a famous player,
with his attendant--the first to get in--was swept along in a small bath
chair ahead of the crowd, an expression of fierce exhilaration on a
gaunt face white as bleached bone. But the young and healthy gamblers
had an advantage, especially those with long legs.

Only yesterday Mary would have let herself be passed by every one,
rather than push into a place which somebody else wanted. Now, however,
the gambler's fever was in her. Whatever happened, she must get a seat
at the table where she had played last night. To do so was the most
important thing on earth. Slender and tall and long-limbed, she ran like
a young Diana; though not since she had become Sister Rose had she ever
been undignified enough to run. Straight as an arrow she aimed for the
table she wanted, and convulsively seized the back of the last unclaimed
chair. It was grasped at the same instant by a young man of rather
distinguished appearance, who would in other circumstances no doubt have
yielded place to a woman, especially a young and pretty girl. But he too
had the gambler's fever. He struggled with Mary for the chair, and would
have secured it by superior strength if she had not dropped limply into
it as he drew it out for himself.

"Well done!" muttered a woman already settled in a neighbouring seat.
"That's one of the Pretenders to the throne of Portugal."

Instead of being overawed, Mary found herself laughing in the joy of her
triumph. "He can't have this throne, anyhow," she panted, out of breath.

Then she noticed that Lord Dauntrey was with her defeated rival. He had
secured a chair, but getting up, gave it to the royal personage, who was
his paying guest at the Villa Bella Vista. Lord Dauntrey had not seen,
or had not recognized, Mary. He appeared to be more alive than he had
been before, almost a different man. Though his features were stonily
calm as the features of a mask, Mary felt that he was intensely excited,
and completely absorbed in the game about to begin. He had a notebook
over which his sleek brown head and Dom Ferdinand de Trevanna's short
black curls were bent eagerly. It was evident that they had some plan of
play which they were working out together.

It was just as thrilling, Mary thought, to be in the Casino by day as by
night, and even more interesting now, because she knew how to play,
instead of having to depend upon Madame d'Ambre. She had feared that her
too solicitous friend might be lying in wait for her this morning, but
she need have had no anxiety. Madeleine never appeared before noon.
Perhaps she might have made a superhuman effort had there been
reasonable hope of anything to gain. But Madame d'Ambre had learned to
read faces: and Mary's had told her that for a time there was nothing
more to expect. She would be comfortably lazy while her money held out.

Mary's seat was near the spinner, one of the croupiers who had seen her
sensational wins twelve hours ago. He smiled recognition. "Take zero
again, and the neighbours," he mumbled cautiously. "I'll try and make
you win."

Mary wanted to know what "neighbours" meant, and was told hastily that
they were the numbers lying nearest to zero on the wheel.

"But I feel as if twenty-four would come," she objected.

"Very well, if Mademoiselle prefers twenty-four, I will see what I can
do," replied the obliging croupier, like most of his fellow-spinners
wishing to give the impression that he could control the ball.

Twenty-four did not respond to his efforts, but twenty-two was the first
number spun, and as Mary had staked maximums on everything surrounding
her number, she won heavily. Throughout the whole morning luck still
favoured her. She lost sometimes, and her wins were not as sensational
as those of last night, but they made people stare and talk, and added
so many notes to the troublesome contents of her bag that, to the
amusement of everybody, when the time came to go she stuffed gold and
paper into the long gloves she had taken off while playing. Both gloves
were full and bulged out in queer protuberances, like Christmas
stockings. But this was not until nearly two o'clock, when Mary had
grown so hungry that she could no longer concentrate her thoughts upon
the game. Meanwhile, different relays of croupiers and inspectors had
come and gone, and the crowd round the table had changed. Very few
remained of the players who had raced for chairs at the opening hour.
Many had lost and taken themselves off, discouraged; others had a habit
of darting from table to table "for luck"; some had won as much as they
wanted to win, and departed quietly as a man goes home from his office.
But among the few faithful ones were Lord Dauntrey and his royal friend,
who was stared at a good deal, and evidently recognized. By this time
Lord Dauntrey had noticed Mary, his attention being attracted to her by
Dom Ferdinand, but as he had not been introduced to the girl in the
train, he did not bow. The excitement had died from his face, leaving it
gray as the ashes in a burnt-out fire, and his cheeks looked curiously
loose on the bones, as if his muscles had fallen away underneath. Mary
had not taken time to watch his game, but she saw that most of the
silver and gold once neatly piled in front of the two players had
disappeared, and she was afraid that they had lost a good deal. It
seemed unnecessary and almost stupid to her that people should lose. She
did not see why every one could not play as she did.

As she reluctantly rose to go away, driven by hunger, she had to pass
close to Dom Ferdinand and Lord Dauntrey. There was no crowd round the
chairs, as the morning throng had thinned for _déjeuner_, and she heard
Lord Dauntrey say: "I assure you, Monseigneur, it never went as badly as
this on my roulette at home. You saw the records. But nobody can win at
every séance. Don't be discouraged. I'm confident my system's
unbreakable in the end."

It was half-past two when Mary began luncheon, and she had to finish in
a hurry when Schuyler and Carleton called for her with the motor-car.
She was sorry that she had promised to look at anything so irrelevant as
an aeroplane, and felt nervously irritable because she could not at once
go back to her game. She could almost hear the Casino calling her in a
musical, golden voice: "I have something nice to give you. Why don't you
come and take it?" But it was interesting to tell the two men about her
luck of the morning. Each detail of the play was so fascinating to her
that she would hardly have believed it possible for the story to bore
any one else. She did not ask a single question about the remarkable
hydro-aeroplane in which Carleton was to compete for an important prize
next week; nor did she see the pitying smile the men exchanged while she
entertained them with an exact account of how she had staked, what she
had lost, and what she had won. "Poor child!" the look said. But neither
man blamed the girl for her selfish absorption. Both understood the
phase very well, and it was not long since Carleton had lived it down,
thanks to some friendly brutality on Jim's part. As for Schuyler, though
he never played at the Casino, it was because he had played too often
when a younger man, in America. Roulette and trente et quarante bored
him now, though the great game in Wall Street still had power over his
nerves, when he was in the thick of it. One reason that he avoided
society at Monte Carlo and invited few people to his house was because
the constant babble about the "Rooms" and the "tables" exhausted his
vitality, making him feel, as he said, "like a field-mouse in a vacuum."
Sometimes it had seemed to him that, if once again he heard any one say,
"Oh, if only I had played on seventeen!" he would be forced to strike
the offender, or rush away in self-defence.

Already Mary's eyes were losing the starlike clearness of their delight
in all things novel or beautiful. They looked mistily introspective, as
if they were studying some combination going on in the brain behind
them; and when she could not talk about roulette she relapsed at once
into absent-mindedness. But even her absorbed interest in the new
pursuit was not proof against the hydro-aeroplane lurking in its hangar.
It looked wonderful, yet she could not believe that it was able really
to rise out of the water into air.

"I assure you it does, though, and it can run on land, too," said
Carleton, eagerly. "Surely you must have read of Glenn Curtiss and his
_Triad_, that made such a sensation in America? You can ask Jim. He saw
my first successful experiment in the Hudson River six weeks ago."

"And one or two unsuccessful ones, too," laughed Jim. "But I really
think, Miss Grant, that Carleton's got his pet dragon into pretty good
training now, both as a land and water and air animal. I shouldn't
wonder if we'd see something worth seeing nest week at Nice?--and it
will be new on this coast, for there've been no hydro-aeroplanes tried
here before."

"Next week?" echoed Mary. "Shan't I see anything now? I thought Mr.
Carleton meant to go up in the air to-day."

"I hadn't thought of it, but I will if you like. That is, I'll try,"
said Carleton, modestly.

"I--oh, how I should love to go with you!" Mary exclaimed. "Can you
carry people?"

"One passenger at a time, yes. You wouldn't really like it, would you?"
he asked, flushing under the compliment of her trust in him, and
admiring her pluck. "You don't mean that you'd go up with me?"

"I would if you'd take me." Her eyes were shining once more. "It would
be--like all one's most marvellous dreams come true."

"You wouldn't be afraid?"

"Oh, no, not with you."

This was delicious flattery. Carleton promptly fell in love with Mary.
Not to have done so would have been base ingratitude. No woman had ever
paid him so great a compliment. He had thought her bewilderingly pretty
before. Now she was the most beautiful woman in the world.

"You're the bravest girl on earth!" he exclaimed, ardently.

"Better leave her on earth, then," Schuyler said dryly. "We need brave
women."

"There's no danger," Carleton protested with indignation. "Do you think
I'd take her, if I thought there were?"

"Not if you thought there were. And I don't say there is. But Miss
Grant's here without her people----"

"I have no people," Mary cut him short. "Because you can't count aunts,
can you, especially if they dislike you very much?"

Both men laughed.

"I must be your passenger," she said. "Now I've seen the
hydro-aeroplane, I shan't eat or sleep till I've been up in it."

Carleton looked at his host. "You know, at worst she could only get a
wetting if I kept over the sea," he said. "And very likely the _Flying
Fish_ will be cranky and refuse to rise."

"Here's hoping!" mumbled Schuyler. He did not define the exact nature of
his hope, but offered no further objections.

Mary, seeing that she was to have her wish, was anxious to start at
once, and almost surprised at herself for her own courage. But Carleton
explained that she could not "make an ascent," as he laconically called
it, dressed as she was. She must have a small, close fitting hat, and a
veil to tie it firmly down, also a heavy wrap. He had an oilskin coat
which he could lend her, to put over it. Mary was not, however, to be
turned from her desire by small obstacles. She had no very thick coat,
but knew where to buy a lovely moleskin, very long, down to her feet.
She could secure it and be ready in ten minutes if Mr. Schuyler would
send her up the hill in his car. Permission was granted and she went
spinning off with the chauffeur, both Schuyler and Carleton awaiting her
return at the hangar, down on the beach by the harbour.

The "ten minutes" prolonged themselves to twenty, and while they were
slowly passing, three men who had been on the Rock, writing their names
in the visitors' book at the palace, came strolling down the long flight
of paved steps to the harbour. One of these was Captain Hannaford. The
other Englishman was also an officer, Major Norwood, who had known
Hannaford long ago. And the third member of the party was the Maharajah
of Indorwana, an extremely troublesome young Indian royalty who was
"seeing Europe" under the guardianship of his reluctant bear leader,
Norwood. Since the pair had landed at Marseilles, three weeks ago,
Norwood had passed scarcely a peaceful moment by night or day. His
authority over his charge was officially absolute; but in practise it
could only be enforced by violence, which the unfortunate officer had
not yet brought himself to exert. If he did not wish the Maharajah (who
was twenty and had never before been out of his native land) to fall
into some new mischief every hour, he was obliged to find for the youth
a ceaseless succession of amusements. Monte Carlo was to have been but
the affair of a day. The Maharajah, however, had decided differently. He
liked the place, and firmly refused to move. The two had now been
staying for a week at the Metropole, and Major Norwood had telegraphed
to the India Office in London for instructions.

The night before, he had been dragged by his charge to three dances at
open-all-night restaurants, where professionals entertained the
audience. The Maharajah had insisted on learning to dance, his
instructress being an attractive Russian girl; then, as the fun grew
furious, he had forgotten his eastern dignity, and pirouetted for a
wager, with a valuable jar containing a palm. This jar he had promptly
broken, and had not been conciliatory to the proprietor. At five o'clock
he had driven his own car--bought at Marseilles--to Nice, full to
overflowing with his late partners. There had been a slight accident,
and to console the girls for their fright the Maharajah had divided all
his ready money among them. Since then he had had one fight with a
German, whom he had jostled, and who had called him a black man. Major
Norwood had been obliged to use the most nerve-racking exertions to keep
his princeling out of a French prison. Slightly subdued, the Maharajah
had consented to call at the palace at Monaco, to walk through the
beautiful gardens on the Rock with Hannaford, and to visit the Fish
Museum; but there was a yearning for new excitements in his dangerous
dark eyes, and Norwood had been thankful to see Carleton the airman
standing on the beach by his hangar. The two Americans were introduced
to the Indian royalty, and Carleton, not too eagerly, had just begun to
explain the features of his _Flying Fish_, when the big blue car brought
Miss Grant back.

At sight of Mary in a newly bought motor-bonnet, the Maharajah's eyes
lit up. He had seen her the night before at the Casino, and had started
the applause after her first sensational win. Now he asked to be
introduced, and Major Norwood's weary heart sank. Judging from the
expression of the plump olive face, this was going to be another case of
infatuation, and already there had been one on the ship, and one at
Cannes, both of which had necessitated the most delicate diplomacy. The
Maharajah was passionately fond of jewels, and had brought with him from
home some of the finest in his collection, which he intended to wear in
London. But on board ship he had given an emerald worth five hundred
pounds to the pretty young wife of an old Indian judge, who could not
resist accepting it; and at Cannes he had bestowed a diamond aigrette on
a second-rate actress. Major Norwood had tried to get these valuables
back, in vain; and now felt symptoms of heart failure whenever his
charge looked at a beautiful woman.

The Maharajah had an extraordinarily winning manner, however, almost
like that of a dignified child, and his way of speaking English was
engaging. Mary had never seen an East Indian before, and was much
interested to meet one. She gave him her prettiest smiles and looks,
while the other men stood round her, each secretly annoyed to see her
treating a "black fellow" as if he were the equal of a European.

"I'm hanged if I'll stand on ceremony with the chap, if he is some kind
of potentate," Carleton grumbled; and, interrupting the conversation,
asked Mary if she were of the same mind about being his passenger for a
flight.

"Of course!" she answered. But Carleton had not yet stepped into the
hangar when Prince Vanno Della Robbia passed on foot, going to the
palace on the Rock.

He had returned to his hotel after lunching with the curé, had dressed
and, as he was told there might be a small revolution in progress at
Monaco--something worth seeing--he had started out to walk.

The revolution of Monegasques demanding the vote seemed after all not to
be taking place that day; but if Vanno missed the miniature warlike
demonstration he had been promised, at least his walk was not
uneventful. Noticing a group round Carleton's hangar on the beach, he
drew nearer, and to his astonishment saw Mary in a long coat of
moleskin, and a little red motor-bonnet, surrounded by five men, one of
them the somewhat notorious Maharajah of Indorwana. Vanno retreated
hastily, and went on toward the steps which led up to the Rock of
Monaco; but he had not gone far when a combination of sounds stopped
him: the whirr of a propeller and the throb of an engine. Carleton was
evidently on the point of trying his machine, the curious invention
which could be used, it was said, on land as well as in air and on the
water.

Vanno looked back, and saw a biplane on wheels, fitted with a kind of
float. It was moving out of the hangar, down an inclined plane that
bridged the beach as far as the water's edge. In the aviator's seat sat
Dick, and behind him the red motor-bonnet was decorative as a flower.

She was going with Carleton! Vanno had hardly time to realize that he
had seen her, before the hydro-aeroplane ran, rather than plunged, into
the water. It ploughed deeply and almost painfully for the first moment,
sending up a great spout of foam like an immense plume of spun glass;
but as Carleton increased the speed daringly, his _Flying Fish_ rose
higher on the little waves, the float barely skimming the surface of the
water. The aviator tilted the control, as if to watch the action, and
suddenly, to the amazement of all the spectators, what had been an
unusual looking double-decked motor-boat sprang out of the harbour into
the air. It rose gracefully and gradually to a height of perhaps four
hundred feet, flying as if it aimed straight for the far-distant
pearl-cluster of Bordighera, on the Italian coast.

Vanno had an extraordinary sensation, as if his heart stopped beating,
and as if at the same time an iron band across his chest stopped the
expansion of his lungs. It was such a sensation as a man might have in
the moment of death, and it was so unlike anything he had ever felt
before that, for a few seconds of physical agony, he asked himself
dazedly what was the matter. Then, suddenly, he knew that he was
afraid--afraid for the girl. And he hated Carleton for risking her life.
He felt a savage longing to do the young airman some bodily injury as a
punishment for what he, Vanno, was made to suffer.

The relief was so great when the _Flying Fish_ dropped slowly down and
settled again into the water that Vanno was slightly giddy with the rush
of blood through his veins. He watched the hydro-aeroplane turn and head
back for the mouth of Monaco harbour; and it seemed to him that he had
lived through years in a few minutes, as one can have a lifetime's
experience in one short dream. He sickened as he thought what would be
his feelings now if the machine had fallen and turned over, too far off
for any hope of rescue from land. If those "eyes like stars" had been
closed until eternity, with no hope that he could ever learn the secret
of the soul behind them, nothing the future might have to give could
make up for the loss. It was only when the _Flying Fish_ swam safely
into the harbour that Vanno remembered his irritation at seeing Mary
with all those men, the only woman among them. After what he had gone
through since then, this annoyance seemed a ridiculously small thing;
but no sooner was she on land again, received with acclamations from
her new friends and applause by the crowd which had quickly collected,
than Vanno felt the same tingling anger.

The girl was making herself notorious! At this rate she would be talked
of everywhere. Strangers would snapshot her as she passed. Her picture
would be for sale on one of those Monte Carlo postcards of celebrities
which were newly taken every day; she would be in the local English
illustrated newspaper. He walked off quickly, with his head down, so as
to lose himself in the crowd and not be seen by Mary or her companions.

She was pale as a drowned girl when Carleton and Hannaford helped her
out of the oilskin which had protected her new fur cloak; and never,
perhaps, had she been so beautiful. There was something unearthly about
her, as if she had seen a vision and the blinding light of it still
shone white upon her face. As he touched her, Hannaford felt a thrill as
of new life go through him. By his own wild recklessness he had spoilt
his career and put himself, so he believed, beyond the pale of any
woman's love. He had thought that he had trained himself not to care;
but in that instant, while Mary, dazed by her vision, almost hung in his
arms and Carleton's, he knew that he was as other men. He wondered why
last night she had meant no more to him than a pretty new face at Monte
Carlo, a rather amusing problem which would soon lose its abstruse
charm. It was like tearing out a live nerve to feel that she could think
of him only with disgust or maybe horror. Yet he knew that, now he had
seen her face with the wonderful light on it, he would have to try and
win something from her, if only pity. The idea came to him that she and
he, and these men with them, and Madeleine d'Ambre, and others who would
gather round the beautiful and lucky player, were figures being woven
into a web of tapestry together; that they were forced to group
themselves as the weaver of the web decreed. He saw his own figure woven
into an obscure and shadowy corner far from that of Mary, and, rebelling
against the choice of the weaver, wished to tear the tapestry in pieces.
But the next moment he was ready to smile at himself with the quiet,
cynical smile which had become familiar to all those who knew him.
"Nothing is tragic unless you think so," he said to himself. Yet he
could not put out of his mind the fancy of the web with figure after
figure being woven into it, against the background of sea and mountain.
It was not unlike the idea which had come to Peter in a half-waking
dream the night after Mary went away. And at the convent in the north of
Scotland the same thought still came back to Peter, though no news had
yet been received there from Monte Carlo.

"Were you afraid?" the Maharajah of Indorwana asked Mary, as the colour
slowly flowed back to her face.

"No," she said, dreamily, "not afraid. But it was like dying and going
to another world. When we were rushing through the water with the loud
noise of machinery in our ears, and the glassy screen of spray over our
heads, I lost my breath. I couldn't think clearly; but I supposed that
was all. I couldn't believe we should go up. But then came the spring,
and we were in the air, bounding higher--it was like something imagined
after death. And the rest was being in heaven, till we began to drop.
Then, just for a few seconds, it felt as if my body were falling and
leaving my soul poised up there in the sky. I shall never forget--never.
And when the time does come to die, I don't believe I shall mind now,
for I know it will be like that, with the wonder of it after the
shrinking is over."

Hannaford looked at her closely as she spoke. He was continually
thinking of death as a dark room, behind a shut door which he would
perhaps choose to open. He felt that he would like to talk to her some
day about what she really expected to find on the other side of the
door.

Nothing else was quite real to him in the scene, when everybody pressed
round Carleton, congratulating him on his machine and the exploit of
which the airman seemed to think little. It was not real when Schuyler
invited Hannaford and his two companions to crowd into the big car, and
be spun up the hill to Monte Carlo. He remembered the illumined look on
Mary's face (though it was gone now) and the faint ray of hope it had
sent into that secret place where his real self lived wearily.




XII


If Mary had died and waked up in another world, it could hardly have
been more of a contrast to her old existence than the new life at Monte
Carlo to the life at St. Ursula's-of-the-Lake.

And the Mary at Monte Carlo was a different person from the Mary at the
Scotch convent. She had a new set of thoughts and feelings of which she
would not have believed herself capable in Scotland. She would have been
surprised and shocked at them in another, a few weeks ago. Now she was
not shocked or surprised at them even in herself. They seemed natural
and familiar. She was at home with them all, and with her new self, not
even realizing that it was a new self. And she grew more beautiful, like
a flower taken from a dark northern corner of the garden and planted in
a sheltered, sunny spot.

She no longer thought of turning her back upon Monte Carlo in a few
days, and journeying on to Florence. She stayed, without making definite
plans; but she did not write to the convent. She knew that Reverend
Mother would not like her to be here, gambling, and it would be too
difficult to explain. There was no use in trying, and she could not bear
the thought of having to read a reproachful letter, when she was so
happy and every one was being so nice to her. It was different about her
Aunt Sara. She knew, if she did not arrive in Florence, Mrs.
Home-Davis's friend would write and say that she had never appeared.
Then perhaps her aunt would follow to see what had become of her. Rather
than run the risk of this dreadful thing happening, Mary telegraphed to
Cromwell Road; "Have changed my mind. Staying on the Riviera. Am well
and safe; will write when decide to leave." And she put no address.
After sending off this message she felt relieved for a few days, as if
she were secure from danger; but sometimes she waked in the night to
worry lest Aunt Sara knew any one on the Riviera who might be instructed
to look up a stray niece. Then she would comfort herself by reflecting
that Mrs. Home-Davis was not at all the sort of woman to know people at
Monte Carlo. She was too dull and uninteresting.

And just now most things seemed dull and uninteresting to Mary which
were not connected with gambling.

Her winnings were not in themselves out of the common, for every season
at Monte Carlo there are at least six or seven players who win great
sums, whose gains are talked about and watched at the tables, and who go
away with from ten to fifty thousand pounds. But it was the combination
of personality with great and persistent good luck which made Mary Grant
remarkable, and her behaviour was puzzling and piquantly mysterious to
those who had no clue to her past. Everybody talked about her: the
croupiers who spun her numbers or put on her stakes, and received her
generous tips: the shopkeepers with whom she spent the money she won,
buying expensive hats and furs, dresses and jewellery: clerks at the
bank where she deposited her winnings: people of all sorts who
frequented the Casino, and even those who were there seldom but heard
what was going on through acquaintances at the many luncheon parties and
"At Homes" which make up the round of life at Monte Carlo. And Mary knew
that she was stared at and talked about, and liked it as a child likes
to be looked at when walking out with a splendid new doll. She had no
idea that any one could say unkind things of her, or that there was
anything in her conduct to call for harsh comments. It was so delightful
to be winning every day at roulette, and spending the easily gained
money in amusing ways, that Mary thought every one who came near her
must be almost as much pleased with her luck as she was--all but the one
man who had snubbed her, the man whose name she had not heard, but who,
she had been told by her devoted waiter, was a Roman prince. He
disapproved of or disliked her, she did not know which, or why; and
because he kept the table near hers in the restaurant his look, which
was sometimes like a vehement reproach, always depressed her, bringing a
cold sense of failure where all might have been joy. The thought of this
stranger's disapproval was the fly in her amber; and the idea floated
through her mind sometimes that they might have known each other in a
forgotten state of existence. When their eyes met, it was as if there
were a common memory between them, something that had happened long ago,
drawing them together.

Days passed, and Vanno's project which concerned Mary and the curé was
still in abeyance, for the priest was not free yet to leave Roquebrune.
The man whose death was daily expected had not died, and the curé spent
as much time with him as could be spared from other duties. But Vanno
Della Robbia was not the only one who sought the services of a friend in
order to "help" Mary.

One afternoon at the end of the Nice aviation week Dick Carleton ran up
three flights of marble stairs in a huge square house on the left or
seaward side of the Boulevard d'Italie at Monte Carlo. It was a building
given up to flats, and the corridors were almost depressingly clean and
cold looking, with their white floors and stairways of crude, cheap
marble, and their white walls glittering with the washable paint called
"Ripolin." On each étage were two white doors with openwork panels of
iron over glass, which in most cases showed curtains on the other side.
The door before which Carleton stopped on the third floor had a
semi-transparent rose-coloured curtain; and just above the bell push was
neatly tacked a visiting card with the name "Reverend George Winter"
engraved upon it.

Carleton had never met the new incumbent of St. Cyprian's, but the
chaplain had lately married an American girl, Dick's cousin. This was
the first time that Carleton had found a chance to call, although he had
been staying with Schuyler for over a fortnight. He felt rather guilty
and doubtful of his reception, as a neat little Monegasque maid told him
that Madame was _chez elle_. But he need not have been anxious. As the
maid announced his name with a pronunciation all her own, a pretty girl
sprang up from a chintz-covered window seat, in a drawing-room which in
an instant took Carleton across the sea to his native land.

The girl had been sitting on one foot, and as she jumped up quickly she
stumbled a little, laughing.

"Oh, Dick, you nice thing!" she exclaimed. "I _am_ glad to see you. But
my foot's asleep. Goodness, what needles and pins!"

She stamped about on the polished floor, with two small feet in silk
stockings and high-heeled, gold-buckled slippers, a novel tucked under
her arm, and one hand clasping her cousin's.

"Well," he said, "if any creature could be less like a parson's wife
than you, madam, I'd like to see it."

"I know I'm the exact opposite of what one ought to be," she laughed,
"and it almost makes me feel not legally married. But don't--don't,
please, if you love me, use that awful word 'parson' again. I can't
stand it. Don't you think it sounds just like the crackle of cold,
overdone toast?"

"Can't say I ever thought about it," said Carleton.

"Well, I have, constantly. It was a long time before I could make up my
mind to say 'yes' to St. George, on account of that word."

"Is St. George his name?" Dick asked.

"It's my name for him. The 'saint' part's my private property. But he is
a saint, if ever there was one: and a good thing too, as he's got a
dragon on the hearth to tame; but a _little_ inconvenient sometimes for
the poor dragon. Oh, Dick, you've no idea how good and pure-minded and
absolutely Alpine and on the heights he is. Often I expect to pick
edelweiss in his back hair."

Carlton gave one of his sudden, boyish laughs. "That sounds like you.
How did you come to marry such a chap?"

"I was so horribly afraid some other girl would get him, if I left him
lying about. But do let's sit down. My foot's wide awake again now."

They sat on the cushioned window seat and smiled into each other's eyes.

"How brown you are!" she exclaimed.

"How pretty you are!" he retorted.

And it was true. She was very pretty, a girlish creature, thin and eager
looking, with large tobacco-brown eyes full of a humorous, observant
interest in everything. Her skin was dark and smooth as satin. Even her
long throat and nervous hands, and the slim, lace-covered arms, were of
the same satin-textured duskiness as the heart-shaped face, with its
laughing red mouth. Her cheekbones were rather high and touched with
colour, as if a geranium petal had been rubbed across them, just under
the brown shadows beneath the eyes. Her chin was small and pointed, her
forehead low and broad, and this, with the slight prominence of the
cheekbones and the narrowing of the chin, gave that heartlike shape to
her face which added piquancy and made it singularly endearing.

She was very tall and graceful, with pretty ways of using her hands, and
looking from under her lashes with her head on one side, which showed
that she had been a spoiled and petted child.

"Yes, I'm quite pretty," she agreed gayly, "and I have on a pretty
dress, which is part of my trousseau, and I hope it will last a long
time. But the thing I am principally interested in just now is our flat.
Call this a 'living-room' at once, or I shall feel homesick and burst
into tears. The question is, do you think _it_ is pretty?"

"Awfully pretty; looks like you somehow," answered Dick, gazing around
appreciatively. "Jolly chintz with roses on it, and your rugs are
ripping. Everything goes so well with everything else."

"It ought to. I have taken enough trouble over it all, introducing
wedding presents to each other and trying to make them congenial. I have
no boudoir, so I can't boude. But St. George has a study with books up
to the ceiling, and lots still on the floor, because we are not settled
yet, though we arrived--strangers in a strange land--in November. I
expect you'll recognize some of the things here, because old colonial
furniture doesn't grow on blackberry bushes in this climate, and I
brought over everything Grandma Carleton left me: that desk, and cabinet
and mirror, and those three near-Chippendale chairs. Wouldn't the poor
darling make discords on her golden harp, or moult important feathers
out of her wings, if she could see her parlour furniture in a room at
Monte Carlo?"

"Nice way for a par--I mean a chaplain's wife to talk," said Dick.

"I've been _so_ prim for three whole months," Rose Winter excused
herself, "except, of course, when I'm alone with St. George."

"Ever since you were married. Poor kid! But don't you have to be prim
with him?"

"Good gracious, no! That would be death. I arranged with him the day I
definitely said yes, and again on our wedding eve, so as to have _no_
misunderstanding, that I might keep all my pet slang, and even use
_language_ if I felt it really necessary; otherwise he would certainly
have been the 'Winter of my discontent.'"

"What do you call language?" Dick wanted to know.

"Oh, well, I have invented some and submitted it for St. George's--if
not approval--tolerance. 'Carnation' for instance, and 'split my
infinitives,' are the most useful, and entirely inoffensive, when one's
excited. Also I may have a cigarette with him after dinner, if I like,
when we're alone. Only I haven't wanted it yet, for we have so much to
say, it won't stay lighted. But now tell me about yourself. Of course
we knew you'd come. It was in a paper here, that tells us all the news
about everybody, in English: who's who (but who isn't who nowadays who
can play bridge?), also what entertainments Who gives to Whom."

"Sounds complicated," said Dick.

"So it is, complicated with luncheon parties and tea parties, and
knowing whether to invite So and So with Thing-um-bob, or whether
they've quarrelled over bridge or something, and don't speak. It's most
intricate. But I've kept track of you--as much as one _can_ keep track
of an airman. We knew how busy you'd be, so we didn't expect you to
call. And St. George didn't like to go and worry you at Stellamare, as
he isn't acquainted with Mr. Schuyler."

"I believe Schuyler sends subscriptions to the church at Monte Carlo and
at Mentone, and to the Catholic priest at Roquebrune as well, and thinks
he's quit of religious duties," said Carleton. "Yet he's an awfully good
fellow--gives a lot away in charities, all around here. He is great
chums with some of the peasants. It's quite an experience to take a walk
with him: He says how-de-do to the quaintest creatures. But he can't be
bothered with society. Vows most of the people who come back here every
winter to the villas and hotels are like a lot of goldfish going round
and round in a glass globe."

"I hope _we_ shan't get like that," said Rose. "At present, I am quite
amusing myself. And it seems to me there are many different kinds of
life here. You have only to take your choice, just as you do in other
places, only here it's curiously concentrated and concrete."

"Now, I ask you, is it the right spirit, to talk of 'amusing yourself'
in taking up your new parochial duties?" Carleton teased her.

"Perhaps one does things better if it amuses one to do them," she
argued. "And really I'm a success as shepherd's assistant, or
sheep-dog-in-training. I don't go barking and biting at the poor sheep's
heels (_have_ sheep heels?), for the sheep here are pampered and
sensitive, and their feelings have to be considered, or they jump over
the fence and go frisking away. Besides, I always think it must give
dogs such headaches to bark as they do! Instead, I make myself agreeable
and do pretty parlour tricks, which would be far beneath St. George's
dignity; and, anyhow, _he_ couldn't do tricks to save his life. His
place is on the mountain tops, so I sit in the valley below, and give
the weakest sheep tea and smile at them or weep with them, whichever
they like better."

The cousins laughed, both looking very young and happy, and pleased with
themselves and each other. They were almost exactly of the same age,
twenty-three, and as children had played together in the pleasant old
Kentucky town which had given them both their soft, winning drawl. But
Dick's people had moved North, and hers had stayed in the South, until
three years ago, when Rose and her father had started off on a tour of
Europe. In England she met George Winter, and did the one thing of all
others which she would have vowed never to do: she fell in love with a
clergyman. They had been married three months ago in Louisville, had
then visited his parents in Devonshire; and because Winter had not fully
recovered tone since an attack of influenza, he had accepted a
chaplaincy in the south of France. Rose Fitzgerald and Dick Carleton,
children of sisters, had put a marker in the book of their old
friendship, and were able to open it at the page where they had left off
years ago. She was not in the least hurt because he had let more than a
fortnight go by before calling, for she knew that he had come for the
aviation, and must have had head and hands full. She was not aware that
he found time to see a good deal of another young woman who had no claim
of old friendship; but even if she had known, she would have understood
and forgiven almost as one man understands and forgives another. For
quaintly feminine as she was, Rose often said, and felt, that "before a
woman can be a true lady she must be a gentleman." And, being a
gentleman, she can learn to be a "good fellow"--an invaluable
accomplishment for a woman.

"I saw you fly, you know," she said, when they had finished laughing. "I
went to Nice on purpose--that is, nearly on purpose. I combined it with
buying a dress, a perfectly sweet Paris dress, which I shall try to wear
with a slight English accent, so as not to be too smart for a
well-regulated sheep-dog. Every one declared the honours of the aviation
week were yours, with that wonderful _Flying Fish_. I wouldn't have
believed a machine made by man could do such weird things, if I hadn't
heard all about the Glenn Curtiss experiments and successes with the
_Triad_ at home. I was proud of you. Except that man who tested the
Della Robbia parachute, you were quite the most distinguished thing in
the air, although it was really crowded--all sorts of quaint creatures
giving you their airwash. I want to have a Skye terrier now, and name
him after you. St. George was going to give me a dachshund, but they do
look so bored to tears, I think it would depress me having one about.
And, besides, I draw the line at an animal which can't know whether its
ancestors were lizards or dogs."

"Look here, Rosie," Dick began when she paused, with an introspective
look which told her that he had not heard a word she said, "there's
something I want you to do for me."

"It won't be the first time," she replied pertly. "I 'spect I'll like to
do it. But if it's anything important, better begin now, for some of my
own specially collected sheep will be drifting in to tea."

"Sheep at tea! A new subject for an artist," mumbled Carleton.

"My special ones are so shorn it would be scarcely decent to paint them,
and a few are already quite black. But they all like tea--from my hands.
It knits them together in a nice soft woolly way. And St. George will
probably stroll in with the Alpine glow of a sermon-in-the-making still
lighting up his eyes. And he will be introduced to you and drop crumbs
on my lovely Persian rug, and ask to have the gramophone started. He
loves it. Often I think our friends must go away and complain of being
gramophoned to death by a wild clergyman. So out with what you have to
ask me, my dear man, or the enemy will be upon us."

Carleton got up, with his hands in his pockets, and stared out of the
window which looked down from a seemingly great height over the
turquoise sea. He could see a train from Italy tearing along a curve of
the green and golden coast, like a dark knight charging full tilt toward
the foe, a white plume swept back from his helmet. Suddenly the smooth
blue surface of the sea was broken by the rush of a motor-boat
practising for a forthcoming race, a mere buzzing feather of foam, with
a sound like the beating of an excited heart, heard after taking some
drug to exaggerate the pulsation. Yet Carleton was hardly conscious of
what he saw or heard. He was thinking how best to ask Rose Winter to
make Miss Grant's acquaintance. Several ways occurred to him, but at
last he blurted out something quite different from what he had planned.

"There's a girl--a lady--I--I want to get your opinion about," he
stammered, turning red, because he knew that Rose was looking at him
with a dangerously innocent expression in her eyes. "That is, I should
like to know how you'd classify her," he finished.

Rose answered lightly. "There are just three sorts of women,
Boy--counting girls: Perfect Dears, Poor Dears, and Persons. Men of
course are still easier to classify, because there are only two kinds of
them--nice and horrid. But under which of the three heads would you
yourself put your friend? I suppose you think she's a Perfect Dear, or
you wouldn't have to go and look out of the window while you lead up to
asking if I'll make her acquaintance."

"No," said Dick. "I'm afraid she's rather more like a Poor Dear. That's
why I want you to help her."

"Oh, you want me to help her? You're _quite_ sure she isn't a Person?"

"I should think not, indeed!" Dick broke out indignantly. "She's a lady,
whatever else she may be."

"It sounds like a Deserving Case. Oh, dear, I do _hope_ she isn't a
deserving case? I've had so many thrust under my nose in the last seven
weeks, and I'm sorry to say the undeserving ones are usually more
interesting. They're all undeserving ones who're coming to tea."

"If you'd call on her, you could see for yourself whether you thought
she was deserving or not."

"That's the way I'm to help her--by calling? I thought perhaps I was to
get her out of pawn, or something, by buying her jewellery. But I had
to tell you, if _that_ was what you wanted, I couldn't do much, for all
my pocket money is exhausted, owing to so many people coming and crying
tears as large as eggs all over the living-room--quite strange people
I've never seen before. You can't conceive, Dick, the cataracts of tears
that have poured over this rug you admire so much."

"I don't understand," said Carleton, looking blank. "Unless you want to
switch me off the subject of----"

"The Poor Dear? No, indeed. But you couldn't be expected to understand,
not being a chaplain's wife at Monte Carlo. You see, they hear we're
kind, so they call, and then begin to cry and offer me pawn tickets as
security."

"Who are 'they'?"

"Oh, poor creatures--seldom poor dears--who've _lost_, you know. As I
suppose your one has?"

"On the contrary," said Dick, almost sharply. "She's won tremendous
sums. She simply can't lose--anything except her head."

"Not her heart? But without joking, if she isn't a 'case,' why do you
want me to----"

"Because I think she ought to have some one to look after her, some one
who knows the ropes. Honestly, Rose, I'd be awfully obliged if you'd
call."

"I will of course," Rose answered. "Have I got to be agreeable to any
mothers or aunts she may have lurking in the background?"

"That's the trouble. She hasn't got a soul."

"Oh! And she is quite young?"

"Sometimes she looks a baby. Sometimes I think she's a little older."

"Then she probably is. Where's she staying?"

"At the Hôtel de Paris."

"My gracious! _Alone_ at a big Monte Carlo hotel! A young girl! No
wonder you glare out of the window while you ask me to call on her, and
stick your hands deep in your pockets. People won't allow me for an
instant to forget I'm a clergyman's wife. _Et tu Brute!_"

"I told you she was a lady." Dick turned rather white. "She doesn't know
what she's doing. I'm sure she doesn't. She--even Schuyler, who reads
most people at sight like A B C, can't make her out. She's a mystery."

"Forgive me," said Rose. "I was half in fun. I wouldn't hurt your
_Flying-Fish_ feelings for anything on earth or in air. Is she pretty,
and is she American--or what?"

"She's perfectly beautiful, and she's English, I think."

"Hasn't she told you?"

"No. She says nothing about herself--I mean about herself before she
came here."

"What's past is past. Dark or fair?--not her past, but her complexion?"

"Fair."

"_Not_ one of those pink and white girls picked out in blue and gold,
one sees about so much?"

"As different from them as moonlight from footlights. If ever you went
into the Casino, you couldn't have helped having her pointed out to
you. She's always there, and she's so awfully pretty and dresses so--so
richly, and wins such a lot that everybody stares and talks. She's the
sensation of the place."

"But I never do go into the Casino, of course--that is, not into the
Rooms. I go to the Thursday Classical Concerts, and even that St. George
shakes his head over, as it's inside the fatal door. You see he's here
to preach against gambling, among other things."

"I don't suppose the gamblers go to hear his sermons?"

"Oh, yes, they do. A good many of them feel that if they attend church
and put money in the plate, and don't play on Sunday, the rest's all
right. They can keep up a bowing acquaintance with religion that way,
anyhow. But I'll go and call on your mystery. What's her name?"

"Miss Grant."

Rose's face changed. "Oh, is it _that_ girl? I _am_ glad! Virtue is its
own reward. I shall love to have an excuse to make her acquaintance."

Dick, who had faced round in the window but was still standing, came and
sat down by his cousin.

"What do you know about her?" he asked.

"I'll tell you. It's a sort of story," she answered thoughtfully; "a
story about a picture."




XIII


"You know the two beggars who stand by the bridge, just over the
Monegasque frontier as you go toward Cabbé-Roquebrune and Mentone?" Rose
said, her eyes no longer on Carleton, but fixed upon something she alone
could see. "Of course you know they keep off Monaco territory by half an
inch or so, because begging is forbidden in the principality. There's an
old white-haired man with rather a sinister face. I'm not sure if he's
deformed in any way, or if he just produces on the mind an odd effect of
some obscure deformity. He's one of the beggars; and the other's a
little humpbacked elf of a creature, hardly human to look at, with his
big head and ragged red eyelids; but he's always smiling and gay, bowing
and beckoning. It's his _métier_ to be merry, just as it's the other's
pose to be overwhelmed with gloom."

"I know them both," said Dick. "I can't resist throwing the little
humpback a fifty-centime piece now and then, from Jim's automobile,
though Jim scolds me for it in a superior way--the way people have who
take a firm moral stand against beggars. Jim's on the firm moral stand
about a lot of things. He's a strong man, body and soul and mind, but I
have a whole brood of pet weaknesses running about that I hate to
destroy. The other day when I was going over to Nice to try my luck with
the _Flying Fish_ for the first time, I'm ashamed to say I chucked that
little red-eyed, grinning imp five francs for luck--my luck, not his?"

"It's a wonder you didn't get out and rub his hump, as a lot of gamblers
do. They say he's quite a rich man, owing to that sort of silly
superstition, but I can't resist him, either. And I feel it quite a
feather in my cap of fascination that I've made the other one--the
gloomy beggar--smile, though I've never given him a sou. He has quite a
sense of humour, when you get to know him--and when he's realized that
he can't fool you. I often walk to the bridge and back, just for a chat
with the two beggars, instead of everlastingly promenading up and down
the Terrace, bowing to every one I know, when I want exercise. I thought
I was the only person original enough or brave enough or depraved enough
to visit the beggars socially; but the other morning I was on my way to
pay them a call, when I saw that somebody else was ahead of me. It was
quite a picture. You remember the blazing hot day we had last week?"

"Wednesday. The best we had at Nice. Not a breath of wind. The day
Rongier tried the Della Robbia parachute the second time and made his
sensational descent."

"Well, then it was Wednesday. It was like June. The beggars were having
a lovely time. They'd taken off their comfortable winter overcoats with
those wing-like, three-leaved capes which they've been wearing ever
since the beginning of December, and had gone back to summer things:
nice, shady, flapping felt hats and cool clothes; and they were having
one of their pleasant little feasts which I used quite to envy them when
we first came, while the weather was still very warm. A rough table in
the road, close to the stone wall, with thick chunks of black bread, and
cheese and salad, and chestnuts instead of the figs they had in autumn,
all spread out on a paper tablecloth. They had wine of the country, too,
with slices of lemon in it; and when I came along a girl was there,
peeling a big chestnut for herself which the beggars had given her.
She'd taken off her gloves and laid them on the table, with a perfectly
gorgeous gold chain bag blazing with jewels, and a gold vanity box to
keep the gloves down. Just imagine! On the beggars table! And they
didn't seem to grudge her such splendid possessions one tiny bit. They
were grinning at her in the most friendly way, as if they loved her to
have pretty things and be rich and beautifully dressed. You could see by
their air that they considered themselves chivalrous knights of the road
being gallant to a lovely lady. That gloomy old wretch was grinning at
least an inch wider for her than he ever did for me; and she was
smiling, with heaven knows how many dimples flashing as brilliantly as
her rings, while she peeled the chestnut."

"Yes, that must have been Miss Grant!" exclaimed Dick, delightedly. "I
never saw such dimples as she's got."

"Or else you've forgotten the others. Well, I walked slowly so as not to
break up the picture. She had on a thin veil, so I thought maybe she
wouldn't be as pretty or young without it, but it was like a pearly mist
with the sun shining on it, and it gave her that kind of mysterious,
magic beauty of things half seen which stirs up all the romance in you."

"Don't I know?" Dick muttered. "But she's always got that, with or
without a veil. It's a peculiar quality of her features or her
expression--I don't know which--that can't be described exactly, any
more than the lights on the clouds can, that I see sometimes when I've
got up a few hundred feet high in the sunrise. I wouldn't have said all
this about her if you hadn't begun. But anybody must feel it."

"I believe the beggars did, without knowing it. I did--even I, a woman.
I felt I must see if she'd be as pretty when she lifted her veil to eat
the chestnut, so I stopped not far off, on the Monaco end of the bridge,
and pretended to tie up my shoe-string. I thought I'd never seen a face
like hers--not at all modern, somehow. Who is it says romance is the
quality of _strangeness_ in beauty? Hers has that. It seemed to me when
she got her veil up that she was more wonderful, not belonging to any
century in particular, but to all time, as if thousands of lovely
ancestresses had given her something of themselves as a talisman."

"Rose, what a darling you are!" Dick said, seizing her hands and
squeezing them hard.

"Oh," she laughed, wincing a little. "You couldn't do that to _her_ with
all her rings. I was just trying to _draw_ you! Now I've found out all I
want to know. You're dreadfully, frightfully in love with Miss Grant."

"Am I?" he asked. "Perhaps. I'm not sure. Only I see that there's
something rare about her, and she's too precious to be living as she
does, surrounded by a weird gang who all want to get something out of
her, or else to give her something she oughtn't to take. Like that
Indian chap, the Maharajah of Indorwana--confound the little beast! He's
tried to make her take a diamond star and a rope of pearls."

"I suppose she needn't, unless she wants to."

"Oh, I don't know, she's so good-natured, and somehow childlike. She had
both the things on at the Casino last night; said he insisted on lending
them to her, for luck, and she didn't like refusing them, as he almost
cried. And then there's that jeweller man from Paris--has a shop in the
Galerie Charles Trois. She strolled into his place to buy the gold bag
you saw on the beggars' table and he went wild about her. Cheek of him!
Sent her a bracelet she had to send back. How dare a fellow like that
have the impudence to fall in love with a girl like her?"

"Cats may look at kings, and I suppose kings embrace queens, don't they?
You needn't be so mad. You come from a democratic country, and Grandma
Carleton's father was a grocer."

"He was a super-grocer. And, anyhow, Americans are different."

"Some of them fly high nowadays, eh, Mr. Air-pirate?"

Dick laughed. "You haven't told me yet what happened next at the
beggars' feast, and how you found out who _she_ was."

"Nothing happened to any one except me. They went on feasting and gave
her some more chestnuts. I don't know what she'd given them! But she'd
probably rubbed the lucky hump and paid for it. I was dying to go up and
speak to my pals, and perhaps be introduced to the girl, but I hadn't
got quite cheek enough, and they seemed to be having such a good time,
it was a shame to interrupt. The elf was talking, with explosive sort of
gestures in between mouthfuls, evidently telling something very
interesting. And you know, I always pretend to myself in a kind of fairy
story that he's really a person of immense, mysterious influence, a
weird power behind the throne, starting or stopping revolutions. Of
course it's nonsense--all founded on my seeing him with one of the new
revolutionary newspapers in his hand--the ones they allow nowadays to be
sold in the principality, against the Prince, and the Casino, and
everything. But if I were to write a sensational story of Monte Carlo,
that little red-eyed dwarf at the bridge should be the hero. And just as
I was thinking about all that, and tying my second shoe, along came a
taxi with poor Captain Hannaford in it. He'd been into Italy to see
Madame Berenger, the actress, at her villa, which he would like to buy,
and was coming back to lunch; so he made the chauffeur pull up while he
asked if he could drive me home? I said yes, because I saw him lift his
hat to that girl, and I hoped he could tell me something about her."

"What did he tell you?"

"Not so very much. He didn't seem to want to talk about her, I thought.
That didn't surprise me, because he has an idea that women feel disgust
for him and can't bear to look at him if they can help it--all but me,
for I've convinced him that I'm really his friend. He only said that her
name was Miss Grant, and that she was very lucky at the Casino. And in
about three minutes we were at the door of this house."

"Well, I'm mighty glad you're interested in her, and that you're willing
to call."

"Willing? I'm charmed. I'll go to-morrow."

"You--you couldn't go to-day, I suppose?"

"Silly boy, it's too late. Here's tea; and here's St. George; and here
will be some of the flock presently, who generally appear on the stroke
of half-past four."

In another moment Carleton was shaking the hand of a slender, pale man
with auburn hair worn rather long, a sensitive mouth, delicate nostrils,
and beautiful, bright, hazel eyes which shone with a spiritual,
unworldly enthusiasm. He looked like one who would cheerfully have been
a martyr to his faith had he lived a few centuries earlier. And Dick
thought his cousin's simile of the high Alps not too far fetched, after
all. But there was a warm light in the beautiful eyes as they turned
upon Rose; and something in the man's smile hinted that he did not lack
a sense of humour, except when too absent-minded to bring it into play.
Dick felt happy about Rose, and happier about Miss Grant, because Rose
would go and see her.




XIV


Life was not running on oiled wheels at the Villa Bella Vista.

A spirit of discontent, a feeling that they had been lured to the house
under false pretences, grew among Lady Dauntrey's visitors and was
expressed stealthily, a word here, a word there, and sullen looks behind
the backs of host and hostess. Even on the first day disappointment
began to wriggle from guest to guest, like a little cold, sharp-nosed
snake, leaving its clammy trail wherever it passed.

In the first place the villa, which had been described glowingly by Lady
Dauntrey to the Collises and Dodo Wardropp, was not what she had painted
it. Indeed, as Dodo remarked to Miss Collis, it was not what any one had
painted it, at least within the memory of man. Once it had been a rich
gold colour, but many seasons of neglect had tarnished the gold to a
freckled brown, which even the flowering creepers that should have
cloaked it seemed to dislike. In depression they had shed most of their
leaves; and bare serpent-branches, which might be purple with wistaria
in the late spring long after everybody had gone to the north, coiled
dismally over the fanlike roof of dirty glass that sheltered a
blistered front door. Inside, a faint odour of mouldiness hung in the
air of the rooms, which had been shut up unoccupied for a long time. The
ugly drab curtains in the drawing-room smelled of the moth-powder in
which they had been wrapped through the summer heat. The imitation lace
drapery underneath them had been torn and not mended. Bits of thick
brown paper pasted over the windows during the hot months still stuck to
the glass. The furniture was heavy, not old but middle-aged, lacking the
charm of antiquity, and in the worst French taste. The pictures were
banal; and there was no garden. More painful than all, the house was in
the Condamine; and Dodo, when she had spent a few days at "Monte" on her
way to England from Australia, had been told that "nobody who was
anybody lived down in the Condamine: only the 'cheap people' went
there." And Dodo did not consider herself a cheap person. She was paying
high to be the guest of a "lady of title": she wanted her money's worth,
and soon began to fear that there was doubt of getting it.

Servants had been engaged in advance for Lady Dauntrey by the agent who
had let the house. There were too few; and it needed but the first
night's dinner to prove that the cook was third rate, though Lady
Dauntrey carefully referred to him as the _chef_. In addition to this
person, occasionally seen flitting about in a dingy white cap, there was
a man to wait at table and open the door--a man, Dodo said, with the
face of a sulky codfish; and a hawk-nosed, hollow-cheeked woman to "do
the rooms" and act as maid to the ladies, none of the three having
brought a maid of her own. Their hostess had said she could not put up
her guests' servants, but they might "count upon a first-rate maid in
the house." They reminded each other of this promise, the day after
their arrival, and grumbled. Secundina had as much as she could do to
keep the rooms in order; and the only other service she was able to give
the visitors was to recount gruesome stories of the villa while she made
their beds or took a top layer of dust off their dressing-tables.
According to her, the Bella Vista was the cheapest furnished house to
let in the principality, because years ago a murder had been committed
in it. A woman had been killed for the sake of her jewels by the
tenants, a husband and wife. They had kept her body in a trunk for days,
and had attempted to get out of France with it, but had been arrested on
their way to Italy. Nobody who was superstitious would live in the
house, and so it was not often let. Secundina did not know where the
murder had taken place, but believed it was in the dining-room, and that
the trunk had been kept in the cellar.

It was Dodo to whom the tale was told, and she repeated it to Mrs.
Collis and her daughter, the three having forgotten their slight
differences in making common, secret cause against the Dauntreys, or,
rather, against Lady Dauntrey; for they were inclined to like and be
sorry for her husband, pitying him because misfortune or weakness had
brought him to the pass of marrying such a woman. "You could make a
whole macadamized road out of her heart," remarked Mrs. Collis.

"It would serve her right if we all marched out of this loathsome den in
a body," said Dodo, emphatically, when they had met to talk things over
in the Collises' room. "She's a selfish cat and thinks of nobody but
herself. She won't even let the men come near us girls if she can help
it, though you and I both know perfectly well, Miss Collis, that she
hinted about the most wonderful chances of great marriages, nothing
lower than an earl at meanest. Not that you and I need look for
husbands. But that isn't the point; for anyhow, she has no business to
snap them out of our mouths. Now, she's jealous if Dom Ferdinand or the
Marquis de Casablanca so much as looks at one of us. And she's given us
the worst rooms, so she can take in other poor deluded creatures and get
more money out of them. And there isn't enough to eat. And all the eggs
and fish have had a past. And Secundina says there are black beetles as
large as chestnuts in the kitchen. Still----"

"Still," echoed Miss Collis, "Monseigneur's awfully interesting, and
it's fun being in the same house with him; though I'm afraid he's
selfish too, or he wouldn't calmly keep on his front room, when he can't
help knowing we're stuffed into back ones without any view. Of course he
_is_ a royalty, so perhaps he has his dignity to think of. But I know
an American man wouldn't do such a thing, not even if he were a
President."

"The Marquis is nice, too," said Mrs. Collis. "Lord Dauntrey tells me
his family's one of the oldest in the 'Almanach de Gotha,' whatever
_that_ is. And Monseigneur and he are both great friends of the
Dauntreys."

"Only of Lord Dauntrey," Dodo corrected her.

"Well, anyhow, they're likely to stay a while in this house, for
whatever there is of the best, they get. And they're playing Lord
Dauntrey's system with him at the Casino."

"And losing!"

"Yes. But Dom Ferdinand seems to have plenty of money."

"Secundina says the _chef_ told her it was well known that Monseigneur
hasn't a sou of his own, but borrows of people who believe in his Cause.
Then he comes here and gambles with what he gets. According to the cook,
he's a well-known figure at Monte Carlo, and sometimes calls out when
he's playing in the Rooms, 'There's my cousin's head on that gold piece.
It ought to be mine.'"

"His is a mighty good-looking head, anyhow," remarked Miss Collis
thoughtfully. She herself was not rich, but her stepfather, a Chicago
merchant, was enormously wealthy, and she was wondering whether, to give
her a chance of possible queenhood, David Collis might not open his
heart and his purse.

Dodo was at the same time asking herself what would be the smallest sum
Dom Ferdinand would consider worth looking at with a wife. Also she
contemplated the idea of impressing him with the belief that she was a
great heiress, until too late for him to change his mind in honour. But
first he must fix his mind upon her. She would have been glad to create
distrust of him in the hearts of Lottie Collis and her mother; and while
they remained at the Bella Vista in Dom Ferdinand's society Dodo decided
not to be frightened away by a few inconveniences. Nor did she wish the
story of that long-ago murder to reach his ears. Dom Ferdinand had
publicly announced that he was horribly superstitious, and perhaps he
would not stay if he knew what had happened in the dining-room. He would
think it brought bad luck to live in such a house, even if he could bear
the idea of a ghost; for he talked of little else than what one ought to
do in order to attract luck.

After a few days at Monte Carlo Lord Dauntrey began to find
acquaintances, people he had known long ago in England before he was
swallowed up in darkest Africa, or those he had met at hotels since his
marriage--hotels chosen by Lady Dauntrey for the purpose of making
useful friends. He had a certain wistful, weary charm of manner that was
somehow likable and aroused sympathy, especially in women, though it was
evident that he made no conscious effort to please.

There was a vague, floating rumour of some old, more than half-forgotten
scandal about him: an accident, giving the wrong drug when he was
studying medicine as a very young man; a death; a sad story hushed up; a
prudent disappearance from Europe, urged by annoyed aristocratic
relatives who had little money to speed his departure, but gave what
they could; professional failure in South Africa; some gambling-trouble
in Johannesburg, and a vanishing again into the unknown. Nevertheless
his title was an old one. Men of his race had loomed great in dim
historic days, and though during the last two centuries no Dauntrey had
done anything notable except lose money, sell land, go bankrupt, figure
in divorce cases or card scandals, and marry actresses, they had never
in their degeneration lost that charm which, in Charles II's day, had
won from a pretty Duchess the nickname of the "darling Dauntreys."

The present viscount was the last and perhaps the least of his race;
yet, because of his name and the lingering charm--like the sad perfume
of _pot-pourri_ clinging to a broken jar--he would have been given the
prodigal's welcome at Monte Carlo (that agreeable pound for lost
reputations) but for one drawback. The stumbling block was the woman he
had made Lady Dauntrey.

In the permanent English colony on the Riviera, with its jewelled
sprinkling of American millionaires and its glittering fringe of foreign
notables, there are a few charming women upon whom depends the fate of
newcomers. These great ladies turned down their thumbs when with
experienced eyes they looked upon Lord Dauntrey's wife, when their
trained ears heard her voice, with its curiously foreign, slightly rough
accent.

Nobody wanted or intended to turn an uncompromising back upon her. Lord
Dauntrey and she could be invited to big entertainments--the mid-season
"squashes" which wiped off boring obligations, paid compliments quickly
and easily, and pleased the outer circles of acquaintanceship. But for
intimate things, little luncheons and little dinners to the elect, she
would not "do"; which was a pity--because as a bachelor Lord Dauntrey
might have been furbished up and made to do quite well. As things stood,
the best that could happen to the pair, if they were found to play
bridge well, was to be asked to the bridge parties of the great; while
for other entertainments they would have to depend on outsiders to whom
a title was a title, no matter how tarnished or how tattered.

As Rose Winter had said to Carleton, "Who _isn't_ Who, if they can play
bridge?" But it had been important for Lady Dauntrey's plans not to be
received on sufferance. She had meant and expected to be some one in
particular. In the South African past of which people here knew nothing,
but began to gossip much, it had been her dream to marry a man who could
lead her at once to the drawing-room floor of society, and she saw no
reason in herself why she should not be a shining light there. She knew
that she was handsome, and fascinating to men, and while using her gifts
as best she could, always she had burned with an almost fierce desire
to make more of them, to be a beauty and a social star, like those women
of whom she read in the "society columns" of month-old London papers,
women not half as attractive as she. She had felt in herself the
qualities necessary for success in a different world from any she had
known; and because, during a period when she was a touring actress she
had played the parts of great ladies, she had told herself confidently
that she would know without any other teaching how great ladies should
talk, behave, and dress.

"Who _was_ she?" people asked each other, of course, when she and her
husband appeared at Monte Carlo in the beginning of the season, and Lord
Dauntrey began quietly, unobtrusively, to remind old acquaintances of
his own or of his dead uncle's (the last viscount's) existence. Nobody
could answer that question; but "_What_ was she?" seemed simpler of
solution as a puzzle, at least in a negative way; for certainly she was
not a lady. And one or two Americans who had lived in the South of their
own country insisted that she had a "touch of the tar brush." She
confessed to having passed some years in South Africa, "in the country a
good deal of the time." And something was said by gossips who did not
know much, about a first husband who had been "a doctor in some
God-forsaken hole." Perhaps that was true, people told each other; and
if so, it explained how she and Dauntrey had met; because it was
generally understood that he had been, or tried to be, a doctor in
South Africa. Thus the story went round that he had been her late
husband's assistant, and had married her when she was free.

Even the first ten days in Monte Carlo showed Lady Dauntrey that her
brilliant scheme for the season was doomed to failure: and that heart of
hers, out of which Mrs. Collis said a whole macadamized road might be
made, grew sick with disappointment and anxiety.

She had married Dauntrey--almost forced him to marry her, in fact, by
fanning the dying embers of his chivalry--because she expected through
him to realize her ambitions. Under this motive lay another--an almost
savage love, not unlike the love for an Apache of the female of his
kind. Only, Dauntrey was not an Apache at heart, and Eve Ruthven was.
Eve, of course, was not her real name. She had been Emma Cotton until
she went on the stage twenty years ago, at sixteen; but she was the type
of woman who admires and takes the name of Eve. And Mrs. Ruthven she had
been as wife and widow after the theatrical career had been abandoned in
disaster. Something in her nature would have yearned toward Dauntrey if
he had had nothing to recommend him to her ambition; but she would have
resisted her own inclination for a penniless man without a title.

What money there was between them had been saved in one way or other by
her; but, as Dodo Wardropp surmised, there was far less than Mrs.
Ruthven had persuaded Lord Dauntrey to believe. At first she had worked
upon the overmastering passion of his nature, where most other loves and
desires were burnt out or broken down: the passion for gambling. He had
told her about the roulette system which he had invented, a wonderful
system, in practising which with a roulette watch or a toy wheel, he had
managed to get through dreadful years of banishment, without dying of
boredom. She had encouraged him to hope that with her money they would
have enough capital to play the system successfully at Monte Carlo, and
win fortune in a way which for long had been the dream of his life, as
hers had been to become a personage in "real society."

With five thousand pounds, Lord Dauntrey was confident that he could win
through the worst possible slide the system was likely to experience,
playing with louis stakes. Mrs. Ruthven mentioned that she had eight
thousand pounds. After he had asked her to marry him, and she had said
yes, and told everybody she knew, about the engagement--including
newspaper men in Johannesburg--Dauntrey discovered that the figure she
had mentioned was in hundreds, not thousands. But she sobbed out a
passionate confession, saying she had lied because she loved him: and
they could still go to Monte Carlo, with a plan she had, and try the
system with five-franc pieces instead of louis.

It was a long time since any one had loved Dauntrey. He was lonely, and
hated to hurt a woman. Besides, five-franc pieces were better than
nothing, and he was sick to death of South Africa.

They had got through the spring and summer in England partly on their
wits, partly through impressing landlords and travelling nonentities
with their social importance, and partly through their successes at
bridge. For they both played bridge extremely well, too well, it had
once or twice been said of Lord Dauntrey in South Africa.

Lady Dauntrey's "plan" was to get together as many paying guests as
possible, enlist their interest in the "system," or, if they could not
be persuaded into that, to earn for herself something even better than
board-money, by introducing rich girls to men of title. She had not
doubted her opportunities for thrusting her female pigeons into society,
or of getting hold of young foreign aristocrats, perhaps even
Englishmen, who were "out for dollars," as her girls would be out for
dukes--or the next best thing after dukes. And she had begun well.

The house she had secured was cheap; and she brought with her from
England three women who would alone pay more than enough to keep it up.
Her husband's friend, Dom Ferdinand de Trevanna, and his faithful
follower, the Marquis de Casablanca, had fulfilled a promise to meet
them at Monte Carlo on the day after their arrival at the villa. Several
other guests were expected--the young widow of a rich stockbroker; two
Jewish heiresses who still called themselves girls; an elderly,
impecunious English earl; an Austrian count who had failed to find a
wife in England, and a naval lieutenant who was heir to an impoverished
baronetcy: a set of people sure to be congenial, because each wanted
something which another could give. Everything ought to have been
satisfactory, even from Dauntrey's point of view, for he had interested
all the men in his system, and what money they could spare would be put
into it; he would play for the "syndicate"; or if the men preferred
gambling themselves, they must give him something for the system which
he was prepared to teach.

When she arrived at Monte Carlo on a beautiful day of sunshine, which
seemed a good omen, Eve Dauntrey believed that at last luck had turned
for her. She thought that the thing she had longed for, year after year,
was coming at last; and she was proud of the plan she had made, proud of
the way in which she had worked it out. But the moment she entered the
villa in the Condamine, her spirits were damped almost as if, by some
monkey-trick, a jug of cold water had been upset on her head as the door
opened to let her in. She felt the same depression fall upon the minds
of the others, as shadows can be seen to move and grow long at sunset.
She knew that the Collises and Dodo Wardropp were going to be
dissatisfied, and that they would talk against the house and their
accommodation in it, behind her back, saying that she had deliberately
deceived them.

Still, there were Dom Ferdinand and Casablanca. There was no deceit
where they were concerned. They wanted to meet girls with money, and
Dodo and Lottie wanted to meet men of title. There ought to be no danger
that any members of this party would leave solely because the cooking
was poor and the rooms badly furnished; and it was really Eve's wish to
throw the four together, so that they need not miss certain things which
lacked in her promised programme. But she had counted without herself.
It was not in her to surrender any men who might be near, to other
women, even when surrendering them would be to her advantage. In her
heart she despised Lottie Collis and Dodo Wardropp, and she had to try
her own weapons against theirs. She could not help this, and did it
almost unconsciously.

Throughout her whole life since she was fifteen she had lived by and
sometimes fallen by the fascination she had for men; not all men, but
many, and most of those whose type appealed to her. She could never
resist testing its power, even now when she loved the man she had
married, and would ruthlessly have sacrificed any other for him. She
tried it upon Dom Ferdinand and the Marquis de Casablanca. They
struggled, because they wished to make an impression upon the two girls
in the house; but they could not hold out against the allurement of the
primitive woman in Lady Dauntrey, and though they paid the girls
compliments and went about with them docilely, they looked at Eve. And
the girls saw not only the looks, but the weapons which Lady Dauntrey
used to win the men for herself, when she ought to have been furthering
her guests' interests. They began to hate her, and soon realized that
she would not be able to introduce them to the "best set" at Monte
Carlo, as she had promised. Still they stayed on, hoping a little, for
other people were expected to join the house party, and there was a
chance yet of something better. Besides, they found a small and bitter
pleasure in seeing the disappointment and humiliation of the woman who
had been so sure of herself, and had, by the force of her own strong
personality, made them sure of her. Dodo and the Collises, travelling
out of their own country for the first time, had not--as they
acknowledged to each other now--"known the difference in foreigners." It
was only by the light in other women's eyes--women of good birth and
breeding--that they began to see Lady Dauntrey as she was, common, bold,
not a lady, one whom ladies would not care to receive.

Dodo also was common, and knew herself to be "nobody" at home, but she
had thought that she might "go down in England," if she could have the
right introductions. Now she saw that her money was being wasted at the
start; for though the Dauntreys attracted a certain set round them,
instinctively she, as well as the Collises, felt that it was not the
right set.

Even when, after ten days of Monte Carlo, the Villa Bella Vista was full
of the Dauntreys' paying guests, a cold sense of insecurity and trouble
to come, which would be worse by and by than the bitter disappointment
of the present, lay heavy upon Eve's heart. Her ménage was
uncomfortable, and people were threatening to go. Every day nearly she
had a "scene" with some one, a guest or a servant, or both. Mrs. Collis
had burst into tears at a luncheon in honour of a rich Jewish
money-lender, because she thought herself insulted. She had been given a
kitchen dish-towel instead of a napkin, and had spoiled the party by
complaining of it. The stupid creature! As if some one were not obliged
to put up with the thing, since there were not enough napkins to go
round for so many! Lady Dauntrey had explained that she could not take
the dish-towel herself, as Monseigneur was on her right hand, Mr.
Holbein on her left. But even the fact that Lord Dauntrey contented
himself with a dust cloth did not appease Mrs. Collis, who said it was
only the last feather on the top of other grievances. And Dodo was
furious because, whenever Lady Dauntrey entertained, the servants were
so busy that she had to make her own bed, or see it lie tumbled just as
she had got out of it, until evening. Eve's violent temper had got the
better of her then, and she had flung her true opinion of Miss Wardropp
into the pretty painted face. "Persons who've never had anything decent
at home always complain more than any one else in other people's
houses," she had said; and Dodo had retorted with compliments of the
same kind.

Miss Wardropp often wondered if Lady Dauntrey knew the history of the
Villa Bella Vista. She did know, the agent having felt obliged to
confess, lest later she might hear the story and try to get out of her
bargain on the strength of it. But he had eloquently explained that if
there were no drawback the house--being a large one with many
rooms--would have commanded twice the price at which he could offer it
to her ladyship. He had added that the murder, committed long ago, had
been almost forgotten by every one except old inhabitants; and as the
villa had been occupied by several tenants since its evil days, and
thoroughly redecorated, it need no longer have disagreeable associations
even for the most sensitive minds.

Lady Dauntrey's mind was not sensitive. She had hoped that her guests
would not hear the tale, and she had thought that she would not care
herself. Perhaps she would not have cared, if everything had gone as
well with her and her husband as they had expected, for then she would
have been cheerful, and could have laughed at superstition. But when the
people she wanted to know would not know her, when Dauntrey's system did
not work as it had worked on the toy roulette, when the servants stole,
or left without notice, and when the guests quarrelled and complained,
she began to feel that there was a curse upon the house. She fancied
that, if she had not taken it, but had run larger risks and chosen a
more expensive villa, perhaps things would have been better.

In spite of herself she thought a great deal about the man and the
woman who had done the murder. From the agent she had heard no details,
and though the case had made a great sensation at the time it happened,
years ago, she had been far away in South Africa, and had not given much
attention to it. Some sly hints of Secundina's, however, had shown her
that the servants knew, and she had not been able to resist asking
questions. Afterward she could not put out of her head Secundina's
description of the dreadful couple.

The man had been of good birth, the woman _bourgeoise_, but clever. They
had gambled and made money, eventually losing it again, and all their
capital besides. Then they had grown desperate, at their wits' end, and
they had killed a woman who trusted and thought of them as her friends.
At night, when Eve lay awake worrying, as she often did--especially when
Dauntrey had been losing--she seemed to see the two haggard faces
staring at her hopelessly, growing and taking shape in the darkness.
Worse than all, she seemed to understand something in their eyes which
they wished to make her understand. She wondered if, by any chance, the
room where she and her husband slept had been theirs, and if between
these walls they had talked over the murder before committing it. She
imagined how they had felt, how they had hated and rebelled against the
idea at first, then accepted it as the one thing left to do. The story
was that the woman had persuaded the man to consent, though he had
refused at first.

One day, after a worse quarrel than any that had gone before, Mrs.
Collis left with Lottie, packing up in a hurry, and driving off to a
hotel. This gave Lady Dauntrey an empty room; and already Dodo had twice
vowed that she too would go. Now, in all probability the Collises would
persuade her to join them; and perhaps an epidemic of departure would
sweep through the villa. Lord Dauntrey had suffered a serious setback;
and all the money received from the guests was needed to retrieve this
accident. Dom Ferdinand had lost so much that he could not pay at all
until a further remittance came to him; and as odd stories of the
household had leaked out through dissatisfied servants, several
tradesmen had begun to make themselves objectionable. Strangers are not
trusted in the shops at Monte Carlo, and the butcher threatened to send
no more meat to the Bella Vista unless he were paid what was owing.

This happened when the Dauntreys had been in their villa three weeks;
and that same afternoon at the Casino Lady Dauntrey spoke to Mary Grant.
It was then two days before Christmas.

Often she had looked at Mary and felt inclined to speak, but always
something had happened to prevent, or else Dodo or the Collises had been
near, and she had known that they would say to each other, "Look at the
woman making up to that girl now because she's winning such a lot. Any
one who's got money is good enough for her." But this time the
conversation came about easily, as though it were meant to be. She was
watching Mary's play, standing behind the next chair. Suddenly a man
occupying the chair got up and went away from the table. Instantly Lady
Dauntrey dropped into the vacant place, as if she had been waiting for
it.

She did not really wish to play, though she liked gambling, for she had
been unlucky in the small game she had attempted, and had grown
cautious, anxious to keep what she had. But on a crowded night it is
almost obligatory to play if one has annexed a chair which many people
would like to have. Eve reluctantly took out two louis, the only coins
in her imitation gold bag. She was not near a croupier, and having seen
already that a few five-franc pieces lay among her neighbour's gold and
notes, she asked Mary with a pleasant smile if she would mind changing a
louis for her. "I'm not lucky, like you," she said, "so I'm afraid to
play with gold."

Mary pushed four five-franc pieces along the table, and would have been
only too glad not to accept the gold in exchange, but of course she
could not make a present of money to Lady Dauntrey. "I shall be
delighted," she said.

"You're sure you're not wanting your silver?" Eve inquired.

"Oh, no, thank you. I sometimes put five francs on zero _en plein_ to
protect half a stake on a simple chance," Mary explained, now thoroughly
conversant with every intricacy of the game that had been so kind to
her. "But zero's been up three times in half an hour, so I don't think I
shall bother with it again for a while. And, anyhow, I'm not playing for
a few minutes. Sometimes I feel as if I must wait for an inspiration."

"I wish I ever had one!" sighed Lady Dauntrey, hesitating over one of
her big silver coins. "Do tell me where to put this. You're so
wonderful, you might bring even me a stroke of luck."

"But I should be so distressed if I made you lose," Mary said, as
gravely as if the five-franc piece in question had been a _mille_ note.
"But--well--if it were mine, I rather think I should try ten. I've no
inspiration for myself this time; but I seem to see ten floating in the
air around you, and that's the way my inspirations come. I see numbers
or colours, and then I play on them."

"I'll try it!" Eve exclaimed. "But will you put the money on for me? I
want all your luck, and none of my own."

Mary pushed the five-franc piece on to the number 10, using a rake of
her own which Dick Carleton had given her. It was a glorified rake,
which he had ordered specially for her, made of ebony with the initials
"M. G." set into it in little sapphires, her favourite stones.

Ten came up, and Lady Dauntrey was enchanted. She even felt an impulse
of gratitude, and a superstitious conviction that this girl would be for
her a bringer of good fortune.

"I've so often watched your play, and wanted to tell you how much I
admired it," she said, "but I never quite had the courage."

Lady Dauntrey did not look like a woman who would lack courage for
anything she wished to do, but Mary saw no reason to disbelieve her
word, and indeed did not judge or criticise at all, except by instinct;
and people had only to look sad or complain of their ill luck to arouse
a sympathy stronger than any instinct against them.

"I think it's very nice of you to speak," she replied, politely. Both
murmured in subdued tones, in order not to annoy other players.

"I recognized you, of course, the first time I saw you in the Casino,"
Lady Dauntrey went on, "as the lovely girl who came south in the train
with us. We've all been longing to know you."

This was untrue. Anxious to propitiate Society as far as possible, Eve
had avoided recognizing Mary, who might be looked upon as a doubtful
person--a young girl, always strikingly dressed, living alone at a
fashionable and gay hotel, playing high at the Casino, and picking up
odd acquaintances. But now Lady Dauntrey was abandoning all hope that
Society might let her pass over its threshold, and she was willing to
defy it for the sake of money. This girl was at least a lady, which Dodo
was not, nor was Mrs. Ernstein, the stockbroker's widow. Eve thought it
would be a good thing if Miss Grant could be persuaded to come and stay
at the Villa Bella Vista in the room left vacant by the Collises. Mary
was rather flattered, but she now had an inspiration to play, and did
not want to go on talking. "I think ten will come up again, or else
eleven," she said, with the misty look in her eyes which was always
there at the Casino, or when her thoughts were intent on gambling. "I
shall play the two numbers _à cheval_."

She put on a maximum, Lady Dauntrey hastily placing a five-franc piece,
not on the _cheval_, but more timidly on the six numbers of which ten
and eleven were two. Mary lost and Eve won, for thirteen came up. The
same thing happened several times in succession. If Mary chose a number,
Lady Dauntrey included it in a _transversale simple_, or took the dozen
in which it was. Mary invariably lost, while she won. It was as if she
gave Mary bad luck, while Mary brought her good fortune, for never had
Mary so often lost, never had Eve won so often in succession.

At last all the money which Mary had brought with her was exhausted, and
Lady Dauntrey, who had raked in more than twenty louis, offered
laughingly to lend her something to go on with. But Mary thanked her and
refused, in spite of the tradition of the tables that borrowed money
brings back good luck.

"I'm rather tired, and my head aches a little," she said. "I think I'll
go home."

Eve rose also. "You call the Hôtel de Paris 'home?'" she asked.

"I begin to feel quite at home," Mary answered. "I've been there nearly
three weeks, and it seems longer."

They walked together out of the bright room of the large decorative
picture called jestingly "The Three Disgraces," on through the Salle
Schmidt, and so to the atrium. "If you don't mind," said Lady Dauntrey,
"I'll go with you as far as your hotel. There's a hat in a shop round
the corner I've been dying for. Now, thanks to the luck you've brought
me, I shall treat myself to it, as a kind of Christmas present. You
know, day after to-morrow will be Christmas. Surely you'll be rather
lonely in your 'home' then, or have you friends who are going to take
you away for the day?"

"No," Mary replied, as they went down the steps of the Casino. "No one
has mentioned Christmas. I suppose people don't think as much about
celebrating Christmas here, where it's almost like summer. Besides, I
have very few friends."

"Haven't you made a good many acquaintances?"

"Not many. Four or five. One lady has called--I think she is the wife of
the chaplain of the Church of England--but I was out, and I haven't
returned her visit yet. One seems to have so little time here! And the
curé of Roquebrune, the village on the hill, has been--twice. I was out
both times. I'm always out, I'm afraid. But that reminds me, I must send
him a Christmas present for his church."

"I should be delighted if you'd dine with us on Christmas night," said
Lady Dauntrey, cordially. "Do! At eight o'clock. We have such a merry
party with us--all young, or if not young they feel so, which is the
true Christmas spirit."

"You're very kind----" Mary began; but suspecting hesitation, Lady
Dauntrey broke in. "That's settled, then. I'm _so_ pleased! And would
you care to go to a dance on Christmas eve?--a rather wonderful dance it
will be, on board a big yacht in the harbour. You must have noticed
her--_White Lady_ her name is--and she belongs to Mr. Samuel Holbein,
the South African millionaire. You've heard of him, of course. His wife
and daughter are on board, and they've begged me to bring as many girls
to the dance as I can, for there'll be a lot of men. You know there are
heaps more young men about here than there are girls--so unusual except
at Monte Carlo."

"A dance on a yacht!" Mary echoed. The idea tempted her, though she
hardly felt friendly enough yet with Lady Dauntrey to accept two
invitations from her at once. "It sounds interesting."

"It will be. Do say yes. I shall love to chaperon you."

They were at the steps of the Hôtel de Paris.

"Then I say 'yes,'" answered Mary, "and thank you!"

In a few minutes it was all arranged. And Lady Dauntrey bade Miss Grant
goodbye, gayly, calling her a "mascotte." She turned the corner as if to
go to the shop of the hats. But there was no hat there which she
particularly wanted. She had merely sought an excuse to walk as far as
the Hôtel de Paris with Mary. When the girl had disappeared behind the
glass doors, Eve went back quickly to the Casino, where her husband was
playing. She could not bear to be long away from him when he was there.
It was agony not to know whether he had lost or won.




XV


After the aviation week Vanno Della Robbia still had the excuse of
waiting for Prince Angelo and his bride. It was as well therefore to be
at Monte Carlo as anywhere else in the neighbourhood of the villa they
would occupy at Cap Martin.

They had been detained in England by a "command" visit to royalty, but
would soon come to the Riviera. In a letter Angelo asked his younger
brother to go over to Cap Martin and look at the house, which Vanno did:
and prolonging his excursion to the ruined, historic convent on the Cap,
met Miss Grant strolling there with Jim Schuyler and Dick Carleton. He
passed near enough to hear that Schuyler was telling the legend of the
place: how the nuns played a joke on the men of Roquebrune, the
appointed guardians of their safety, by ringing the alarm bell to see if
the soldiers of the castle town on the hill would indeed turn out to the
rescue. How the very night after the men had run down in vain, the bell
pealed out again, and the guardians remained snugly in their beds, only
to hear next day that this time the alarm had been real. Saracens had
sacked the convent, carried off all the young and pretty nuns, and
murdered the old ones.

Schuyler and Carleton both bowed to Vanno, whom they had met several
times during the "flying week" at Nice, and Schuyler interrupted his
story long enough to say to Mary, "That's Prince Giovanni Della Robbia,
who invented the parachute Rongier tested so successfully the other day.
Dick met him once in Egypt. He goes star-gazing in the desert, I
believe, consorting with Arabs, and learning all sorts of Eastern
_patois_."

Neither Vanno (who caught the sound of his name in passing) nor Schuyler
guessed the half-reluctant interest with which Mary heard the name of
her sulky neighbour at the Hôtel de Paris, and learned those few details
of his life.

Vanno had been more than once to Roquebrune since the first day, and
knew that the curé had called twice upon Miss Grant, without finding her
at home. He knew, too, that the priest had received no visit from her in
return; nor had he again seen or heard of the "strange lady" who had
come to question him about Prince Angelo.

Vanno was deeply disappointed at the failure of his plan, and feared
that Mary wished to avoid knowing the priest; otherwise she might at
least have gone to church at Roquebrune. She made other excursions, when
she could tear herself from the Casino, on irresistibly bright
afternoons. Not only had he seen her at Cap Martin, but in Nice and in
Mentone; once, motoring into Italy with people whose faces were strange
to Vanno, and unpromising; and with the same party again in the
beautiful garden at Beaulieu, where it is fashionable to drink tea and
watch the sunset. But she did not make time to go to Roquebrune, and
show a little graceful gratitude for the curé's kindly interest.

The desire grew stronger in Vanno to speak to her, to know something of
her besides the perhaps deceiving beauty of her face, but he clung in
firmness or obstinacy to the resolve of which he had told his friend. He
knew that he could not help her as the curé might, and secretly he
feared himself. Once the ice was broken in making her acquaintance, he
was not sure that he could still be strong.

But one afternoon he had been taking a long walk alone, as was his
custom every day. Coming down from a Ligurian fort, by an old mule track
that ended on the upper Corniche road, he saw an automobile which had
stopped at the foot of the path. A girl in a rose-red motor-bonnet and a
moleskin coat was standing up in the car, her eyes raised, her chin
lifted like a flower tilted in its stem, intent on something which Vanno
could not see. The girl was Miss Grant, and Vanno's heart gave a bound,
then seemed to contract at sight of her, so near him and alone.

The automobile was drawn up so close to the descending mule path that
Vanno saw it would be impossible to pass unless the chauffeur started
the engine and moved the car on a little; but rather than this should be
necessary, he halted abruptly a few yards above the level of the road.

The rattle of footsteps on rough cobbles roused Mary from her study of
the thing which Vanno could not see. She glanced up, expecting some
peasant who would want to pass her car. At sight of the Prince halted on
the path and looking down into her uplifted face, she blushed. It was
just such a blush as had dyed her cheeks painfully the night when he
frowned in answer to her friendly smile; and Vanno knew that she was
thinking of it. The remorse he had suffered then, when too late, came
back to him. If she had not blushed now in the same childlike, hurt way,
he was sure that he could have kept to his resolution not to speak. He
would simply have stood still, gazing away into distance until she was
ready to go on; or at most he would have said with cool politeness,
"Please don't let me disturb you. I am in no hurry to pass." But in an
instant it rushed over him that here was his chance to atone for an
unkindness, and that if he did not quickly seize it he would be sorry
all the rest of his life. Besides, it flashed into his mind that by
speaking of a certain thing he could easily lead up to the subject of
the curé. He wanted very much to know whether she attached any
importance to the visits of the priest.

Vanno took off his hat to Mary, bowing gravely. He had guessed her
reason for bringing the car to rest at this place, and it gave him his
excuse. A step or two farther down the mule path brought him near enough
to speak without raising his voice. "I think," he said, "you must have
stopped here to look at the marble tablet set in the rock. Will you let
me tell you something about it--unless you know its history already?"

"I thank you. I don't know. I was wondering about it." Mary stammered a
little, blushing very deeply, partly with embarrassment--though she was
not embarrassed when other strangers spoke to her--partly in surprise at
hearing the "Roman Prince" speak English like an Englishman. "Please do
tell me."

Before he spoke, she had given a quick order to the chauffeur to move on
and leave the end of the mule path free. Now the heart of the motor
began to beat, and the car rolled a few feet farther on. Vanno came out
into the thick white dust of the much-travelled road, and he and Mary
could both look up to the tablet he had mentioned.

It was an oblong piece of marble, set high on the face of gray rock
which on one side walled the upper Corniche, Napoleon's road. On it was
the curious inscription: "Remember eternal at my heart. February, 1881."

"It is so strange," Mary said, trying to seem at ease, and not show the
slightest emotion. It was ridiculous to feel emotion! Yet she could not
help being absurdly happy, because this man who had snubbed her once and
apparently disapproved her always was speaking to her of his own accord,
in kindness.

"'Remember eternal at my heart?' It's like the English of a person not
English. But why did he not have the words put in his own language,
which he knew?"

"That is what everybody wonders," Vanno said, finding it as difficult as
Mary found it, not to show that this conversation was of immense,
exciting importance. "It puzzled me so much when I first came this way
that I couldn't get it out of my head. I asked a friend who has lived
for years not many miles away, if he could tell me what it meant."

"And could he tell you?"

"He told me a story which he believed but would not vouch for. Only, a
very old inhabitant told it to him. It appeals to me as true. It must be
true." A new warmth stole into Vanno's voice as he spoke. They had both
been looking up at the tablet on the rock, but as that thrill like a
chord on a violin struck her ear, Mary turned to him. Their eyes met, as
they had so often met, but to-day there was no coldness in Vanno's, or
hurt pride in Mary's.

"Can you think of any reason for the bad English?" he asked. He longed
to hear what she would say.

She thought for a minute. "Could it be," she reflected aloud, "that the
person who had the tablet put up associated this place with some one who
was English--maybe a woman, if he was a man--and so he wanted to use her
language, not his own?"

"You have guessed right!" exclaimed Vanno, boyishly delighted with her
intuition. "He was an Italian. He loved an English girl." The romantic
dark eyes which had so often burned with gloomy fire in looking at her
burned with a different flame for an instant; then quickly, as if with a
common impulse, the girl and the man tore their looks apart. "They met
here on the Riviera," Vanno went on, not quite steadily. "It was at this
spot they first found out that they loved each other, according to the
story of my friend."

He paused involuntarily. His mouth was dry. When he began to explain the
tablet, he had not realized what it would be like to tell the story to
this girl at this place. It was as if some other voice, talking above
his with his words, gave a meaning and an emphasis which must be
unmistakable to her. It was hard to go on, for with each sentence he
would surely stumble deeper into difficulty. Yet the silence was
electrical. Unsaid things seemed rustling in ambush. He dared not look
again at Mary, and he felt that she dared not look at him. But it was
necessary to go on, and he took up the narrative clumsily, fearing to
tangle the thread.

"The Italian asked the girl to marry him--here, where we stand. And they
were engaged. But in a few weeks or months something happened. My friend
is not sure whether she died, or whether some one came between them. He
is sure only that they parted. And afterward the man had this tablet put
up to mark the spot where he had lived his happiest hour."

"It is a sad story," Mary said.

"Yes. It is sad. But it is beautiful, too. He was faithful. 'Remember
eternal at my heart.'"

"Perhaps those were the very words he spoke to her here, when--they
loved each other and he was trying to talk in her language."

"I thought of that, too. It's almost certain he said these words, to
assure her that he could never forget this place."

"No one else can forget, who knows the story. It makes the tablet seem
haunted."

"Would you be afraid to see the ghosts of those lovers?" Vanno asked.

"No," Mary answered. "For if he too is dead--and 1881 is quite a long
time ago!--they must be happy together now. Happy ghosts would try to
give happiness to others."

Instantly the sentiment was uttered Mary regretted it. She feared that
the man might think she associated herself with him in some vague hope
of happiness. "I trust at least," she hurried on, "that the story of the
lovers is true."

"It was the curé of Roquebrune who told it to me. He thinks it more
probable than two or three other tales," Vanno said, speaking slowly, to
impress the name of his informant upon the girl. "The curé is a most
interesting man. Perhaps you've met him?" He asked this question
doubtfully, lest Mary should guess that it was to him she owed the
curé's visits; but she was unsuspicious.

"No. He called on me when I was out. I don't know why he came," she
said. She looked a little guilty, because she would have gone up to the
church of Roquebrune after the second call if she had not been afraid
that the curé had been sent to see her by some one at home who had found
out that she was on the Riviera. Vanno, misunderstanding her change of
expression, said no more, though he had begun his story with the
intention of leading up to this. They parted with polite thanks from
Mary for his information, thanks which seemed banal, a strange
anti-climax coming after the story of the lovers. Yet they went away
from one another with an aftermath of their first unreasoning happiness
still lingering in their hearts. That night at dinner they bowed to each
other slightly; and during the week that followed before Christmas eve,
sometimes Vanno almost believed in the girl; sometimes he lost hope of
her, and was plunged from his unreasoning happiness to the dark depths
of a still more unreasoning despair. But he knew that she thought of
him. He saw it in her eyes, or in the turn of her head if she
ostentatiously looked away from him. And he did not know whether he were
glad or sorry, for he saw no good that could come of what he began to
call his infatuation.

The morning of Christmas eve arrived, and with it a telegram to say that
Angelo and his bride Marie were delayed again until the eve of New
Year's Day, the great fête of France. Vanno was disappointed, for he had
expected them that night, and would have liked to be with them on
Christmas. He resolved to invite the curé to dine with him on Christmas
night; and meanwhile, strolling on the Casino terrace in the hope of
seeing Mary, he ran across Jean Rongier, the airman, the young French
baron who had achieved a sensational success at Nice for the new Della
Robbia parachute. On the strength of this feat the two had become good
friends, and Vanno had been up several times in Rongier's Bleriot
monoplane.

"A favour, _mon ami_," Rongier began as they met. "I was on the point of
calling at your hotel, to ask it of you. Go with me to-night to a dance
on board the big yacht _White Lady_, that you can see down there in the
harbour."

"Many thanks, but no!" laughed Vanno. "I haven't danced since I was
twenty; and even if I had I don't know _White Lady's_ owner."

"That is nothing," said Rongier. "Nobody knows him, but every one is
going--that is, all the men we know are going; and you will go, to
please me."

"I'd do a good deal to please you, but not that," Vanno persisted.

"If I tell you a lady whom I am anxious--particularly anxious--to
please, will be angry with me if you refuse? She makes it a point that I
bring you."

"That's a different matter," said Vanno good-naturedly. "I suppose she
doesn't make it a point for me to stay through the whole evening?"

"You can settle that with her," Rongier reassured him. "I thought you
wouldn't fail me. She's heard about your blue comet and your yellow
desert, and your new parachute, and has probably mixed them all up; but
the result is that she wants to meet you."

"Very kind. I wish I could do the comet and the desert the same credit
you do the parachute. But who is 'She'?"

"Miss Holbein, the daughter of the yacht's owner. English people here, I
understand, won't know her father because he was once an I. D. B. and is
now a money-lender; but thank heaven we who have Latin blood in our
veins are neither snobs nor hypocrites. By the way, Holbein called some
fellow at the Casino a 'snob' the other night, and the man returned, 'If
I were a snob, I wouldn't know you.' Holbein thought it so smart he goes
about repeating the story against himself, which proves he balances his
millions with a sense of humour. Miss Holbein is handsome. Jewesses can
be the most beautiful women in the world, don't you think? and though
she is snubbed by the _grandes dames_ here and perhaps elsewhere, I
notice that snubs generally come home to roost. She will have all the
millions one day, and she is clever enough to pay people back in their
own coin--not coin that she would miss in spending. And she is clever
enough to be Madame la Baronne Rongier, wife to the idol of the French
people, if she thinks it worth while! Just for the moment, though, I am
on my probation. I dare refuse her nothing she wants, and she wants
Prince Giovanni Della Robbia at her mother's dance."

"That unworthy person is at her service," Vanno said, bored at the
prospect, but willing to please his friend.

        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

Mrs. Ernstein and Dodo Wardropp were eagerly looking forward to the
Christmas eve dance on board _White Lady_. Mrs. Collis and Lottie had
been looking forward to it too; and after they went from the villa they
wrote almost humbly to ask Mrs. Holbein if they might still come, though
they were no longer with her friend Lady Dauntrey. To their joy and
surprise she had written back cordially to say she hoped most certainly
they would come, and bring friends. She had seemed far from cordial to
them or anybody else when lunching at the Villa Bella Vista on the
unfortunate occasion of the dish-towel; indeed, she had been lymphatic,
and had scarcely troubled to speak to any one; but now the Collises
thought they had misjudged her.

This was the first entertainment for which Lady Dauntrey had contrived
to secure invitations for her guests; and Dodo, Mrs. Ernstein, and the
Collises had been delightedly telling every one they knew (not a large
number) that they were going to the _White Lady_ dance. It was a
pleasure at last to be able to tell of something happening to them which
might excite envy. So far, they had felt that as the Dauntreys' guests
they were being pitied or laughed at by those they would have liked to
impress.

There was no doubt that the Holbeins, being enormously rich, would do
everything very well; and Lady Dauntrey remarked more than once that
Mrs. Holbein had told her people were "simply crawling" for invitations.

Not till the last moment did Eve inform any one that she was taking Miss
Grant, for she had not yet mentioned speaking to her the other day at
the Casino. It was arranged that, the villa being much nearer than the
Hôtel de Paris to the yacht, Mary should call for her chaperon;
therefore, as Eve had said nothing, it was a great surprise when the
house party had assembled in the drawing-room, putting on their wraps
and buttoning their gloves, to hear the "sulky codfish" announce Miss
Grant.

Mary walked into the dull drab room in a dress which appeared to be made
entirely of fine gold tissue, her hair banded with a wreath of diamond
laurel leaves, which made her look extraordinarily Greek and classic.

No one else, not even the rich Mrs. Ernstein, had a dress which compared
to this, and Mary's entrance was received in shocked silence by the
ladies, with the exception of Eve, who greeted her "mascotte" warmly,
with compliments.

Lady Dauntrey's efforts to make the drawing-room more habitable before
Mary saw it would have seemed almost pathetic to any one who understood;
and they had seemed pathetic to Lord Dauntrey. He was more or less in
her confidence, and still under her spell. It was for him, she had said,
that she wanted to secure a new paying-guest who had plenty of money to
put into the "system," and who loved gambling better than anything
else. He had helped Eve and the codfish decorate both drawing-room and
dining-room for Christmas, in order that Mary might take a fancy to the
place, and consent to come as a boarder. There were a good many pine
branches pinned on to curtains and stuck into huge, ugly Japanese vases,
a few wreaths hiding damp or dirty patches on the wall. Crookedly hung
pictures had been straightened; some Christmas magazines were lying
about, and bowls of chrysanthemums relieved the room of its wonted
gloom. It really had almost a festive air; and after her rather lonely
life at the hotel, the place and the people seemed pleasant to Mary. She
was so enchanted with a little shivering marmoset, which Miss Wardropp
had bought of a wandering monkey-merchant in the Galerie Charles Trois,
that Dodo forgave her the wonderful dress and filet, if she did not
quite forgive Lady Dauntrey the surprise. Then Mrs. Ernstein produced
two trained sparrows, which she called her "mosquito hawks" and took
with her everywhere. Mary told them both about an adorable blue frog
named Hilda which she had bought at a Mentone china-shop; and in
comparing pets the atmosphere cleared. They all started off in cabs for
the harbour and _White Lady's_ slip, where a motor-launch from the yacht
would meet them; and Mary made friends with Dom Ferdinand, who was the
only man in the carriage with her and Lady Dauntrey.

Arriving at the slip they found Major Norwood and the Maharajah of
Indorwana also waiting for the launch, with Captain Hannaford; and Mary
introduced all three to the party from the Villa Bella Vista, whom they
did not yet know. Then came Dick Carleton, alone, for Schuyler had
firmly refused to sacrifice himself on the altar of friendship, and half
a dozen smart, merry little officers of the Chasseurs Alpins, stationed
at Mentone, and up at the lonely fort on Mont Agel. By this time it was
late, for Lady Dauntrey wished to make a dramatic entry after most of
the guests had already come on board, and the wish was more than
granted. She, with her gorgeous widow and the two girls, attended by
fifteen men, burst upon the crowd, who, for the best of reasons, had not
yet begun to dance. Besides Mrs. Holbein and her daughter, there was not
another woman present until the party from the Villa Bella Vista
appeared.

Seldom could there have been a more curious scene, upon a magnificently
appointed yacht, decorated for a dance. Already, when Lady Dauntrey and
her impromptu train arrived, forty or fifty men were assembled on a deck
screened in by flags and masses of palms and flowers. A Hungarian band
imported from Paris was playing, not dance music, for that would have
been a mockery in the circumstances, but gay marches and lively airs to
cheer drooping spirits. Of all the women invited (some of whom Mrs.
Holbein scarcely knew) only Lady Dauntrey and her house-party had
accepted, for word had gone forth from the Elect that, in good American
slang, the notorious Jew money-lender and his common wife were "the
limit." As for the girl, she did not count, except in cash. Now, when it
was too late, Mrs. Holbein desperately regretted that she had slighted
some of her old friends, who had once been good enough for her to know,
and who would have flocked to her dance gladly. There were plenty of
them scattered about between San Remo and Nice, who were at this moment
feeling aggrieved by the Holbeins' neglect. If only they had been
bidden, these contemptuously amused men would have had partners, even
though the list of names in the society papers might have excited some
derision. Mrs. Holbein had aimed high and overshot the mark. The result
was tragic. And though her vulgar nature, writhing in humiliation,
judged others by itself and believed all to be laughing maliciously,
there were some who could not laugh.

Vanno Della Robbia detested vulgar people, and had disliked the idea of
coming to the dance; but now that he was here, on their beautiful yacht,
he pitied the wretched Holbeins so intensely that he felt physically
ill. The man, with fiercely shining eyes and hawk nose, hunching up his
round shoulders as he clenched and unclenched his pudgy hands, deeply
hidden in his pockets, was horribly pathetic to Vanno, who tried not to
see the little bright beads that oozed out of the tight-skinned
forehead. Even more pathetic was the woman, blazing in 20,000
diamond-power, haggard under her rouged smile, her large uncovered back
and breast heaving, her fat, ungloved hands mere bunches of fingers and
rings. The girl did not so much matter. She was young and handsome, her
moustache as yet but the shadow of a coming event; and the affair was
not so tragic to her since she had the attention of Rongier and plenty
of other men. But Vanno had seen such faces and figures as those of Sam
Holbein and his wife in dusky shops at Constantine. They had been
happier and more at home there.

Disgustedly he knew that it comforted the woman to be talking with
Prince Giovanni Della Robbia, yet he gave the comfort and spread it
thickly for her by showing deference, listening patiently to desperate
boastings of her splendid possessions: her house in Park Lane, the
castle "Sam" had bought in Fifeshire. "I am a county lady _there_, I can
tell you, Prince!" she said, with a giggle that just escaped being a
sob. "I hope you will come to my ball at Dornock Castle next August, in
the Games Week, your Highness; all the men in kilts and mostly with
titles; our own family pipers, never less than six, playing for the
reels. My daughter has taken lessons, and I tell you she can give points
to some of those Calvanistic cats with Macs to their names, and a lot of
rot about clans, who think just because they're Scotch they're
_everybody_. Why, some of the old nobility up there have got such poor,
degenerated taste in decoration, they have nasty plaid carpets and
curtains all over their houses. _We_ had a firm from Paris send their
best men to do our castle over new from cellar to attic, Empire and
Louis. It's an example to some of those stuck-up Scotch earls and their
prim countesses. If _I_ had a title I'd live up to it!"

"You seem to do very well without," Vanno said.

"Well, we like to show them what's what. And I shouldn't wonder if my
daughter would attract one into the family some day. But talking of
titles, here comes the Viscount and Viscountess Dauntrey and that
gentleman friend of theirs who may be a king any minute. There's a
foreign Marquis and an Englishman with them, and some pretty girls, so
maybe things will begin to wake up a bit."

Vanno turned in the direction of her glittering eyes, and saw Mary Grant
approaching with a large party; three over-dressed, over-painted,
over-jewelled women; the Maharajah of Indorwana, scintillating with
decorations; six French officers in uniform, and eight other men. The
little brown Indian royalty was walking with Mary, clinging closely to
her side, seeing no one but her, and trying ostentatiously to "cut out"
Dom Ferdinand, who kept almost equally near on the other side. Mary, as
she waited for Lady Dauntrey to be boisterously greeted by host and
hostess, smiled gently and softly from one man to the other, as if she
wished to be kind to both, and was pleased with their attentions.

So, indeed, she was pleased. It was nice to be admired. Men were amusing
novelties in her life. She thought them most entertaining creatures, and
quaintly different in all their ways from women. She was charmed with
her own dress and the lovely filet of diamond laurel leaves which she
had bought at the shop of the nice jeweller who was so kind. She had
smiled and nodded to her image in the mirror before leaving the hotel,
as Cinderella might have smiled; for this was her first ball. Never had
she been to a dance except those got up among a few young people after
dinner at Lady MacMillan's, years ago when she was only a schoolgirl,
and the convent dances where the pupils had learnt to waltz together,
and one of the dear sisters had played the old piano in the schoolroom.

Mary was wearing a good deal of jewellery, because she loved it, and had
never had any before. Much of her winnings she had given away. Any one
who asked, and made up a pitiful tale, could have something from her.
The latest story going about in connection with her reckless and
unreasoned generosity was of what she had done for a band of strolling
Italian musicians. She had encouraged them to bleat and bawl their
wornout songs in wornout voices, under the windows of the Hôtel de
Paris, until it had been politely intimated to her that the shriekings
and tinklings were a nuisance. Mary, who loved and understood good
music, had enjoyed these disastrous efforts no more than others had, but
her heart had been full of pity for the battered little band. She could
not bear to have their feelings hurt; and when at last she had to tell
them that they must sing no more under her window, she gave the leader
and his wife a _mille_ note each to buy new instruments and costumes
for the entire company. The man and woman had been seen bursting into
tears, and pressing garlic kisses on Mary's hands, apparently against
her inclination. Thus the story had got about, with many others of her
eccentric and exaggerated charities. But beyond what she did for all who
were in need, or made her think they were, she had more money than she
knew what to do with for herself; and much of it she had spent with the
jeweller in the Galerie Charles Trois, who was openly her slave.

If he offered her beautiful things at prices which gave him no margin of
profit, she in her ignorance of values did not know that the jewels were
surprisingly cheap. She bought of this man because he was kind, because
he begged her to come to his place, because he seemed to enjoy showing
her lovely ornaments, and knew always, as if by instinct, exactly what
was most suitable and becoming. But gossip said that the jeweller made
presents to the eccentric and beautiful girl whose career at Monte Carlo
was an interesting mystery to every one. Vanno had heard these stories
from Rongier, before he could find presence of mind to cut them short by
turning to another subject: and seeing her to-night, dazzling with
diamonds, surrounded by men whose admiration she evidently liked, the
good thoughts of her which he had eagerly cherished were burnt up in a
new flame of suspicion, a rage of jealous anger. He was furious with the
girl for coming to this dance which ladies of position had ignored,
furious because she had come with such people, women who painted their
faces, and a crowd of men of different nations.

The two sides of his nature warred like opposing forces. The wild
passion of Othello was in him. He could have snatched up the slender
white-and-gold figure, wrapped the shining jewelled head in the trailing
scarf of point lace, and rushed away with the girl in his
arms--anywhere, far from these people who had no right to be near her.
He could not bear to see the Maharajah's eyes on her face and on her
long white throat. A hateful thought sprang into his mind concerning the
rope of Indian pearls, with ruby and emerald tassels, tied loosely round
her neck. He wondered if the Maharajah of Indorwana had given it to her,
if she would have accepted such a gift from the brown man; and the
thought seemed to take colour in his brain, as if it were a bright
scarlet spot which grew larger and redder, spreading behind his eyes
till he could see nothing else.

Vanno had told himself many times that he must not draw too near this
girl; that for the sake of love's nobility, for the sake of his respect
for womanhood sacred in her and in all women, he must not draw near
unless her soul were a star behind the eyes that were like stars. And he
had not been able to believe in the stars for more than a few happy,
exalted moments, which passed and came again, only to be blotted out
once more.

But now, suddenly, it no longer mattered whether he believed or not. He
had to try and tear her away from the life she was leading. He did not
know which impulse was master--the impulse to save a soul, or the
impulse to possess selfishly a thing coveted; at least, to snatch it
from others, if he did not take it for himself.

As he stood pale and quiet in the background, Mary was accepting
invitations to dance; for now Mrs. Collis and Lottie had arrived,
bringing three American girls and a youthful American mother from the
Hôtel Metropole, where they had gone to stay. Counting the hostess and
her daughter, the number of women had been swelled to a dozen by these
last arrivals, and dancing was to begin. The younger men, entering into
the spirit of the occasion, struggled with each other to engage
partners, and the smiling ladies were promising to split each dance
between four partners.

Mary, being the prettiest girl as well as something of a celebrity, was
almost alarmingly in request. She was besieged by men who begged her
bodyguard to introduce them quickly, and laughing like a child she was
busily giving away dances when Vanno came forward. For a moment he stood
silently behind the other men, taller than any, dark and grave, and as
always mysteriously reproachful, as if for some sin of Mary's which she
had committed unconsciously.

She looked up, struck almost with fear by the contrast between his
gravity and the frivolous gayety of the others. But he made all the rest
look puerile, and even common.

"Will you dance with me?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered, forgetting to add the polite "with pleasure," which
years ago had been taught at the convent as the suitable reply for a
débutante to a prospective partner.

"The third waltz?"

"Very well--the third waltz," she echoed.

There was no question of splitting it up. No man dared make the
suggestion. Something in the Roman's manner and Mary's look gave every
one the idea that they knew each other well, that no one must try to
interfere between them.




XVI


Although her Roman Prince had looked so grave, Mary argued to herself
that he could hardly be angry, or he would not have asked her to dance.
Yet she half dreaded, half longed for the third waltz.

As a schoolgirl she had shared with Marie Grant the distinction of
dancing more gracefully than any other pupil. A girl who has danced well
and has a perfect ear for music does not forget; and after the first
waltz on the smoothly waxed deck Mary felt as if she had been dancing
every night for the last four years.

When the moment arrived, Vanno came and took her away from the Maharajah
of Indorwana. He did not speak or smile, and they began at once to
dance. Their steps went perfectly together, and he held her strongly,
though at first he kept her at an unusual distance. Then, as though
involuntarily, he drew her close, so that she could feel his heart
beating like something alive, in prison, knocking to come out, and her
own heart quickened. A slight giddiness made her head spin, and she
asked to stop before the music sobbed itself to sleep.

"I have something I want to say to you," Vanno began. "Will you come
with me where we can speak alone, without being interrupted?"

"I--I am engaged to four partners for the next dance," Mary stammered,
laughing a little. She wished to hear what he had to say; she wished to
stay with him, yet his voice made her afraid. And it was true that she
did not like to break her promise.

"I beg that you will come with me," Vanno persisted. He did not say that
he would not make her late for the others. He meant to take her away
from them altogether, if he could.

"Then--I will come, for a few minutes," she consented. "But--where?"

"I will take you on the bridge," he said. "You will not be cold, for I
know they've had it roofed over with flags for to-night. Mrs. Holbein
told me. There will be room only for you and me, for I shall let no one
else come."

Perhaps never before had Mary been so torn between two desires, except
when she wished to leave the convent, yet longed to stay. Now she did
not want to go on the bridge with this sombre-eyed man who spoke as if
he were taking her away from the world: and yet she did want to go, far
more than she wanted not to go. If anything had happened at this moment
to part them, all the rest of her life she would have wondered what she
had missed.

Mary knew nothing about the bridge of a vessel, or what it was for; but
when she had mounted some steps she found herself on a narrow parapet
walled in with canvas up to the height of her waist. Above her head was
a tight-drawn canopy made of an enormous flag; and on the white floor,
wedged tightly against the canvas wall, were pots containing long
rose-vines that made a drapery of leaves and flowers. Here and there
folds of the great flag were looped back with wooden shields, gilded and
painted with coats of arms--the crest of the Holbeins, no doubt,
invented to order at great expense. These loopings were like curtains
which left square, open apertures; and as Mary looked toward the shore
the balmy night air brushed against her hot cheeks like cool wings.

"I don't know, I don't suppose it's possible--no, it can't be possible
that it should be with you as it is with me," Vanno said, in a low voice
which sounded to her ears suppressed and strange, as if he kept back
some secret passion, perhaps anger. "Ever since the first moment I saw
you standing on the platform of the train at Marseilles, looking down
like Juliet from her balcony, I have felt as if I'd known you all my
life, even before this life began, in some other existence of which you
remain the only memory: you, your eyes, your smile."

Her heart bounded as sometimes the heart bounds at night, in that
mysterious break between waking and sleeping, which is like a leap, and
a fall over an abyss without bottom.

She wished to hold his words in her mind and dwell upon them, as if upon
a suddenly opened page of some marvellous illuminated missal of
priceless value. Conscious of no answer to give, or need of answer for
the moment, her subconscious self nevertheless began at once to speak,
and the rest of her listened, startled at first, then with wonder
acknowledging the truth of her own admission.

"Why, yes," the undertone in herself answered Vanno. "It was like that
with me, too, at Marseilles and afterward--as if I had known you always,
as if our souls had been in the same place together before they had
bodies. When you looked at me first, I felt you were like what a picture
of Romeo ought to be, though I never saw a picture of Romeo, that I can
remember. How strange you should have had Juliet in your mind! Yet
perhaps not strange, for each may have sent a thought into the brain of
the other--if such things can be."

"Such things are," Vanno answered, with passion. "In the desert where
I've lived for months together, alone except for one friend, a man of
the East, or an Arab servant, a voice used to say when I waked suddenly
at night sometimes, that there was a woman waiting for me, whose soul
and mine were not strangers, and that I should recognize her when we
met."

"It is like a dream!" Mary broke in upon him, when he paused as if
following a thought down some path in his mind. "As if we were dreaming
now--to the music down there. Maybe we _are_ dreaming. What does it all
mean?"

"It means that when the world was made we were made for each other. But
what has happened to us since? How have we so drifted apart? I think I
have been faithful to you in my heart always. But you? You've wandered
a million miles away from me. Nothing told you to wait. You have not
waited, or you would not live your life as you seem to be living
it--among such men and such women. For God's sake, even if you don't
care for me as things are now between us, let me take you away from all
this, let me put you where you will be safe, where you can be what you
were meant to be."

"I--I don't understand," Mary said, her breath coming so quickly that
her words seemed stopped, and broken like water that tries to run past
scattered stones.

"Don't you? Don't you understand that I love you desperately, that I
can't bear my life because I love you so, and because I see you
drowning? I'm telling you this in spite of myself. But I know now it had
to be. I swear to you, if you'll trust me, if you'll come away with me,
you shan't repent. Let me put you somewhere in a safe and beautiful
place. That's all I ask. I want no more. I shall force myself to want no
more."

"You--love me?" Mary repeated, still in the dream that was made of music
and moonlight, the ripple of the sea and the stirring of something new
in her nature of which all these sweet and beautiful things seemed part.
"Love! I never thought this could happen to me."

Suddenly he caught her hands and held them so that she was forced to
turn and look at him, instead of gazing out at sea and moonlight.

"Does it mean anything to you?" he asked, almost fiercely.

"Oh, a great deal," she answered. "I hardly know how much yet. It is so
wonderful--so new. Yet somehow not new. I must think about it. I
must----"

It was on her lips to say "I must pray about it," but something stopped
her. He was strange to her still, in spite of the miracle that was
happening, and there were some thoughts which must be kept in the heart,
in silence. Perhaps if she had not kept back those words, much of the
future might have been different, for he must have guessed at once that,
if she were sincere, his thoughts of her had been false thoughts.

"Don't stop to think. Promise me now," he cut her short.

The note of insistence in his voice frightened her, and seemed to break
the music of the dream. "I can't promise!" she exclaimed. "I've never
wanted to marry. It never seemed possible. I----"

Something like a groan was forced from him. She broke off, drawing in
her breath sharply. "What is the matter?" she asked. "Are you
suffering?"

"Yes," he said. "I am suffering. It's my fault, for not making you
understand, and yours because you haven't let me believe in you, worship
you as the angel you were meant to be. I don't know what you are, but
whatever you are I love you with all there is of me. Only--what I asked
was--that you'd let me take you out of this life to something better.
Now don't misunderstand in another way! I'd rather die a thousand deaths
than wrong you. I ask nothing from you for myself. When I knew that you
were safe I'd go, and not even see you again, unless--but how can I
explain that I mean only good for you, with no evil or selfishness, yet
not marriage?"

"Not marriage!"

Mary wrenched her hands away, and stepped back from him. There were men,
she knew, who loved women but did not marry them. She had learned this
thing through the tragedy of her schoolmate, her friend, whose life had
been swallowed up in mystery and darkness because men could be vile and
treacherous, taking everything and giving nothing. No one save himself
could have made her believe that this deep-eyed Prince was such a man.

After all, the light in which she had seen their souls together in the
beginning of things had been a false light. She had never known his
soul, for what she thought she knew had been very noble and splendid,
and the reality was bad. It was as if she had begun to open the door of
her heart, to let in a white dove, and peeping out had seen instead a
vulture. She slammed the door shut; and the sweet new thing that had
stirred in the depths of her nature fell back asleep or dead.

"I'm going down now," she said, in a toneless voice. "Don't come with
me. I never want to speak to you again."

[Illustration: "'I CAN'T PROMISE!' SHE EXCLAIMED. 'I'VE NEVER WANTED TO
MARRY'"]

She turned away with an abrupt mechanical movement like a doll wound up
to walk, but he snatched the lace scarf that was wrapped round her arm,
and held her back for an instant.

"I implore you----" he begged. Her answer was to drop the scarf, and
leave it in his hands. She seemed to melt from his grasp like a snow
wreath; and not daring to follow then, he was left alone on the bridge
with the black and horrible ghost of his own mistake.




XVII


Mary's one thought was to escape and hide herself from every one. She
felt as fastidious women feel after a journey through miles of thick
black dust, when they cannot bear to have their faces seen with the
disfiguring stains of travel upon them. But she had to go back to the
deck where people were dancing, before she could find her way to any
hiding place; and even then she did not know how she should contrive to
leave the yacht without answering questions and fighting objections.

She was thankful to find Captain Hannaford not dancing, and standing
near the foot of the steps she had just descended. He was some one she
knew, at least, some one whose calm manner made him seem dependable.
Then, too, the physical affliction which repelled her, in making him
appear remote from the world of fortunate men, almost attracted her at
this moment. Standing there as if waiting for her, very quiet,
apparently quite unemotional, he was like a lifeboat in a merciless sea.
She snatched at the help he silently offered.

"I feel ill," she said, chokingly. "Do you think I could get away
without any one noticing? I want to go home."

Instinctively she was sure that she might count upon him to serve her,
that he would rather do so than stay and watch the dancing, for he
himself did not dance.

"Come along," he said, with the calmness which was never ruffled.
"People will think you're engaged to sit out this dance with me. Get
your wraps, and I'll see that the launch is ready to take you across to
the slip."

The ladies' dressing-room was below. One of the largest and finest of
the staterooms had been set apart for that purpose; but there were so
few cloaks that Mary had no difficulty in finding hers, half-dazed as
she was. To her relief, Captain Hannaford was waiting for her not far
from the door when she came out.

"I thought as you're seedy you mightn't be able to find the way alone,"
he said. "It's all right about the launch."

Five minutes later she was being carried toward the shore, the explosive
throbbing of the engine sending stabs of pain through her temples.
Beside her sat Hannaford; silent, his arms folded, his black bandaged
face turned away from her. He had a habit, when he could, of seating
himself so that the unscarred side of his head was in sight of the
person next him; but to-night he had not done this with Mary. He knew
that she would be blind not only to his defects, but to his existence,
if he did not irritate her by trying to attract attention.

Neither spoke a word during the few moments of transit, and Mary gazed
always toward land, as if she did not wish to see the great lighted
yacht which illuminated the whole harbour. It had not occurred to her
that she ought to say, "Don't trouble to come with me. I shall do very
well alone." She took it for granted not only that he would come, but
that he would be glad to come; and there was no conceit in this tacit
assumption. It was borne in upon her mind from his, as if by an
assurance.

When the motor launch had landed them upon the slip, and puffed fussily
away again, Hannaford steadied Mary's steps with a hand on her arm. It
was not until they were on the pavement, and facing up the hill that
leads from the Condamine to higher Monte Carlo, that she spoke. "Oh, I
ought to have left word for Lady Dauntrey!" she exclaimed.

"I thought of that," Hannaford quietly answered. "I wrote on a card that
you had a headache and I was taking you home."

"Thank you," Mary said, mechanically. As soon as she had heard the words
she forgot them, and let her thoughts rush back to the arena of their
martyrdom. Hannaford took her hand and laid it on his arm. She allowed
it to rest there, depending unconsciously on the support he gave. They
did not speak again until they had reached the top of the hill, turned
the corner, and arrived at the steps of the Hôtel de Paris.

Because Lady Dauntrey had chosen to make a late entrance on the scene,
it was after midnight now, though Mary and Hannaford had come away
comparatively early from the dance. The Casino was shut, but Christmas
eve festivities were going on in the restaurant, as well as in the
brilliantly lit Moorish Café de Paris on the opposite side of the
_Place_. Mary's longing for peace and quiet in "coming home" was jarred
out of her mind by the gay music and lights, and sounds of distant
laughter which seemed to have followed her mockingly from the yacht. But
they brought her out of herself; and standing on the lowest step she
thanked Hannaford for all that he had done.

"You know I've done nothing," he said. "I wish there were something I
really could do for you. Isn't there? Wouldn't you like to have an
English doctor prescribe for your headache? I know a splendid one. He'd
cure you in an hour."

"I must try to cure myself," Mary said. "I shall be better soon. I must
be! There's nothing more you can do, thank you very much. Unless----"

"Unless what?" He caught her up more quickly than he usually spoke.

"Now I've come back, I can hardly bear to go indoors after all. I feel
as if I couldn't breathe in a warm room, with curtains over the windows.
Would you take me on the terrace? I think I should like just to sit on
one of the seats there for a few minutes; and afterward maybe I shall be
more ready to go in."

"Come, then," was the brief answer that was somehow comforting to Mary.
She began consciously to realize that this man's calm presence helped
her. She was grateful, and at the same time smitten with remorse for the
faint physical repulsion against him she had never until now quite lost.
At this moment she believed that it was entirely gone, and could never
return; but she felt that she ought to atone in some way because it had
once existed. She took his arm again, of her own accord, and leaned
on it with a touch that expressed what she dimly meant to
express--confidence in him.

They went down the flight of steps at the end of the Casino, and so to
the terrace, which was completely deserted, as Mary had hoped it would
be. Here, away from the golden lights of hotel and café windows, the
moon had full power, a round white moon that flooded the night with
silver.

They turned to walk along the terrace-front of the Casino, facing toward
Italy, and away from the harbour half girdled by the Rock of Hercules.
They could not see the yacht, but the great illuminated shape rode in
Mary's thoughts as it rode on the water. She knew that in coming back
along this way she would have to see the harbour, and _White Lady_
blazing with light, pulsing with music. Just yet she could not bear
that, and when they came near the eastern end of the terrace she said
that she would sit down on one of the seats.

The moonlight had seemed exquisite as an angel's blessing when she
looked out between the flags and rose branches, drinking in the words "I
love you," as a flower drinks in dew. Now the pale radiance on the
mountains was to Mary's eyes wicked, wicked as a white witch fallen
from her broomstick. All the world was wicked in its weary pallor; and
the dark windows of far-off, moon-bleached villas were like staring
eyeballs in gigantic skulls.

She had not meant to talk, but suddenly the fire within her flamed into
words. "What have I done--what do I do--that could make people think I
am--not good?--make them think they have a right to insult me?"

"Nobody has a right to think that," Hannaford answered, quietly as
always. "If any man has insulted you, tell me, and I'll make him sorry."

"I--there is nothing to tell," she stammered, frightened back into
reticence. "It's only--an idea that came into my head because
of--something I can't explain. But, oh, do be honest with me, Captain
Hannaford, if you are my friend, for I can never ask any one else, and I
can never ask you again. It's just asking _itself_ now, this question,
for I want an answer so much. Is there anything very different about me,
and the way I behave, from other girls or women--those who try to be
good and nice, I mean?"

It was a strange appeal, and went to the man's heart. If Mary had
puzzled him once, and if at first he had thought cynically of her, as he
thought of most pretty women he met, love had washed away those thoughts
many days ago: and in this moment when she turned to him for help he
wondered how it was that he had ever been puzzled. He saw clearly now
into the heart of the mystery, and it was a heart of pure rose and
gold, like the heart of an altar fire.

"Wait a minute," he said, "before I answer that, and let me ask _you_ a
question. Did you ever hear the story or see the play of Galatea?"

"No. Not that I remember. What has it to do with me?"

"I'll tell you about her, and then maybe you'll see. The story is that a
Greek sculptor made a beautiful statue which he worshipped so
desperately that the gods turned it into a living girl. Well, you can
imagine just how much that girl knew about life, can't you? She looked
grown up, and was dressed like other young women of her day, but any
kitten with its eyes open was better equipped for business than she, for
kittens have claws and Galatea hadn't. Naturally she made some queer
mistakes, and because a rather beastly world was slow to understand
perfect innocence--the pre-serpentine innocence of Eve, so to speak--a
lot of injustice was done to the poor little statue come alive. Some of
the people wouldn't believe that she'd ever been a statue at all."

"I see!" exclaimed Mary, sharply. Then she was silent for a moment,
thinking; but at last she put a sudden question: "What happened to
Galatea?"

"Oh, the poor girl was so disgusted with the world that she went back to
being a statue again eventually. I think myself it was rather weak of
her, and that if she'd waited a bit she might have done better."

"I'm not sure," Mary said, slowly. "To-night I feel as if there was
_nothing_ better--than going back and being a statue."

"You won't feel like that to-morrow. The sun brings courage. I know--by
experience. You think, Miss Grant, for some reason or other--I don't
even want you to tell me what, unless it would do you good to tell--that
you're down in the depths. But you're not. You never can be. Where you
are it will always be light, really."

"What makes you believe I am good, if others don't believe it?" She
turned on him with the question, the moon carving her features in marble
purity, as if Galatea were already freezing again into the coldness of a
statue. The whole effect of her, in the long white cloak with its hood
pulled over the shining hair, was spiritual and unearthly. Hannaford
would have given his life for her, happily, just then.

"I don't know what others believe," he said. "I have seen for a long
time now, almost since the first, that you were a very innocent sort of
girl enjoying yourself in a new way, and losing your head over it a
little. Perhaps because I've been down in the depths we talked about,
and look on life differently from what I did before, I may have clearer
sight. I don't know what you did or were until you came here, but I've
realized to-night all of a sudden that you are absolutely a child. There
is no worldly knowledge in you. You're what I said. You're Galatea."

"_You_ see this, without any telling," she cried. "And yet----" She bit
her lip and kept back the words that would have rushed out, to shame
her. But he knew with the unerring knowledge of one who loves, that she
had nearly added: "And yet the one man who ought to understand me, does
not. It is only you."

It was a bitter knowledge, but he faced it, hating the other man, who
had hurt and did not deserve her. But he did not guess that the man was
Prince Vanno Della Robbia. He had not heard Vanno almost commanding Mary
to dance with him, and had not seen them go up on the bridge together.
Hannaford was not even aware that they knew each other. The man in his
mind was Dick Carleton, or possibly the Maharajah of Indorwana, whom
some women found strangely attractive.

"I should like to be the one to make all others see--any fools or brutes
who don't," he said.

"I don't want anybody _made_ to see."

"Of course you don't. Well, there isn't one anywhere about worthy to
think of you at all--not a man Jack of us--including me."

"And yet," Mary said, almost pitifully, "I have _liked_ men to think
about me! It's been so new, and interesting. What harm have men done me,
that I should avoid them, just because they are men? Are they all so
much worse than women, I wonder? Oughtn't we to be nice and sweet to
them? It would seem so ungrateful to be cold, because they are so very,
very kind to us. At least, that is what I felt till now--I mean till
quite lately. Men interested me, because they seemed rather mysterious,
so different from us; and I wanted to find out what they were really
like, for I've been with women all my life. I wish now--that is, I hope
I haven't behaved in ways to make people misunderstand?"

"Only fools, as I said before."

"But--what have I done to make the fools misunderstand? You must tell
me!"

"Nothing serious. Only--well, you have gone about with a queer lot
sometimes."

"Men or women?"

"Madame d'Ambre, for instance."

"Yes; but I haven't talked to her for a long time now."

"You've talked to others like her, and--worse."

"Would you have me be cruel? If some of the poor, pretty creatures here
aren't quite what they ought to be, because they've been badly brought
up or unfortunate, would you think it right and womanly not to answer
when they speak, or to turn one's back on them, or slam the Casino door
in their faces, as some cross-looking people do? Wouldn't that drive
them to being worse?"

It was difficult to answer this question with due regard to the laws of
God and man, and at the same time give Galatea a lesson in social
decorum. "I suppose," he said slowly, "you'll just have to follow your
star."

"I don't see any star now worth following. Oh, Captain Hannaford, I was
so happy! It was such a beautiful, lovely world till to-night! Now I
feel as if joy and luck were both gone."

"Does it comfort you a little to know that here's one man who'd do
anything for you?" he asked. "There never was such a friend as I'll try
to be, if you'll have me."

"Thank you," Mary answered. "I shall be very glad of your friendship. I
shall feel and remember it wherever I go."

"Wherever you go? You mean----"

"Yes. I think I must go away--go on to Italy."

"If somebody has hurt you, don't go yet," Hannaford urged. "It would
look as if--well, as if you felt too much. Don't you see?"

"I shouldn't like to give that impression," she said, almost primly.
Then, with a change of tone, "But I can't--I won't stay at the hotel
where I am. To-night at her house Lady Dauntrey invited me to come and
stay there. I was asked before, to Christmas dinner. I could accept, I
suppose?"

"Hm!" Hannaford grumbled, frowning. But he thought quickly, and it
seemed to him that perhaps even Lady Dauntrey's chaperonage might be
better than none. There was nothing against the woman, as far as he
knew, except that she whitewashed her face and had strange eyes. The
rich Mrs. Ernstein, who was staying at the Villa Bella Vista, was
undoubtedly--even dully--respectable, if common. Neither was there any
real harm in Miss Wardropp; and poor Dauntrey did not seem to be a bad
fellow at heart.

"It's not ideal there, I'm afraid," Hannaford said at last, "but for
lack of a better refuge it might do."

Mary felt suddenly as if some very little thing far down in herself was
struggling blindly to escape, as a fly struggles to escape when a glass
tumbler has been shut over it on a table. She drew in a long, deep
breath.

"I'll leave the Hôtel de Paris to-morrow," she said, as if to settle the
matter with herself once and for all. "And I'll go and stay at Lady
Dauntrey's."

Almost unconsciously her eyes were fixed upon the old hill town of
Roquebrune, asleep under the square height of its ruined castle, which
the moon streaked with silver. All the little firefly lights of the
village had died out except one, which still shone "like a good deed in
a naughty world."

"It is perhaps the curé's light," Mary thought; and told herself that as
he was a friend of the Prince, she would never dare to go and see him
now.




XVIII


Vanno stood without moving for some minutes, when Mary had gone. She had
forbidden him to follow, but it was not her command which held him back.
It was the command laid upon him by himself. In a light merciless as the
crude glare of electricity he saw himself standing stricken, a fool who
had done an unforgivable thing, a clumsy and brutal wretch who had
broken a crystal vase in a sanctuary. For the blinding light showed him
a new image of Mary, even as she had suddenly revealed herself to
Hannaford: a perfectly innocent creature whose ways were strange as a
dryad's way would be strange if transplanted from her forests into the
most sophisticated colony in Europe.

Something in Vanno which knew, because it felt, had always pronounced
her guiltless; but all of him that was modern and worldly had told him
to distrust her. Now he was like a judge who has condemned a prisoner on
circumstantial evidence, to find out the victim's innocence after the
execution.

Standing there on the bridge, the dance-music troubled the current of
his thoughts, rising to the surface of his mind, though he heard it
without listening, like the teasing bubbles of a spring through deep
water. Though he tried, he could not fully analyze his own feelings;
yet he was sharply conscious of those two conflicting sides of his
nature which Angelo saw, and he could almost hear them arguing together.
The part of him that was aristocrat and ascetic excused itself, asking
what he could have done, better than he had done? Had he not broken his
resolve for a good motive and for the girl's sake, not his own? Had he
begged anything of her for himself? Ought she not to have understood
that though he loved her, he could not ask her to be his wife unless or
until she could prove herself worthy--not of him--but of a name and of
traditions honoured in history? Ought she not to have trusted him, and
seen that he was resisting temptation, not yielding to it, when he
implored her to take his help and friendship?

Already Angelo had disappointed their father, by marrying a girl of whom
no one knew anything except her beauty and talent as an artist. Marie
Gaunt had come to Rome to paint the portrait of a fashionable woman; had
been "taken up" by other _mondaines_; and Angelo, meeting her at a
dinner, had fallen in love with and followed her to Dresden, where she
lived and had made her reputation as an artist. In spite of the Duke's
objections they had married; and Vanno, who was his father's favourite,
surely owed some duty to the old man who loved him. At worst, Marie
Gaunt the artist had in no way laid herself open to gossip. According to
what friends had written from Rome, she was more than discreet, demure
as a Puritan maiden, and the elderly chaperon who travelled with her
was a dragon of virtue. With this girl whom Vanno had met at Monte Carlo
it was different. She was not discreet. Whatever else she might be, she
was not Puritan. She was gossiped about on all sides, and gayly fed the
fire of gossip by appearing in startling dresses, by doing startling
things, and picking up extraordinary acquaintances. Even as far away as
Mentone and Nice she was talked about. Two women had started some story
about her travelling to Paris with a French artist; and the man himself,
who had arrived since, had made a fool of himself at the Casino, and
apparently tried to blackmail her. She was said to have given him money.
No love, no matter how great, could justify Prince Giovanni Della Robbia
in making such a girl his wife while uncertain of the truth which
underlay her amazing eccentricities, and the gossip which followed her
everywhere, like a dog that barked at her heels.

This was what one side of him protested anxiously to the other side,
which in turn raged against it and its cold plausibilities. The side
which was all passion and romance and high chivalry lashed its enemy
with contempt, and evil epithets of which the hardest to bear was
"prig." For no man can endure being thought a prig, even by himself.

"You, who said that her soul was meant for yours, and the next moment
distrusted it!" he reproached himself in bitterness. "What a fool--what
a hypocrite! If you've known her since the beginning of things, you
should have known by instinct what she was, down under the surface
frivolities and foolishnesses, mistakes any untaught girl might make."

This Vanno, who was all man and not prince, said that no punishment
could be too severe for one who doubts where he loves. He saw himself
justly punished now, by learning Mary's truth through her noble
indignation. Because he had waited for this proof he acknowledged that
he had sinned beyond most women's pardon; yet he meant to win hers. He
cared more for her than before, and determined that he would never give
her up; yet all the while that other, worldly Vanno, who was prince as
well as man, held stiffly back. How could one whose small knowledge of
women good and bad came mostly through hearsay be sure of a woman?

His one boyish venture in love he saw now had been in shallow water; but
it had not tended to strengthen his faith in the innate nobility of
women. On the contrary, it had shown him that a woman who seemed sweet
and loving could be hard and calculating, even mercenary. Innocence
being a charming pose, why should it not be adopted by the cleverest
actresses, professional sirens, specialists in enchantment, who wished
to be admired by all men, even men for whom they cared nothing? How
could he tell even now that this girl was not a clever actress who
judged him well and planned to lead him on?

So he asked himself questions, and answered in rage, only to begin
again, fiercely breaking down one set of arguments and building up
another.

It was the arrival of Dodo Wardropp with Dom Ferdinand on the bridge
which drove him away and out of himself sufficiently to bid his host and
hostess good-night.

When the motor launch had taken him ashore, the impulse was very strong
in him to go up to Roquebrune and tell the curé what had happened. He
knew that his friend kept a light burning all night in a window, and he
could see it, as Mary had seen it, sending out its message for any who
needed help. Yet what good could come of talking to one who had never
met the girl? Fate had kept the two apart, for some reason, and Vanno
could but consult his own heart. Its counsel was to write to Mary,
explaining all those things that she had not let him explain in words.

This matter of explanation seemed easier than it proved. Letter after
letter had to be torn up before Vanno was able to express on paper
anything at all which she might understand, which might soften her to
forgiveness. Even then he was dissatisfied; but something had to stand,
something had to go. "Write me at least one line," he ended, "if only to
say that you know I did not mean to insult you, in the way you thought
when you left me."

Mary was still "Miss M. Grant" to him, and so he addressed his letter.
Dawn had put the stars to sleep when he sealed the envelope, and he had
to wait for a reasonable hour before sending to her room; but he did not
go to bed, or try to sleep.

"Christmas!" he said to himself, aloud. "The day of peace on earth and
good will toward men. If she remembers, can she refuse to forgive me?"

At half-past eight he thought it might be taken for granted that she was
awake. "Don't ask for an answer," he told the young waiter to whom he
gave his sealed envelope, and the lace scarf which Mary had left in his
hands. "Say only that you're not sure whether there is an answer or not,
and you will wait to see."

Vanno had hoped the servant might be away a long time, as delay would
mean that Mary was taking time to think, and writing a reply. But in
less than ten minutes the man was at the door again.

"The lady was in, and when I gave her the scarf and letter, asked me who
had sent them," was the report. "I told her it was his Highness the
Roman Prince, staying in the hotel. Then she said, 'This scarf is mine,
but the letter must have been sent by mistake, as I do not know his
Highness.' So I have brought it back, as the lady desired. I hope I have
done right?"

"Quite right, thank you," Vanno returned mechanically, and took his own
letter. His ears tingled as though Mary's little fingers had boxed them.
If she had but known, she was more than revenged upon him for the snub
which had clouded her first dinner in the restaurant of the Hôtel de
Paris.

For a moment Vanno was intensely angry, because she had dared to
humiliate him in the eyes of a servant; but by and by, when his ears
stopped tingling, he told himself that he deserved even this. He
respected her all the more, and no longer feared that she might be a
clever actress trying to lead him on. A woman who wished to attract a
man would not use so sharp a weapon.

Still, Vanno had no thought of giving up. If she would not read his
explanation she must hear it, and justify him in one way, even if she
would not forgive. He hoped to see her at luncheon time, but she did not
come into the restaurant. Again, at dinner she was absent. A merry
little Christmas party of four sat at her table: an English duke and
duchess, a great Russian dancer, a general of world-wide fame.

"Where is the lady who usually sits opposite?" he asked of his waiter,
draining his voice of all expression. "Is she away for Christmas?"

"She is away altogether," answered the waiter. "She left before
luncheon."

"Left altogether--left before luncheon!" Vanno echoed, almost stupidly,
forgetting to appear indifferent.

"I believe she is still in Monte Carlo," the man went on, delighted to
give information. "I do not know where, but I can no doubt find out for
your Highness."

"No, thanks, I won't trouble you," Vanno replied hurriedly. He would not
learn her whereabouts from a servant, but would find out for himself.
Where could she be? To whom could she have gone? The uncertainty was
unbearable. If it were true that she was still in Monte Carlo, she
would probably be in the Casino this evening. Vanno had not gone there
often, after the first night or two, for he hated to see Mary in the
Rooms alone, playing a game which attracted crowds, and caused people of
all sorts to talk about her. Now, however, he finished his dinner
quickly, and went immediately to the Casino.

It was just nine o'clock, and though it was Christmas the crowd was as
great as ever, even greater than he had seen it before. Vanno walked
through the Salle Schmidt, where Mary usually played, stopping at each
table long enough to make sure that she was not there. Then he passed on
into the newer rooms lit by those hanging lights which Mary had thought
like diamond necklaces of giantesses. The three life-size figures of the
eccentric yet decorative picture, nicknamed "The Disgraces," seemed to
follow him mockingly with langorous eyes, whispering to each other,
"Here comes a fool who does not understand women."

Mary was not playing at any of the tables in these rooms; but there was
hope still. The Sporting Club had now opened for the season, and it was
more fashionable at night even than the Casino. Vanno had walked through
once or twice, after midnight when the Casino had shut, and found there
a scene of great beauty and animation: the prettiest women in Monte
Carlo, wearing wonderful dresses and jewels, and famous men of nearly
all the countries of the world, princes and politicians, great soldiers
and grave judges, and even one or two travelling kings. It was very
likely that Miss Grant would have gone on to the Sporting Club, after
dinner with friends on Christmas Day.

He went across the road and a little down the hill, where the white
clubhouse owned by the Casino blazed with light. But as he reached it,
Dick Carleton dashed through the door, began running down the steps, and
almost cannoned into him.

"Beg pardon, Prince," he exclaimed. "I've just been told that a friend
of mine's losing like the dickens, in the _Cercle Privé_, and I'm going
to dart across and take out my subscription. I've never done it yet. But
it will be worth the hundred francs to stop her, if I can."

"Is it Miss Grant?" Vanno did not deliberately put the question, but
heard himself asking it.

"Why, yes it is," Carleton admitted. "Have you been in--have you seen
her?"

"No. But I felt somehow that you were speaking of Miss Grant."

"I thought you scarcely knew her," Dick caught him up, jealously.

"You are right. I--scarcely know her. But one has intuitions sometimes.
I must have had one then. So--she is losing? I heard she had wonderful
luck."

"She has had, up till now. Seemed as if she couldn't lose. Christmas
night, too! Isn't it a shame?" And Dick was off, hatless, in evening
dress without an overcoat. Vanno stood still in front of the Sporting
Club for a moment, watching the slim boyish figure go striding up the
hill. A liveried porter, seeing the Prince at the foot of the steps,
obsequiously opened the door, but Vanno made a sign that he did not wish
to enter. As soon as Dick had disappeared, Vanno followed him.

As he went seldom to the Casino, he had not taken a subscription to the
newest rooms, or _Cercle Privé_, where the price of admission is a
hundred francs. These rooms are for ardent gamblers who dislike playing
in a crowd, and Vanno, who had not felt inclined to play at all,
scarcely remembered their existence. Now he bought a ticket, however,
and having written his name upon it, followed Carleton at a little
distance, to a door at the far end of the trente et quarante rooms. His
heart was beating heavily, for in a few minutes he would perhaps know to
whom Mary had gone when she left the Hôtel de Paris.




XIX


Even the new rooms were crowded, and preoccupied as he was, it struck
Vanno oddly, as it always did strike him anew in the Casino, to hear
every one who passed talking of the all-absorbing game. They were
obsessed by it, and threw questions to each other, which elsewhere would
have meant nothing, or some very different thing; but here no
explanations were needed. "Doing any good?" asked a pallid young man
with a twitching face, like that of a galvanized corpse, as he met a
weary-eyed woman in mourning, whose bare hands glittered with rings.
"No," she answered peevishly. "You never saw such tables--all running to
intermittences. Nobody can do anything, except the old man who lives on
two-one." Then the pair began speaking of Miss Grant, for her name was
common property. She was one of the celebrities of the season.

Vanno went on, pausing at each table in the immense Empire room, whose
pale green walls glittered with Buonaparte's golden bees; and everywhere
he heard the same questions: "How are you doing? Tables treating you
well?" Or, "Have you seen Miss Grant? She's simply throwing away money
to-night. I'm afraid her luck's out."

There was something ominous and fatal in these words, repeated again and
again, with variations. "Poor Miss Grant! Her luck is out." All these
gamblers discussing her affairs, commenting, criticising, bewailing the
end of her long run of luck. The idea came to Vanno that it was like a
chanting chorus in a Greek tragedy; but he thrust the thought out of his
mind with violence. He could not bear to associate Mary with tragedy.
She was not made for a life and a place like this, where pain and
passion and heartburning lie in sharp contrast of shadow side by side
with sunshine and flowers. Vanno would have liked to spirit her away out
of this garden of painted lilies, to a sweet, old-fashioned garden where
pure white Madonna lilies lined the quiet paths. If only she had
listened to him last night, how different might have been her Christmas
day and his!

Presently he saw Dick Carleton, standing on the outer edge of a crowd
which had collected round one of the tables farthest from the entrance.
He was peering over people's heads, frowning, his hands deep in his
pockets. Then Vanno knew that he need look no farther for Mary.

He was taller than Dick, and almost pushing his way to a place, he saw
Mary seated at the opposite side of the table. She sat at the left of a
croupier, who was helping her to place her numerous stakes. Beside her
was Lady Dauntrey, and behind her chair, tall and pale and very haggard,
Lord Dauntrey stood. Vanno guessed, with a mingling of relief and
regret, that Mary must have gone to live at the Villa Bella Vista.

The ball spun round, rested in the pocket of number 11, and all Mary's
stakes were swept away.

"That's the eighth time in succession she's lost maximums round
twenty-four," mumbled a man close to Vanno's shoulder, in a young, weak
voice.

"She deserves it, for being an idiot," petulantly replied a woman, in
French, though the man had spoken in English. "I was her mascotte. I
showed her how to play and how to win; but I was not good enough for her
when she began making grand friends. Some women are so disloyal! She has
hurt me to the heart."

Vanno glanced down impatiently, and saw the woman who had been with Mary
on her first night at the Casino. He remembered the faded, white-rose
face, with its peevish crumples that were not yet lines, and the false
little smile that tried to draw attention away from them. He noticed
that she was no longer shabby, but wore a smart new dress and hat, with
a huge boa of ostrich feathers half covering her thin, bare neck. There
was a glint of jewels about her as she moved. The man with the young,
weak voice gazed at her admiringly, with a half-pitiful, half-comic air
of pride in being seen with so _chic_ a creature.

"Never you mind. We men ain't disloyal, anyhow," he consoled her. She
smiled at him pathetically, and his pale blue eyes, like those of a
faded Dresden china shepherd, returned her look with ecstasy.

"That wretched boy will marry the woman," was the thought that jumped
into Vanno's mind. He recognized the insignificant face, with its
receding chin and forehead, as that of a very young baronet, the last of
a degenerate family, weak of intellect, strong only in his craze for
jewels and horses. He had been in love with two or three English girls,
and one noted American beauty, but all, though comparatively poor, had
refused him, saying that one "must draw the line somewhere, and he was
the limit." Madeleine d'Ambre would not be fastidious. The brief
revelation, like something seen in the flare of a match that quickly
dies out, struck Vanno with pity and disgust. But a youth of this
calibre was sure sooner or later to drift to Monte Carlo; and perhaps
the Frenchwoman's leading strings would be better for him than none.

Again the wheel spun round, and Mary lost several piles of gold and
notes. It seemed to Vanno that she was changed not only in expression,
but even in features. The outline of her face looked sharper, thinner,
less girlish. Her eyes, very wide open, were bright, but not with their
own happy brightness, like a reflection of sunlight. They were more like
thick glass through which a fire can be seen dimly burning: and she
looked astonished, piteous, as a child looks when it has been seized and
whipped for a fault committed in ignorance. She seemed to be saying to
herself dazedly, "What has happened to me? Why should I be punished?"
High on each cheek burned a round spot of bright rose colour.

Sometimes Lady Dauntrey spoke to her, and Lord Dauntrey bent down and
appeared to advise. At first Mary shook her head, with a quivering
smile; but when the piles of money continued to be swept away, she lost
confidence in herself, and accepted their suggestions. Evidently she
tried to follow the new plan of action, whatever it was, but her luck
did not change for the better. Almost invariably her stakes, no matter
where placed, were taken from her. Even the croupiers looked surprised.
From time to time they darted at her glances of interest.

A great longing to be near, to protect her with love and sympathy,
rushed over Vanno. He forgot that she was angry with him, or that he had
given her cause for anger. He remembered only his love, and the
instinctive knowledge he had in spite of all, that her heart was for
him. He felt, unreasonably yet intensely, that if he were to sit at the
table where she could see him and receive the magnetic current of his
love, she would come to herself; that she would stop fighting this demon
of misfortune; that she would be filled with strength and comfort, and
would know what was best to do.

As if moved by the force of Vanno's will, a man got up from a chair
directly in front. It was Captain Hannaford, who looked less impassive
than usual. His somewhat secretive face was flushed, and he was
frowning. Without appearing to see the Prince, or Dick Carleton, who was
on the point of speaking, he walked quickly away from the table as if
anxious to escape. Almost savagely, Vanno grasped the back of the chair
and flung himself into it, though Madeleine d'Ambre had been on the
point of sitting down. A moment later Hannaford strolled back, having
changed his mind for some reason; but Vanno had already forgotten him.
He remembered only Mary, for she had glanced up for an instant, and
their eyes had met, his imploring, hers startled, then hastily averted.

Hannaford stood shoulder to shoulder with Carleton, who nodded and
spoke. "I wish we could get her to stop! I've tried--came over from the
Sporting Club on purpose, but she won't listen to me."

"We can't do anything with her at the table," said Hannaford.

"Norwood told me she was losing a lot, and I ran across from the
Sporting Club," Dick went on. "No good, I suppose, as you say. One can't
keep whispering a stream of good advice down the back of people's necks.
Only a very special kind of an ass tries that twice: but still, I did
hope----"

"Yes, there's that 'but still' feeling, isn't there?" Hannaford smiled
his tired smile, that never brightened. "I was going to cut it, because
she was getting on my nerves a bit. But I've come back to hang around,
as you're doing, and try the effect of will power, though I'm afraid it
won't work."

"It seems a vile table," Dick remarked.

"It's got a grudge against Miss Grant apparently, but it was all right
for me till I began to get nervy, watching her lose."

"You won?"

"Yes, and felt a beast--as if I were taking her money. Whenever I was on
one colour, she seemed always to choose a number on the other. I've got
enough money to buy my villa now, thanks to this night's work; so I
shall consider it a Christmas gift from the dear old Casino."

"Hurrah!" said Dick, his eyes always on the table and Mary's play. "I'm
glad some one's in luck, anyhow." He had heard from Rose Winter, and
from Hannaford himself, of the negotiations for Madame Rachel Berenger's
place just across the Italian frontier. Every one knew of her wild play
at the Casino and of her losses, which were now so great that she wished
to sell the old château which she had bought after her retirement from
the stage; and Hannaford's friends were aware that for some months he
had been quietly bargaining for it. His ambition was to buy the place
out of his winnings, but until to-night they had not reached the price
asked by the old actress. Twenty years ago she had paid two hundred
thousand francs for the huge house, almost in ruin. Later she had spent
nearly as much again in restoring it, and creating a garden which for a
while had been the marvel of the coast. Long ago, however, it had gone
back to wilderness. The splendid furniture imported by Madame Berenger
from the palace of an impoverished Bourbon princess had lost its gilding
and its rich brocade of silk and velvet. Two discouraged servants
remained with her, out of a staff of twelve. Once there had been ten
gardeners; now there was none; and the one hope left for this lost
palace of sleep was in a new ownership. The whole place smelt of decay
and desolation, yet to Hannaford it was more attractive than such a
beautiful and prosperous domain as Schuyler's Stellamare. The sad
loveliness of the old house and the old garden made a special appeal to
him. He wanted to save the Château Lontana from ruin, and felt
superstitiously that the interest he would find in such a task might
redeem him from the desolation which, like a high wall, rose between him
and life.

Something of this feeling Mrs. Winter had gathered from Hannaford,
though he had never put it in words, and Dick knew she would be glad of
to-night's news. It was no secret that Madame Berenger had refused to
accept less than three hundred thousand francs; therefore Dick sprang to
the conclusion that this must be the sum of Hannaford's winnings.

"I congratulate you heartily," he said. "My cousin will be delighted.
She likes you, and has been interested about the Château Lontana."

"She's been very kind and sympathetic. No wonder everybody loves her! I
know what she'll want to say now, even if she doesn't say it. 'Pay for
your château, and play no more.' Well, if you see her sooner than I do,
please tell Mrs. Winter I'm going to take her advice before I get it--to
a certain extent. Not a louis do I risk till the place is mine.
Then--perhaps I'll follow my luck, and try to make the Casino help me
restore the house and garden. Not that I want to do much, only enough to
make the place habitable, and give the flowers a chance to breathe."

"Then you mean to live there?"

"For a while at all events. Perhaps not long. Who knows what one may do?
But I shall have the pleasure of knowing it's mine."

Dick, though interested, had fallen into absent-mindedness. Two or three
persons having slipped away, he was able to get nearer the table, and to
see more clearly what Mary was doing. It almost seemed that if he and
Hannaford concentrated their whole minds upon willing her to stop play
for the night, she must feel the influence. Her luck was out, certainly.
She had lost a great deal, but she had a goodly store of winnings to
fall back upon.

"Let's will her hard, to leave off," he suggested, half ashamed of the
proposal, yet secretly in earnest.

Hannaford smiled indulgence. "All right," he said. "Here goes!"

Vanno Della Robbia less deliberately yet with more ardour had thrown
himself into the same experiment. He thought that Mary's anger against
him might have one good result: in making her wish to leave the table
where he had come to sit. She could scarcely fall upon worse luck
elsewhere, and perhaps she might give up play for the evening if she
went away from this unlucky corner. If a wish of his could be granted by
fate, she would never play again. Yet, desiring this with all the force
that was in him, he began nevertheless to gamble, for the first time
since coming to Monte Carlo. No conscientious scruple had held him back
hitherto; but the game had not appealed to him. He disliked the
crowding, the sordidness and vulgarity which, to his mind, attended it;
and it seemed to him that public gambling was an unintelligent, greedy
vice.

His idea in putting on money now was merely to "pay for his place,"
whence he did not mean to move as long as Mary stayed. Many other men
would be ready to snatch the chair the instant he abandoned it,
therefore he had no right to usurp the Casino's property without
payment. He had no small money with him, and to avoid the trouble of
changing notes with a croupier, he staked a hundred francs on red, the
colour of the number which Lord Dauntrey had just advised Mary to
choose.

As if she fully realized that her luck had failed her to-night, for
several spins she had been guided entirely by Lord Dauntrey. He was
directing her play according to his system, to which his faith still
desperately clung, though he now admitted to his friends that his own
capital was not big enough to test it fairly. His game was upon numbers,
columns, and dozens, all at the same time, increasing the stakes, as he
said, "with the bank's money," or, in other words, after a win. It was
therefore a loss following directly upon a win which was the worst enemy
of the system, and occasionally there came a long run of exactly this
alternation: win, loss, win, loss, win, loss. It happened so to-night,
greatly to his annoyance, as he hoped to interest Miss Grant in his
method. Dom Ferdinand was sulkily waiting for more remittances, and
amusing himself meanwhile by throwing about a few louis here and there,
undirected by his friend Lord Dauntrey. The Marquis de Casablanca had
stopped play entirely, perhaps in the hope of setting his patron a wise
example. The Collises had never been useful. Dodo Wardropp liked to
gamble "on her own," and Mrs. Ernstein, though rich, was a coward when
it came to risking her money at the tables. Others in the house made
themselves as irritating to Lord Dauntrey in their selfish obstinacy as
Dodo; and all his hopes centred upon Mary. She was a lamb whom his wife
had cleverly caught in the bushes, a lamb with golden fleece. He would
have liked above all things to help her win this first night; but
curiously enough she lost monotonously, no matter what game she tried,
unless Prince Giovanni Della Robbia pushed money on to some chance where
her stake happened to lie. Then and then only she won; so that if she
inclined to superstition (as did most women at the tables) she would
believe that not Lord Dauntrey but the Roman "brought her luck."
Nevertheless she seemed vexed rather than pleased when the Prince (whom
Dauntrey knew by sight and name) fixed upon a chance where she had
staked. Presently, though she won four times running when this occurred,
she kept back her money until the last, staking only just before the
croupier's "Rien ne va plus," to prevent Della Robbia from following her
lead. At last, she got up impatiently. "I am tired!" she said, in a
voice that trembled slightly. "I hardly know what I'm doing."

Mary did not pick up the money--comparatively little--which was the
remnant of her losses, and Dauntrey asked sympathetically if she would
like him to play for her, according to the plan they had begun to follow
out.

"Yes, if you please," she replied, seeming to attach no importance to
her answer or to the small pile of gold and notes, all that remained of
a hundred thousand francs with which she had begun the evening.

Without another glance at the table, or a flicker of the lashes at
Vanno, she turned away; and after a whispered word or two in Lord
Dauntrey's ear, Eve went with her, in the direction of the Salle
Schmidt.

Vanno had an immediate impulse to rise, but common sense forbade. Mary
had so unmistakably shown her dislike of his presence, and the
association of his play with hers, that it was impossible for him to
follow her. Though he detested Lady Dauntrey, in his heart he preferred
her to a man as a companion for Mary, even a man like Dick Carleton;
and for the moment the jealousy he could not control was at rest. Seeing
that Lord Dauntrey's weary eyes were fixed upon him, he continued to
play, as if he had not noticed Mary's going. By and by the game began to
absorb him in a way he would not have believed possible. He became
excited, with an odd, tense excitement which had an almost fierce joy in
it. Never before had he felt an emotion exactly like this, except once,
when in India he and a friend had lain in wait for a man-eating tiger,
in the night, at the tiger's drinking place. Dimly it amused him to
compare this sensation with the other; and it surprised him, too, that
he should feel as he felt now; for gambling had always seemed to him not
only greedy and sordid and vulgar, but a stupid way of passing the time,
unworthy a man or woman of sense and breeding.

To his own amazement, the pleasure of the game was balm for the
heartache Mary had made him suffer. He did not forget her, or his
repentance, or the determination to right himself in her eyes; yet the
hot throb of his anxiety was soothed, as by an opiate. What he felt for
Mary was but a part of this keen emotion that flowed through him like a
tide.

He remembered the prophecy of his friend the astrologer, in the Libyan
desert, that his star in the ascendant would bring him good fortune this
month of December. Certainly he had not found luck in love. Perhaps it
was to come to him through gambling. He wondered if there could be any
possible connection between the stars and the actions of a man, or the
chances of a game like roulette. Though his studies of the stars had
been confined to astronomy, the romance in him, and the dreamer's love
of mystery, refused to shut the door on belief in another branch of the
same science. It was enormously interesting to think that perhaps the
stars, the planets, controlled this tiny sphere of ivory in its mad dash
round the revolving wheel. Since the whole universe was made up of
marvels almost beyond credence, who with certainty could say "no?"

Vanno was not rich. He had no more than thirty thousand francs a year,
left him by his mother, and had refused an extra allowance from the
Duke. It had been his pride to live within his income, all through his
travels, and despite his love of collecting rare books. His father had
given him his observatory at Monte Della Robbia, but nothing else of
importance. His invention was beginning to bring him in a little, but it
would never make a fortune; and he was not one who could afford a
"flutter" at Monte Carlo without counting the cost. To-night, however,
after winning some thousands of francs, it did not occur to him--as it
might if some other man in his circumstances had been concerned--that it
would be wise to stop. The spin of the wheel began to exert a
fascination over his mind, appealing to all that was adventurous in him.
Not once was he conscious of putting on a stake for the sake of the
money it might gain; not once did he hesitate from fear of loss. It was
the call of the unknown that lured him, the thrilling doubt as to where
the ball would stop.

The little dancing white thing, magical as a silver bullet, seemed a
miniature incarnation of destiny, spinning his fate. Always Vanno was
pricked by the desire to try again, and see if he could once more
foretell the result. There lay the poignant, the indescribable charm: in
not knowing.

He saw now that he had misjudged gamblers in believing them all to be
mercenary, at least at the moment of gambling. Some might be so, many
perhaps; but he began to realize that the chief appeal was to the
imaginative temperament, such as he knew his own, and guessed Mary's, to
be.

When his stake was larger than usual--larger a good deal than he could
afford in prudence--he revelled in the uncertainty of the event which he
intensely desired. And it dawned in his mind that this was the true
intoxication of the gambler, the delicious anguish of playing with the
unknown. It was a more dangerous intoxication than he had supposed it to
be, because more subtle, as the effect of cocaine or morphia is more
insidious than that of alcohol.

Like a hunter, he pursued the game until, to his great surprise, a
croupier announced, "Les trois derniers." It was almost impossible to
believe that he had sat at the table for hours.

By this time Vanno had abandoned all attempt to check his winnings and
losses. It was not until he had gathered up his money and counted it on
leaving the table that he knew he had lost not only his winnings, but
three thousand francs besides. The discovery filled him with a peculiar,
bitter annoyance, as if an alkaloid fluid ran through his veins: and
this not because of the loss, which was comparatively insignificant, but
because he had failed, because he had been ignominiously beaten by the
bank. He had had his luck, and had stupidly thrown it away, after the
manner of all those fools for whom he had felt a superior, pitying
contempt. Still, he was not sorry that he had played. His short
experience of roulette and the curious exhilaration the spin of the
wheel had given brought him nearer to understanding Mary than he had
ever come before, or could have come otherwise. Also, his combativeness
was roused. His nerves seemed to quiver, to bristle with an angry
determination to justify himself in his own eyes, and to have his
revenge upon the brutal power of the bank.

"I'll get it all back from them to-morrow," he thought, "and more
besides. I won't be beaten. And when I've done something worth doing,
I'll stop. That's the way to gamble."




XX


Mary was not comfortable at the Dauntreys', and the house depressed her;
but it was a refuge from the Hôtel de Paris, where Prince Giovanni Della
Robbia was; and Lady Dauntrey was so kind, so affectionate, that Mary
felt it her duty to be grateful. Almost strangers as they were, her
hostess poured into her ears a great many intimate confidences, and
asked her guest's advice as well as sympathy. Mary was touched by this,
for Lady Dauntrey seemed a strong woman; and, besides, the slight put
upon her by Vanno had left a raw wound which appreciation from others
helped superficially to heal. She had been so openly admired and
flattered at Monte Carlo that vanity had blossomed in her nature like a
quick-growing flower, though she had no idea that she had become vain.
Men looked at her with the look which is a tribute from the whole sex.
She could hardly bear it that the One Man should disapprove.

Those impecunious painters who haunt the open-air restaurants at Monte
Carlo, on the chance of selling a five-minute portrait, had buzzed round
her like bees round a honey-pot, but they were not the only ones. Two
artists of some renown had got themselves introduced through
acquaintances the Casino had given her, and begged her to sit to them.
Also it was true, as gossip said, that the artist she had met in the
train had arrived, and hastened to renew the acquaintance. He had
painted her portrait. She had paid for it and--burnt it. She, the quiet
schoolgirl, the earnest postulant, the novice who had never thought of
her own face, who for a year had not seen it in a mirror or missed the
sight of it, knew herself now for a beauty, a charming figure of
importance in this strange, concrete little world where Hercules
entertained his guests. And then, to be despised by the one person who
occupied her thoughts, despised and thrust away at the very moment when
he confessed to loving her! It was a blow to the woman's pride which had
not consciously stooped to unworthiness, and a still sharper hurt to her
new vanity.

She wanted to show Vanno, if he still thought of her, that others burned
incense to her beauty, though he had not placed her on an altar. The
discomforts of the Villa Bella Vista mattered little to the girl who had
gone through a hard novitiate in a Scotch convent. She made her own bed
and dusted her room. She did not care what she ate; and she tried to
throw her whole heart into the life of the household, that amazing
household which was unlike anything she could have imagined out of a
disordered dream.

Always after coming to the Dauntreys' she continued to lose at the
Casino, often large sums, occasionally picking up a little, as if luck
hovered near, awaiting its cue to return, only to be frightened away
again. But after a few days' time, in which more than two hundred
thousand francs slipped through her fingers, Lady Dauntrey suggested
that Miss Grant should "rest" for a while, meantime letting Dauntrey
play his system for her benefit and with her capital. This idea did not
amuse Mary.

The "gambler's blood," of which she had been warned by her father,
warmed to the excitement of the game. She craved this excitement, and
felt lost without it, now that the interest of Prince Vanno's distant
presence in her life was gone. Still, she could not bring herself to
refuse an offer which seemed meant in kindness. She gave Lord Dauntrey
one thousand louis, the smallest capital, he explained, necessary to
exploit his system with five-franc pieces at roulette. He assured her
that with pleasure he would add this money to the same sum of his own,
and play for her as well as himself, the syndicate he had originally
formed being now dissolved. Dodo hinted that operations had been stopped
because the whole capital was lost, but Lord Dauntrey had already
mentioned to Mary that a few slight reverses had frightened the
"shareholders." This cowardice, he said, had so disgusted him that he
had given back the capital to each one intact, and politely refused to
play any longer for the syndicate. A position of such responsibility was
only possible if he were upheld by the confidence of all concerned.
Otherwise, he preferred to gamble only for himself, or for a personal
friend or two who trusted him.

Each night, after Mary placed her thousand louis in his hands, Lord
Dauntrey gave her five hundred francs. This was as high a percentage, he
made clear to her, as could be got out of the capital except at a risk
of heavy losses, and he "did not care to run big risks for a woman." On
a thousand louis, Lord Dauntrey explained, five hundred francs profit
nightly represented 900 per cent. a year, which was of course enormous;
and regarded thus, her risk was an investment, not a speculation.

When some of Lady Dauntrey's bright particular stars left her firmament
(as they did leave occasionally with the quick flight of comets) she
hastened to fill the vacancies with any small luminaries available. The
Villa Bella Vista remained full, even when Mrs. Ernstein went suddenly
to Cannes, where "villa life" might be considered even more aristocratic
than at "Monte"; and Dom Ferdinand took himself and his ally out of
danger's way when Dodo refused to understand that only flirtation, not
marriage, was possible with a "commoner." The price of Dauntrey
hospitality had, however, fallen. Those who could be attracted by the
bait of their barren title had now to be looked for low in the social
scale: and it was difficult to get eligible _partis_ with whom to dazzle
heiresses. The slender Austrian count, whom Dodo scornfully pronounced a
"don't count," vanished mysteriously soon after Mary's arrival. He did
not even say goodbye; and Dodo, who vowed that she had often heard him
groaning behind the thin partition which divided her room from his,
went whispering about the house that he had committed suicide in the
Casino gardens.

"Why not?" she argued almost convulsively, when Mary protested that
surely such a dreadful thing could not have been kept secret. "Would the
Dauntreys tell, if they knew? No, of course they'd hush it up, and get
rid of anything he'd left--in one way or another. Not that there was
much to get rid of, for the Mont de Pieté was a kind of home from home
for the Count. He used to run back and forth between there and the
Casino, like a distracted rabbit: pawn his watch; play with the money;
win; race back and get his watch; lose again; and so on a dozen times a
day, till he was stripped of jewellery down to his studs and collar
buttons. It all came from his obstinacy in believing that the croupiers
at trente et quarante were signalling to him whether it was going to be
_inverse_ or _couleur_, when they were really only licking their thumbs
to deal the cards better! _I_ say, if you must have a fetish, have a
reasonable one, like playing for neighbours of zero at roulette. But
that silly boy thought himself too smart for roulette, and he wouldn't
take any advice, so this is what comes of it. I feel in my bones that
_his_ are in the suicide's cemetery this minute. Has nobody told you
that there are no inquests of coroners here in this principality? And a
jolly good thing, too! Why make the rest of us gloomy by putting nasty
details in the papers, when we've come here to enjoy ourselves? _They_
don't ask people to gamble, they merely make it nice for 'em if they're
determined to, and anyhow it's honest gambling. They don't want you to
play if you can't afford it and are going to be an idiot, because they
hate rows and scandal. It's all for _our_ benefit! If a man's cad enough
to blow his brains out at the tables, all over a lady's dress, he is
whisked away so quick nobody has time to realize what's up before a
glass door in the wall has opened with a spring and shut again as if
nothing had happened. Not a croupier stops spinning. I call it
magnificent. But it does make you feel a bit creepy when anybody you've
known disappears into space!"

Lord Burden, the dilapidated earl imported as a _parti_, was of opinion
that the Austrian count had merely applied for the _viatique_; and being
granted by the management a sum large enough to pay his fare and his
food, had departed without caring to show his face again at the villa.
Others were inclined to agree with Dodo, especially the women, who were
of the type that secretly enjoys mystery and horror, when unconnected
with themselves. No one ever really knew, however (unless perhaps the
Dauntreys), what had become of the youth with hair _en brosse_, and wasp
waist so slim that the body seemed held together by a mere ligament. He
was gone: that was all, and his small place in the household was more
than filled by a German couple, an ex-officer with an adoring wife, both
of whom spent half their days in bed, testing on a roulette watch
various exciting systems which, now they had come from afar off, they
lacked courage to play at the Casino. Their name was so intricate that
Dodo Wardropp said it ought to be kept a secret. As nobody could
pronounce it, however, it amounted to that, in the end.

They did not stay long; and indeed, after the disappearance of the
Austrian count, a microbe pricking people to departure seemed to
multiply in the Villa Bella Vista. The sailor went suddenly, on receipt
of a letter from the Admiralty, that prying institution having learned
and disapproved of the way in which he was spending his leave and his
pay. Lord Burden followed Mrs. Ernstein to Cannes; and Dodo, who never
ceased to want good value for her money, was bitterly dissatisfied with
the unmarried men who remained.

The principal one had at first attracted not only Dodo but every other
woman, with the exception of Mary. He spoke English well, yet appeared
to be equally at home in all socially useful languages. He looked like a
Russian, dressed like a Frenchman, claimed to have estates in Italy,
copper mines in Spain, a shooting in Hungary, and told delightful
anecdotes of his intimate friendship with most existing sovereigns. Not
a king or queen of any standing but--according to him--came often to his
"little place" in this country or that, and addressed him as "Dear
Alfred." His manner, his voice, were so smooth that they oiled the
creaking wheels of life at the villa; and his stories, told at the
table, distracted guests' attention from the skeleton at the feast--a
premature skeleton of a once muscular chicken, or a lamb that had seen
its second childhood. Unfortunately, however, a journalist who knew
everybody and everything in the world was brought in to luncheon by Lord
Dauntrey one day, and recognized the favourite of the household as a
famous Parisian furrier. He had supplied enough sable coat linings for
kings and ermine cloaks for queens to give him food for a lifetime of
authentic anecdotes. His acquaintance with royalties was genuine of its
kind, but it was not of a kind that appealed to the paying guests at
Lady Dauntrey's. Dodo turned a cold shoulder upon him, and for a day or
two gave her attention to the only other man in the house who pluckily
advertised himself as unmarried. He advertised himself also as a
millionaire, and not without reason, though Lord Dauntrey had cleverly
picked him up in the Casino. When he mentioned, however, that he was a
Sydney man, Miss Wardropp ceased to talk at him across the table. This
change of tactics her enemies attributed to fear that he "knew all about
her at home." But she told Mary that he had such slept-on looking ears,
he took away her appetite; and one needed all the appetite one could
muster to worry through a meal at the Bella Vista. Besides, she believed
that he had made his fortune by some awful stuff which kept hair from
decaying or teeth from falling off, and it did one no good to be seen in
the Casino with a creature like that. It was almost better to go about
with a woman, though she did hate being reduced to walking with a
female; it made a girl look so unsuccessful.

At length Dodo decided that, even for Mary's sake, she could no longer
"stick it out" at the Bella Vista. She felt, she said, so wretched that
she was "quite off her bonbons." The crisis came at luncheon and
indirectly through the marmoset. Dodo paid well and regularly; therefore
she was tacitly allowed certain privileges, not always approved by her
fellow-guests. Diablette had been a standing cause of friction between
Lady Dauntrey and the dog's mistress; but the marmoset, its successful
rival in Dodo's affections, was grudgingly permitted whenever Lord
Dauntrey had borrowed fifty francs or so, to select its own fruit from
the dessert. Some people were even amused at seeing the tiny animal jump
from Dodo's lap on to the table, and pick out the best grapes in an
old-fashioned centre-piece. On the last fatal day, however, Lady
Dauntrey's nerves had been rasped by the loss of her fifth cook. When
the marmoset was taken suddenly and desperately ill in the bread plate,
Eve flew into a rage, and high words passed like rapier flashes between
her and Miss Wardropp. Dodo attributed her pet's seizure to the fact
that Dauntrey fruit was unfit even for a monkey's consumption, and Eve
informed the whole company that Dodo was a disgusting Australian pig.
This was the last insult. Dodo shrilly "gave notice," while the marmoset
was dying in her napkin. The meal ended in confusion; and Miss Wardropp
went away that afternoon with the living Diablette, the dead monkey,
two teddy bears, an umbrella-mosquito-net, and seven trunks.

"Ask that man for your money back!" she advised Mary on the doorstep. "I
don't say go to _her_, for she'd only tell you some lie. 'Lie and let
lie' is her motto. She's reduced lying to a fine art. But ask him for
your capital, my dear, and watch his face when you do it. Compared to
his wife he's a model, even if it's a model of all the vices."

Mary missed Dodo. Diablette had been an invincible and dangerous enemy
to the blue frog from the Mentone china shop, poor, blasé Hilda, who
spent most of her time choking in flies a size too large for her, or
trying helplessly to push them down her blue throat with a tiny
turquoise hand. Dodo, however, had been a ray of brightness in the
house: meretricious, garish brightness perhaps; still she had given a
tinselline sparkle to the dull rooms when things were at their worst,
and Lady Dauntrey clouded with sullen gloom.

When the newest and humblest guests of the Villa Bella Vista lost money
beyond a certain limit, the bare thought of the Casino gave them mental
indigestion. They then stayed safely at home, and infested the unaired
drawing-room--pale people reading pink papers, and talking "system"; or
flushed people playing bridge for small points, with the windows
hermetically closed and their backs to the sunset. They quarrelled among
themselves in a liverish way over cards and politics, and agreed only on
the subject of such titled acquaintances as they had in common, all of
whom seemed to be perfectly charming. But these heraldic conversations
bored Mary even more intensely than the squabbles. There came a time
when desperation got the upper hand of that prudence so earnestly
recommended by Lord Dauntrey. She could not endure the long evenings in
the villa, and felt that she must again tempt fortune at the Casino.

One night after dinner she broke to her host the news that she need no
longer trouble him to win money for her. She would take back her own
half of the capital he was using, and play the old game once more.

"If I have a few days' luck, I think the wisest thing to do next would
be to go away," she went on, forcing herself to laugh quite gayly, as if
there were nobody at Monte Carlo whom it would hurt her cruelly never to
see again. "I've stayed on and on, when all the time I ought to have
been somewhere else. And I've never had courage to write my--my friends
at home what I've been doing. Just one more 'flutter,' and
then--goodbye!"

Her thoughts flew afar, as she made this little set speech. She saw
Vanno as he had looked that day, and on other days when she had
deliberately cut him in the street, or in the Casino, though she knew he
had been waiting in the hope that she would relent and let him speak.
His eyes haunted her everywhere. It seemed to her that they were very
sad, and had lost that burning, vital light of the spirit which in
contrast had made the personalities of other men dull as smouldering
fires. Occasionally he was near her at the tables, for he played
constantly now, recklessly and often disastrously according to
Hannaford.

The word "goodbye" and its attendant thought of departure brought
Vanno's image as clearly before Mary as if he had walked into the ugly
drawing-room, where people were shuffling cards for bridge or putting on
their wraps for the Casino. It was Vanno alone who was real for her, not
the other figures; and she did not see the grayness that settled like a
shadow on Lord Dauntrey's lined and sallow face.

"I'm awfully sorry, Miss Grant," he said, "but I can't give you back
your money now, for the simple reason that I banked most of your capital
and mine this afternoon. I felt rather seedy, and didn't mean to play
seriously to-night. If only you'd spoken in time, it would have been all
right enough. But now I'm afraid the best I can do for you, until
to-morrow, will be a few hundred francs. My wife and I must see what we
can scrape together."

He jumbled his words, as if in a hurry to get them all out, and laughed
apologetically, staring Mary straight in the face, insistently, with his
melancholy eyes. Something in them caught her attention, distracting it
from the thought that was always forcing itself in front of others. She
readily believed that he "felt seedy," for he looked extremely ill.
There were bags under the gray eyes, and his skin seemed loose on his
face, almost like a glove on a hand for which it is too large. Mary was
sorry for him, and protested that after all she did not care about
playing that night. She would wait till to-morrow, and he must not mind
what she had said. He appeared to be slightly relieved; but though he
smiled, his eyes kept the dull glassiness which gave them an unnatural
effect.

Late that night Eve knocked at Mary's door. She had on a bright green
dressing-gown, with a Chinese embroidery running over it of golden
dragons and serpents. In her hand she carried a cheap silver-backed
brush, and her long dark hair was undone. She looked strikingly
handsome, but the thick black strands hanging down on either side of the
white face recalled to Mary a picture in the library at Lady
MacMillan's. It was a clever painting of the Medusa, level-eyed, with a
red mouth like a wound, and dimly seen, pale glimmering features,
between the lazy writhing of dark snakes. The thing had fascinated Mary
in her impressionable schoolgirl days, but now she tried to huddle the
idea quickly out of her head, for it seemed disloyal and even disgusting
in connection with her hostess.

"I saw your light under the door," Lady Dauntrey said, "and I thought
maybe you wouldn't mind my sitting with you for a bit. I do feel so
beastly down on my luck, and you always cheer me up, you're so different
from any of the others."

Mary had begun, for perhaps the twentieth time, a letter to Reverend
Mother; but she was half glad of an excuse to put it away unfinished.
She too was in a wrapper, with her shining hair over her shoulders, but
she suggested a St. Ursula rather than a Medusa. There was no
comfortable chair in the room, but she drew the only one whose legs
could be depended upon, in front of a dying wood fire for Lady Dauntrey.

Eve sat for a few moments brushing her hair in a lazy, aimless way, and
staring at the red logs. "Perhaps," she said at last, "I shall have to
cheer _you_ up, though, when you've heard what I've come for. Might as
well out with it, I suppose! I know _I_ can't bear having had news
'broken' to me. My husband told you he was seedy, didn't he?--and hadn't
meant to play, so he'd banked all the money. He hadn't the courage, poor
chap, to tell you what really happened. He's simply sick over it, so I
offered to see you. In a way, it was true, what he said. The bank _has_
got the money, only--it's the Casino bank. Dauntrey had an awful débacle
to-day, the first time since he's been playing for you, and lost
everything; not only your capital, of course, but his own too. It's your
money he's so sick about, though. He could stand the loss of his own,
though it's a blow, and I don't quite know what we shall do. But to lose
yours! He's almost off his head. If it weren't for me, and my saying
you'd forgive him, I believe he'd blow his brains out."

"Oh, don't speak of anything so horrible!" Mary cried. "Of course I
forgive him."

"He's afraid you may think he has juggled away your money. When you
asked him for it to-night he was already wondering how you'd take the
loss; but your proposal coming suddenly like that bowled him over, and
he made an excuse to put off the evil hour. What a weird coincidence you
should have wanted your capital back the very day he'd lost the lot!
He's so sorry you didn't think of it yesterday; for then it would have
been safe in your hands now, unless you'd lost it yourself, which I
can't help thinking, my dear, you probably _would_, the way things were
going with you before."

"I daresay I should have lost the money if he hadn't," said Mary kindly.
In her heart, she wished that she had been given the chance, as at least
she would then have had some amusement, before the money was gone. And
certainly it was an odd coincidence that the loss should have happened
just before she had suggested playing for herself again. She could not
help remembering Dodo's parting shot at the Dauntreys. She wished that
the idea had not been put into her head; for though she would not
believe that Lord Dauntrey had robbed her, she saw that it was a mistake
to have lent him the capital--a mistake from his point of view, as well
as her own. The money was gone; and even if there were something wrong
in the way of its going, she could not prove the wrong. Nor did she wish
to try. She wished to believe the story Lady Dauntrey had told, which
might easily be true. Yet there would always remain the little crawling
snake of doubt; and that was not fair to Lord Dauntrey.

"It's too, too bad, and we are both terribly upset," Eve went on
heavily. "But it's the fortune of war, isn't it? And, thank goodness,
you've got plenty left of what the Casino's given you, I hope, in spite
of that awful Christmas night."

"Oh, yes, I've got more, in Smith's Bank," said Mary. "I can draw some
out to-morrow, and begin playing again. Tell Lord Dauntrey he mustn't
mind as far as I'm concerned."

"I did tell him you'd be sporting, and that you were a good plucked one,
but I couldn't console him. The truth is, _our_ part of the loss is
pretty serious. The Casino didn't give us any of our capital, you know,
and we aren't rich. We've lost an awful lot this season. Monte Carlo's
been disastrous to us in every way."

"But I thought Lord Dauntrey had done well with his system?" Mary
ventured.

"Oh, the system!" Eve caught herself up, quickly. "Yes, that was all
right. Only we never made much, as he couldn't afford high stakes. But
he's so good-natured and generous. He lent money to others to gamble
with--I won't say _who_, though perhaps you can guess--and never got a
penny back. And some of the people we've had staying here ran up big
bills and skipped without paying them. We simply had to let them go, and
make the best of it. Oh, dear Miss Grant--Mary--this is a bad time to
ask a favour, I know, when my husband's just come a cropper with your
money, as well as his own; but I was never one to beat about the bush.
And you're a regular brick. You're in luck, and we're out--down and out!
I wonder--_would_ you be inclined to lend us--say, a thousand pounds,
just to tide over the few weeks till our dividends come? We'd give you
good security, of course. We have shares in South African diamond
mines."

"I think I might be able to do that," said Mary, who could not bear to
see Lady Dauntrey humble herself to plead.

"How good you are!" Eve exclaimed. "You're a _real_ friend, the only one
we've got. The rest are sharks, or cats. It--it won't run you down low
to let us have a thousand?" She fixed her eyes sharply on Mary, under
the shadow of her falling hair, which she brushed as if mechanically.

"Oh no, I'm sure I can manage it very well."

"And keep enough to go on playing with?"

"Yes. I don't quite know how much I have in the bank. I've given away a
good deal here and there, I suppose, besides what I lost--and this now.
But there's sure to be plenty."

"Suppose, though, you go on losing? Of course I hope you won't. But
there's that to think of. Still, I presume you needn't worry if the
Casino should get back every penny they've given you? I hope you have
ever and ever so much of your own. I think I heard you telling the
Wardropp girl--wretched little beast!--that you had a big legacy left
you?"

"I believe I did tell her so, in the train," said Mary. "I don't
remember speaking of it since."

"I couldn't help overhearing what you said then. You were both talking
at the top of your voices. Well, I'm glad for you. If you're wise,
you'll put yourself out of temptation's way, and won't keep much beyond
your winnings where you can lay hands on it."

"I came here with very little," Mary confessed. "You see, I'd meant to
go on to Italy."

"And you were so lucky at first, that you've lived on your winnings, and
have never had to write a cheque on your own bank in England or
anywhere?"

"Not one!" laughed Mary. "Since I came into my money, I haven't drawn
half a dozen cheques--except in the cheque-book I got at Smith's, after
Mr. Shuyler and Mr. Carleton advised me to keep my winnings there."

"You fortunate girl! And think of all the lovely jewellery you've
bought, too! Of course I'm glad for our sakes, that your friends advised
you to store the best things in the bank, when you're not wearing them,
for one never knows about one's servants; and there are such creatures
as burglars. Still, I wonder you can bear having those heavenly things
out of your sight. _I_ couldn't!"

"I've felt rather tired of my jewellery lately," said Mary. "I hardly
know why. But I don't seem to take the pleasure in wearing it that I did
at first, when it was new to me."

Lady Dauntrey rose from the creaky chair with a sigh, and a slight
shiver. "You look too much like a saint for jewellery to suit you as
well as it does other people--me for instance!" she said. "And you
_are_ a saint. I don't know how to thank you enough. My poor boy will be
grateful! Well, I must go. You ought to have more wood on your fire. But
I suppose it's gone. Everything always is in this house, if it's
anything one wants. If ever you're in trouble of your own, and need a
couple of friends to stand by you, you've got us. Let's shake on it!"

She put out her hand and drew Mary toward her. If the girl had not
shrunk away almost imperceptibly, she would have bent down and kissed
her.




XXI


The curé of Roquebrune learned in an odd way that his Principino was
gambling; just in the queer roundabout way that secret things become
public on the Riviera.

His housekeeper had a sister. That sister was the wife of a man who kept
cows at Cap Martin, sold milk which the cows gave, and butter which he
said that he made (gaining praise thereby), though it was really
imported at night in carts from Italy.

The daughter was eighteen, and it was her duty to carry milk to the
customers of her father, who did business under the name of Verando,
Emilio. She was a beauty, and her fame spread until people of all
classes made errands to the laiterie of Verando, Emilio, to stare at the
dark-browed girl who was like a splendid Ligurian storm-cloud. When the
twelve white cows of Emilio were occasionally allowed an outing, and
could be seen glimmering among the ancient olive trees, the Storm-cloud
walked with them; early in the morning, when the gray-blue of mountain
and sky was framed like star sapphires in the silver of gnarled trunks
and feathery branches; or else early in the evening, when the moon-dawn
had come. The cows were supposed to chaperon Mademoiselle Nathalie
Verando, who was by blood more Signorina than Mademoiselle; but they
countenanced several flirtations which were observed by the caretaker of
Mirasole, the villa presently to be occupied by Prince Angelo Della
Robbia and his bride.

The caretaker, consumed with jealousy because one of the flirters had
flirted also with her daughter, told everybody that Nathalie Verando had
been kissed in the olive woods. Jim Schuyler's cook was a friend of
Luciola, the curé's housekeeper. When she heard of the incident in the
Verando family, she told Nathalie's aunt that Mrs. Winter, the
chaplain's wife at Monte Carlo, was in need of a parlour maid. The maid
must be pretty, because Mrs. Winter could not bear to have ugly people
about her. They ruined her appetite. This peculiarity was known at
Stellamare, because Mrs. Winter's cousin, Mr. Carleton, was visiting
there. Would it not be wise to put Nathalie into service, at a distance
from Cap Martin, so that everything might be forgotten?

Mrs. Winter, to whom the suggestion was made by her cook (cousin to the
cook at Stellamare), snapped at it eagerly. She had been out walking
with Dick, and they had both seen the beautiful dark Storm-cloud
chaperoned by the white cows, among the olives.

Nathalie became _femme de chambre_ in the apartment of Mrs. Winter. She
was so charmed with her mistress, and with certain hats and blouses that
Rose bestowed upon her, that she did not much miss the flirtations. But,
being a good Catholic, and having been confirmed by the curé of
Roquebrune, her conscience asked itself whether it could be right to
live in a household not only Protestant, but the abode of a priest who
spread heresy. It occurred to her that she would go and put this
question to the curé, her spiritual father; and she was not deterred
from her resolve by the fact that Achille Gonzales had finished his
military service and returned to visit his family. Achille's father was
the Maire of Roquebrune, a peasant landowner of wealth whose pride was
in his son and in their Spanish ancestry, which dated back to the days
of Saracen fighting on the coast.

Achille was a great match; and the white cows had nibbled mint and
clover from his hands before he went away with his regiment to Algeria.
His father was about to make over to him some land adjoining the curé's
garden, and the young man was there planting orange trees on fine days.

Nathalie chose a fine afternoon to ask Mrs. Winter if she might go to
Roquebrune.

The curé, who was broad-minded, set her heart at rest about the possible
iniquity of her service. He said that different religions were all paths
leading up a steep hill, in the same direction, only some were more
roundabout than others. Nathalie need not after all have taken the
trouble to climb the mule track in the afternoon sun; yet she was not
sorry she had come. Seldom had she looked so beautiful as when her aunt
was giving her orange-syrup with water after her talk with the curé, the
oranges being a present to the house from Achille Gonzales. On the
table in the little kitchen stood a silver photograph frame which
Luciola was going to clean, as the salt air had tarnished its
brightness. In the frame was a photograph of Prince Giovanni Della
Robbia as a boy of eighteen; but so little had eleven years changed
Vanno, that Nathalie recognized the picture at once.

"Ah," she exclaimed, "surely that is the handsome, tall young gentleman
who walks over often to look at the Villa Mirasole, near our laiterie:
the brother of the prince who is coming soon to live there."

"Why, yes, it is he," replied her aunt. "He is a friend of our curé's,
and was once his pupil. He is the Prince Giovanni Della Robbia, a very
noble, good young man."

"I am not sure he is so very good," retorted Nathalie, pleased to know
something which her aunt perhaps did not know, about a person of
importance.

Luciola's tiny body quivered with indignation. "Not good! How dare you
say such a thing of our curé's Prince? What can you have to tell of a
great noble in his position--you--a little no-one-at-all?"

The Storm-cloud lowered. "There are those as important as your Prince
who do not think me a 'little no-one-at-all.' The grand folk who come to
Cap Martin to call upon our lady the Empress Eugenie tell each other
about me; English dukes and duchesses they are, and Spanish grandees,
and high nobility from all over the world, who visit the Cap to do her
reverence. They make one excuse or another to have a look at your
'little no-one-at-all.' And a famous American artist has sketched me, in
the olive woods. He would not let me run home even for five minutes to
change into my best dress, nor would he permit that I put away my milk
cans: that was my one regret! As for your Prince, he passed, taking a
short cut to the villa, while I posed. Do you think he went on without
looking? No; he stopped and spoke with the artist."

"Then that was because they were acquaintances," snapped Luciola.

"It is true they knew each other. But it was not for the _beaux yeux_ of
the big red-bearded artist that the Prince stopped. It was to look at my
face in the sketch-book. There were other faces there, too, and on the
page next to mine the profile of a most lovely lady, all blond like an
angel, whose name the Prince knew, for he and the artist talked of her,
and called her Miss Grant. I have heard much conversation about her
since then, at Madame Winter's, at tea-time in the afternoon when I
bring in the tray and give cakes to visitors. They all, especially
Madame's cousin, speak of Miss Grant, and she is celebrated for her
beauty as well as for her gambling: yet your Prince looked as much at my
picture as at hers, quite as much; and the artist could have taken no
more pains with me if I had been a queen. So you see what other people
think. And as it happens, I _do_ know a great deal about this Prince."

"Nothing against him, then, I am sure," persisted Luciola, though
somewhat impressed. "Monsieur le Curé loves him, which alone proves that
he is good."

"Does Monsieur le Curé consider it good to gamble at Monte Carlo?"
inquired Nathalie, with assumed meekness.

"Of course not. Prince Giovanni would not stoop to such a pursuit."

"Oh, would he not? That is all you know of the world, here on your
mountain, dear aunt. Me, I hear everything that goes on, though I live
in the house of a cleric. Madame's cousin knows well your Prince, who,
it is true, did not gamble at first, and seemed to scorn the Casino, so
I heard from Monsieur Carleton while I poured the tea. But for some
reason he has taken to play, the Prince. He is always in the Casino. He
has refused to live in the villa at Cap Martin with his brother and
sister-in-law, who have now arrived, because he hates to be too far from
the Casino, though perhaps they may not know why. Monsieur Carleton has
told Madame that not once have they been inside its doors, or shown
themselves at any Monte Carlo restaurant. Oh, your Prince is a wild
gambler, aunt, and loses much money, which is a silly way of amusing
one's self, in my opinion. And that is why I say he is not so good as
you and Monsieur le Curé think him, you who are so innocent."

"I do not believe one word of your foolish gossip," was the only
satisfaction Nathalie got from Luciola. But when the girl had gone, the
little old woman was in such haste to retell the tale to the curé, that
she did not even throw a glance at Nathalie. If she had, she might have
seen the Storm-cloud brightening when, quite by accident, she was met by
Achille Gonzales within a few yards of the curé's door.

Old as she was, Luciola had an excellent memory for anything that
interested her, though she was capable of forgetting what was best
forgotten in a household, such as the breaking of a dish, or the reason
why the cat had been left out of doors all night in the rain. She
repeated what she had heard from her niece, almost word for word,
wandering a little sometimes from the straight path of the narrative
into side tracks, such as the anecdote of the artist who took as much
pains with Nathalie's portrait as with that of the great beauty, Miss
Grant, who was always gambling at the Casino, the place where wicked
people said that Prince Giovanni played. No exciting detail did Luciola
neglect.

The curé listened to the end, without interrupting, greatly to the
housekeeper's disappointment, as she had made her narrative piquant in
the hope of tempting her master to ask questions. But he showed no
emotion of any kind, and only remarked at last that Luciola was quite
right not to believe gossip about the Prince, or indeed evil of any one.

Nevertheless her story left him reflective. He thought it not impossible
that Vanno was gambling; and if it were the case, several things would
be explainable. It was many days since the Prince had come to
Roquebrune, although the curé had done what he did not wish to do, in
order to please his one-time pupil.

Vanno was well aware that it was not the curé's affair to call upon
strangers out of his own parish, except by special request. To call
uninvited upon a person in Monaco might seem to the curé and abbé of San
Carlo like an intrusion: and to present himself at a hotel, inquiring
for a young lady whom he did not even know to be a Catholic, had been an
ordeal. This, for the Principino's sake, he had done not once but twice,
as Vanno knew. And in truth the Prince had seemed too preoccupied with
disappointment because Miss Grant was not at home to express much
gratitude when the curé told him of the two calls.

Not since the third day before Christmas had Vanno come to Roquebrune,
nor had he written his old friend; and certainly the curé had wondered,
for now the new year was more than a week old; and always the weather
had been of that brilliance the peasant women consider necessary after
Noël for the washing of the Christ child's clothes by the Sainte Vierge,
His mother. There had been no such excuse as rain to prevent a visit;
but at last the curé guessed at a reason which might have kept Vanno
from wishing to see him.

On New Year's Day--the great fête--the priest had called in the
afternoon on Prince and Princess Della Robbia, at the Villa Mirasole,
knowing that their arrival had been delayed until the night before.
Vanno, who had lunched with them, had already gone; and it was no news
to the curé that the younger brother was not living at Cap Martin.
Angelo referred to this change of plan, saying laughingly that no doubt
the foolish boy feared to interrupt a tête-à-tête. Nonsense this, of
course; for the honeymoon had extended itself over months, and the
Princess was anxious to see as much as possible of her new
brother-in-law. Angelo, too, particularly wished Vanno to love Marie as
a sister, and report well of her to the Duke, whose favourite he was. It
was no secret that Vanno could do what he liked with his father,
although no other soul was permitted to take liberties with the Duke.

Nothing had been left unsaid which might assure Vanno of his welcome,
yet he insisted on remaining at some Monte Carlo hotel, only coming over
to lunch or dinner, though Angelo quite understood that his brother had
promised to live with him.

The curé, soothing the elder and defending the younger gayly, thought in
his heart that he knew better than Angelo why Vanno clung to Monte
Carlo. He supposed Miss Grant to be the attraction, but this was the
Principino's affair, and the curé kept the secret. Miss Grant's name was
not mentioned. Evidently Prince and Princess Della Robbia had not heard
of her.

Vanno's infatuation for the girl did not seem a light thing to the curé,
and he thought of it anxiously, hoping and sometimes believing that the
young man would be strong enough to hold himself aloof, unless Miss
Grant should show herself worthy of a noble, not a degrading, love. The
priest had kept his promise in going to see her; but until this rumour
of Vanno's gambling reached him he had not been able to regret his
failure. The responsibility of judging and truthfully reporting his
opinion of a young woman had weighed heavily upon his spirits. Supposing
the curé had said to himself that he saw Miss Grant and thought nothing
but good of her? The Principino might on the strength of his report be
reckless enough to propose marriage. A good and beautiful girl might
still be an unsuitable match for a son of the Duke of Rienzi; and on the
priest's head would, in a sense, lie the blame if she became the wife of
Prince Vanno. Altogether, the curé had been inclined to think that the
saints had perhaps had a hand in sending him twice to call when Miss
Grant was not visible. Now, however, he took himself to task. He had
been careless. He had considered his own selfish feelings too much in
this matter. If the Principino had taken to gambling (a vice he had once
sneered at as a refuge for the destitute in intellect) there must have
been some extraordinary incentive. The curé was sure of this; and
granting it without mental argument, he set himself to the task of
deduction.

"One would say I flattered myself by thinking that I had been born a
detective!" he remarked aloud to his favourite rose-bush, when Luciola
had emptied her news-bag for him, in the garden. "Me, a detective?
Heaven forbid! Yet at the same time, if I have brain-power to be of
service to my Principino, the saints give me wit to use it."

Then he thought very hard, sitting in his arbour, on the wooden seat
which gave a view over the whole coast, with its mountains whose feet
were promontories. Half amused, half alarmed lest the pretence were sin,
he tried to put himself in Vanno's place; and so doing it was borne in
upon his mind that something of importance must have happened between
the Prince and Miss Grant. She had been gambling all the while, though
Vanno had not at first gambled: but if they had met--if there had been a
scene which had driven the Prince to desperation--might that not explain
the change? Had she definitely proved herself unworthy, or had Vanno
openly done her some injustice, which had wrought bitterness for both?
In any case, the curé decided that he had been mistaken in the designs
of Providence for himself. After all, perhaps it had been meant for him
to meet Miss Grant, and he had been indifferent, had turned a deaf ear
to the voice which bade him try again and yet again.

He resolved to call upon the girl, not only once more, but many times if
necessary, and when there was something to report, he would have an
excuse to go and see Vanno.

All this, indirectly through Nathalie Verando's walks with the white
cows, in the olive woods of Cap Martin, and more directly through the
tarnishing of a silver frame on an old photograph.




XXII


Eve Dauntrey was in the act of opening the door as the curé of
Roquebrune put out his hand to touch the bell at the Villa Bella Vista.

Somehow it was a shock to find herself face to face with a priest, on
her own doorstep; and before she could quite control her nerves, she
broke out with a brusque, "What do you want?"

The curé looked calmly at her, his pleasant, sunburned face betraying
none of the surprise he felt at such a reception. In his modest way he
was a quick and keen observer, though he had never deliberately prided
himself on being a judge of character. It seemed to him that the
handsome, hard-eyed woman with the white face and scarlet lips was
startled at the sight of his black cassock, as if she had done something
which she would not like to have a priest find out.

This made him spring to the conclusion that she had been brought up as a
Catholic, but was one no longer.

"I have called upon a lady who, I am told, is staying here," he
explained politely in French. "Miss Grant."

"Miss Grant?" Eve could not help showing that she was puzzled and not
pleased. "Yes, Miss Grant is visiting me," she admitted. Then, with a
sudden impulse which she could hardly have explained, quickly added:
"Unfortunately she's out. Is there any message you would like to leave?"

As she asked this question, Lady Dauntrey stared with almost
ostentatious frankness straight into the curé's face, and her voice had
lost its sharpness. She was dressed in purple velvet, and wore a large
purple hat. The rich dark hue gave her light eyes a very curious colour,
more green than gray; and as she stood on the doorstep, tall and somehow
formidable, the curé thought that she looked Egyptian, an elemental
creature who might have lived by the Nile when the Sphinx was new.

The afternoon sunshine streamed into her eyes, and caused her pupils to
shrink until they appeared to be no larger than black pinheads. Perhaps,
the curé acknowledged to himself, it was only this that gave them a
deceitful effect; nevertheless he felt suddenly sure that for some
reason she was lying to him. He did not believe that Miss Grant was out.

"This lady does not wish me to meet her guest," he told himself. But
aloud he said that he regretted missing Miss Grant; and there was no
message, thanks, except that the curé of Roquebrune had called again. He
was making up his mind to a certain course, and stood aside politely,
meaning to let Lady Dauntrey pass, and then follow her down the steps of
her villa. What he would do after that was his own affair; for with
those who are subtle it is permitted to be subtle in return. Lady
Dauntrey, however, seemed unwilling to let him linger. Instead of
passing him, she asked, "Are you coming my way?"

"As you tell me, Madame, that Miss Grant is out, I will go on to the
Church of Sainte Devote, which is not far away," the curé answered.

"Oh!" The slight look of strain on Lady Dauntrey's face passed, as if
her muscles relaxed. "Then we go in different directions. I am walking
up the hill to Monte Carlo. Good afternoon. I will remember to give Miss
Grant your message."

They parted, but Lady Dauntrey turned her head twice, each time to see
the curé's black-robed figure marching at a good pace away from the
villa. Then she went on faster; and the importance of the incident began
to fade from her mind. Not that it had ever had any real importance, she
assured herself. Only, she hated priests as she would hate to see a
raven fly over her head. They seemed somehow ominous; and she could not
understand why a member of the interfering tribe wanted to see Miss
Grant, unless to try and get her away into less worldly surroundings.
Lady Dauntrey did not wish Mary to go; and she was glad she had acted on
impulse, saying that the girl was out. It was lucky that she had met the
priest, for had he arrived a minute sooner or a minute later, a servant
would have told him that Miss Grant was in. Eve decided that she would
forget to mention the curé of Roquebrune's visit.

Having said that he would go to the Church of Sainte Devote, the curé
conscientiously kept his word. Luckily the Villa Bella Vista was not far
from the deep, dim ravine where the patron saint of Monaco was supposed
to have drifted ashore in a boat, piloted by a sacred dove, and rowed by
faithful followers after suffering martyrdom in Corsica. The curé was
fond of the strange little church of sweet chimes, almost hidden between
immense, concealing walls of rock; but to-day he merely paid his
respects to the saint and quickly went his way again. Twenty minutes
after parting from Lady Dauntrey, he rang the bell of her villa, and was
told by an untidy servant that Miss Grant was at home.

Mary was waiting in the house to receive Mrs. Winter, who had been
persuaded by Carleton to overlook the girl's neglect, and to call once
more, with him. Dick had asked Mary not to speak of the visit in advance
to Lady Dauntrey, as his cousin wanted a chance for a talk,
uninterrupted by the mistress of the villa; and Mary half guiltily,
though with a certain pleasure, had consented. Instinctively she guessed
that Eve would have taken the call for herself, and that Mrs. Winter
would have found little time to chat with any one else. It was hateful
to be hypercritical, Mary felt, yet she had begun to see that Lady
Dauntrey was curiously jealous of her; that she did not like to see her
talk with strangers, or alone even with other guests of the house.

When the curé of Roquebrune was ushered in, Mary was expecting Dick to
arrive with his cousin; but for the moment she was alone in the
drawing-room which she had made less depressing by a generous gift of
flowers. The alertness with which the girl sprang up, on his entrance,
and the quick change of expression told the curé that she was expecting
another visitor. "Could it be the Prince?" was the question which darted
through his mind. But, no. There was neither disappointment nor relief
on her face, only surprise. He argued in consequence that the visitor
was not awaited with emotion.

The servant who admitted the curé had not said that the occupant of the
drawing-room was Miss Grant, but his first glance assured him of her
identity. Yes, this must be the face, the eyes, which had appealed to
all the romance in Vanno. Even the man whom conviction had dedicated
body and soul to the religion of self-sacrifice had enough humanity
mingling with his saintliness to feel the peculiar appeal of this gentle
girl. She was not only a woman, she was Woman. Unconsciously she called,
not to men, but to man, to all that was strong, to all that was
chivalrous and desired to give protection.

There was nothing modern about the type, the curé told himself, though
it might be that this particular specimen of it had been trained to
modern ideas. Such a woman would never struggle for her "rights." They
would be flung at her feet as tribute, before she could ask, and quite
without thought she would accept them. The curé would have laughed had
he been accused of lurking tendencies toward romance, except perhaps in
his love of gardens; yet he seemed to reflect the impressions of Vanno,
to realize with almost startling keenness the special allurement Miss
Grant had for the Prince; that remoteness from the ordinary which
suggested the vanished loveliness of Greece with all its poetry; which
would make an accompaniment of music seem appropriate to every movement,
like the _leit motif_ for a woman in grand opera.

"She is good and sweet," he said to himself, even before he spoke. "I
seem to see her surrounded by a halo of purity." And he thought that a
man who loved this girl could not forget, or love another woman. He did
not lose sight of Vanno's position, or belittle it, in thinking it of
small consequence compared to love: but he said, "This is a girl in a
million. She is worthy of the highest place." And in an undertone
something else was whispering in him, "I may have but a few minutes to
do what I have come for." His spirit rose to the occasion. If the
certain reward had been a cardinal's hat, he could not have determined
more obstinately on success; perhaps he would not have strained toward
the goal with the same energy, for rightly or wrongly the curé had no
temporal ambition for himself. He loved his mountain flock, and had no
wish to leave it. His garden was to him what a boxful of jewels is to
some women. What he had to do in the next few minutes was to secure
Vanno's happiness and the girl's; for it did not occur to him as
possible that she had no love for Vanno.

"I think," began Mary, "that you must be the curé of Roquebrune, and
that it was you who came to see me at the hotel. It was very kind of
you, and so kind to come again. I meant to have gone up to your church,
but----"

"I understand," he put in when she paused, showing embarrassment.
"Still, I want you to come not only to my church, but to my garden. It
will do you good. It is that which I have called to ask you to do. That,
and one other thing."

"One other thing?" Mary looked a little anxious. Now he would perhaps
say that he had heard from the convent, that they knew where she was,
and had begged him to admonish her.

"Yes, one other thing. You will think I am abrupt in mentioning it, but
you see, I must speak quickly, for at any moment I may be interrupted,
and the thing is of great importance--to me, because it concerns one
whom I love--he who first asked me to come and see you, Prince Vanno
Della Robbia."

"It was he who asked you?" The words burst from her. She had been pale;
but suddenly the lilies of her face were turned to roses, as one flower
may seem to be transformed into another, by the trick of an Indian
fakir.

"Yes. Because I am his old friend, and he wished that you and I might
also be friends. That was before he had ever spoken one word to you, or
you to him; but now, I feel sure, you have met?"

Mary's flaming face paled and hardened. "What has he told you?" she
asked sharply.

"Nothing. I have not seen him for many days. But because I have not, and
because of what I hear of him, I think you have met. I think, too, that
perhaps you both made some mistakes about each other. I will not even
beg you not to consider me impertinent or intrusive. It would insult
your intelligence and your heart. I ask you, my child, to tell me
whether or no I have guessed right?"

"He made mistakes about me," she replied, almost sullenly. "I don't see
how it's possible that I have made any about him."

"It is not only possible but certain if you believe him capable of
wronging you in thought or act. I know him. And I heard him speak of
you. Any woman might thank heaven for inspiring such words from a man. I
tell you this, I who am a priest: He loves you, and did love you from
the moment he first set eyes upon your face."

"I know," Mary answered simply, and with something of the humbleness of
a child rebuked by high authority. "He said that to me. But--no, I can't
tell you any more."

"That 'but' has told me everything. You sent him away?"

"Yes."

"And I know him well enough to be sure that he has tried to see you
again, to justify himself?"

"He has written. I sent back the letter. And he has wanted to speak,
but I have never let him. I thought it would be wrong."

"Then, my poor child, did you think it less wrong to send him to his
ruin?"

"To his ruin--I?"

"Because you believed him evil, you have roused evil in him, and driven
him to evil. I wish to read you no moral lecture on gambling; but for
him, for a man of his nature, it is a dangerous and powerful drug if
taken to kill pain. I have come to ask you to save him, since I believe
only you can do it."

"I?" she echoed, bitterly. "But I am a gambler! There's gambler's blood
in my veins. I was warned, and wouldn't listen. Now I know there's no
use struggling, so I go on. How can I save any one from a thing I do
myself--a thing I feel I shall keep on doing?"

"Because he loves you, you can save him; and because you love him, too."

She threw her head back, with the gesture of a fawn in flight. "Why
should you say that?"

"I say what I know. I read your heart. And it is right that you should
love him."

"No! For he insulted me."

"You thought so. It was a deceiving thought. Let him prove it false.
Come to my garden to-morrow, and I will bring him to you there. I would
not say this unless I were sure of him. And I tell you again, his
salvation is in you. You have driven him to the drug of forgetfulness.
You owe it to his soul to give him justice. For the rest, let him
plead."

"Madame Veentaire and Meestaire Carleton," announced the shabby
man-servant, blundering abruptly in, as if the door had broken away in
front of him.

The fire died out of the priest's face, but there was no sense of defeat
in his eyes. His calm after excitement was communicated subtly to Mary,
and enabled her to greet her new guests without confusion.

The curé bowed with old-fashioned politeness, and with a slight
fluttering of the voice Mary made him known to the chaplain's wife and
Dick Carleton.

"But we know each other already, Monsieur le Curé and I," exclaimed
Rose, putting out her hand. She explained this to Mary with her bright,
enthusiastic smile. "My husband and I take long walks together. One of
our first was up to Roquebrune; and we went into the church--such a
huge, important church for a little hill town! Monsieur le Curé was
there, and we talked, and he showed us the picture under a curtain. How
I do love pictures under curtains, don't you? They're so beautifully
mysterious. And through a door there was a glimpse of fairyland. I
couldn't believe it was real--I hardly believe so now, though Monsieur
le Curé waved his wand and made us free of the place, as if it were a
'truly' garden. Have you been there yet, Miss Grant?"

"I was just inviting her to come for the first time, to-morrow," said
the curé. "Advise her to accept, Madame, for three o'clock."

"Indeed I do!" Rose smiled from him to Mary.

The curé moved forward, holding out his hand. He made it evident that
this was goodbye. "Will you not take Madame's advice, and my
invitation?" he asked, his good brown eyes warm and gentle.

"Yes!" Mary answered impulsively, laying her hand in his.

He clasped it, looking kindly into her face. "I am very glad. Thank you.
I will meet you in the church," he said; no more; but Mary knew that he
meant, "Thank you for trusting me."

        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

"His Highness is out," was the answer at the Hôtel de Paris to the
curé's inquiries. No, the Prince had left no word as to when he would
come in. Often he was away for dinner, and sometimes did not return
until late at night.

"Eh bien! I will wait," said the curé with a sigh. He had determined to
carry the thing through, and would not fail for lack of persistence.

Vanno might be in any one of a dozen places, but the curé with his
mind's eye saw the young man at the Casino. There he could not seek him
even if he would, as a man in clerical dress would not be admitted.
Resignedly the priest sat down in a retired corner of the hall, where he
could watch those who came in by the revolving door. That he should be
sitting in this home of gayety and fashion at Monte Carlo appealed to
his sense of humour. "A bull in a china shop," he thought, "is in his
element compared to poor Father Pietro Coromaldi in the hall of the
Hôtel de Paris."

At first he was half shyly diverted by the gay pageant around him, the
coming and going of perfectly dressed men and women of many nations, who
drank tea and ate little cakes, while the band played the sort of music
which can have no mission save as an incentive to conversation.

But time went on, and Vanno did not come. The curé tired of the people,
most of whom he felt inclined to pity, as no real joy shone out of their
eyes, even when they laughed. He thought the pretty, smiling young women
were like attractive advertisements for tooth-pastes, and face-powders,
and furs, and hats. They did not look to him like real people, living
real, everyday lives; and Miss Grant, though perhaps she led just such
an existence, seemed to belong to a different order of being.

At last Lady Dauntrey, in her smart purple dress, came in with a tall,
haggard man who had the eyes of a chained and starving dog. They joined
a conspicuous party whose principal members were a fat woman massaged to
the teeth, a dark girl who had evidently a sharp eye to the main chance
as well as to the picturesque, and a hook-nosed, appallingly pompous man
who would strut on the edge of the grave.

"Those are the Holbeins," said a woman, who at that moment came with
another to a seat near the curé's inconspicuous corner. "They represent
the ideal vulgarity. Rich beyond the dreams of reasonable avarice! When
the mother and father die, the girl's last tribute to their memory will
be to order them bijou tombstones. And _they_ are the sort of people
those wretched Dauntreys are driven to know!"

The curé, catching a name made familiar to him earlier in the day,
turned his head to glance at his neighbours, who were seating themselves
at a small round table. At the same time one of the two women, the one
who had not spoken, looked at him. Instant recognition flashed in the
eyes of both. The lady bowed with distant politeness, and he returned
the courtesy. She it was who had come to him at Roquebrune, one day
weeks ago, asking for news of Prince Della Robbia, of whose acquaintance
with him she was evidently informed.

She was dressed more elaborately this afternoon. The curé had described
her to Vanno as wearing a gray travelling dress. To-day she was in
black, with a large velvet hat which set off her pale face, her pale
eyes and hair, making her look striking and almost handsome; younger,
too, than the curé had thought, though she had no air of girlishness.
"Idina Bland" was the name Vanno had ejaculated, on hearing her
description; and he had gone on to say that she was a distant relative,
who had lived for some time in Rome and at Monte Della Robbia.

Certainly Vanno's surprise at hearing of her presence on the Riviera,
and her questions concerning the family, had not been of an agreeable
nature. He had thought that she was in America, and evidently would not
have been sorry if she had stayed there; yet any uneasiness he felt had
not, apparently, been on his own behalf. Angelo's name had been
mentioned, and then Vanno had rather abruptly turned to another subject.

The curé blamed himself for curiosity, yet he could not help feeling
curious concerning the young woman with eyes which he had described as
like those of a statue.

He wondered if she knew that the Prince was at the Hôtel de Paris, and
if she had come there to see him; or if, perhaps, they had already met
since he first mentioned her to Vanno. He wished that his small
knowledge of English were larger, but though he spoke the language not
at all, and understood only a little, he gathered here and there a word
of the conversation. Idina Bland's companion was evidently telling her
about the "celebrities"; therefore he deduced that she was better
acquainted with the Riviera than was the younger woman. Now and then the
curé caught the word "Annonciata," and he wondered if the pair were
staying at the place of that name. He knew it well, the beautiful little
pointed mountain above Mentone, with its deserted convent, its sad
watching cypresses, its one hotel in a fragrant garden, and its famous
view of the Corsican mirage. If Vanno's cousin lived in that hotel,
which could be reached only by a funicular or a picturesque mule path,
it looked as if she had a wish for retirement.

The priest would have liked to know if she had been at the Annonciata
ever since her visit to him. Prince Della Robbia had not mentioned her,
on New Year's Day, but that was no sure argument of his ignorance. Miss
Bland's presence might not seem of importance to him. The curé asked
himself if it would be indiscreet to bring up the subject when he next
saw Angelo. Any day, now, he might have a summons to lunch with the
bride and bridegroom, and to bless their villa, which he had been
requested to do as soon as they were settled.

Almost involuntarily he kept alert, listening for the name of Della
Robbia, but it was not uttered. The elder woman evidently enjoyed her
position as cicerone, and at last her catalogue of celebrities so
wearied the curé that he grew nervous. He turned to watch Lady Dauntrey,
at a distance, trying to read her face and that of the melancholy man he
took to be her husband. He did not like to think of Miss Grant--his
Principino's Miss Grant--being at that woman's house.

"We shall see what can be done," he said to himself, trying to enliven
the long minutes of his waiting, minutes which seemed to grow longer and
ever longer, like shadows at evening.

By six o'clock the great hall and tea-room adjoining were nearly empty.
The Dauntreys and the Holbeins had gone, and nearly all the pretty,
chattering young women who were like advertisements in picture-papers.
Still Miss Bland and her friend lingered over their tea and cakes,
though they had ceased to eat or drink; and the curé could not help
thinking that they had a special object in staying on. Eventually,
however, they paid the hovering waiter, and slowly walked out, Idina
Bland once again bending her head coldly to the priest.

Night's darkness shut round the brilliant _Place_ of the Casino, like a
blue wall surrounding a golden cube of light, and the curé would have a
dark walk up the mule path. In order to come down that afternoon, he had
given the service of vespers to a friend from Nice, who had just arrived
for a short visit and a "rest