The Guests Of Hercules Part 38

Marie smiled at him sweetly and softly; and as her husband's eyes met hers a beautiful look of love and understanding flashed from the hidden soul of the woman to the soul of the man. Vanno saw it, and thrilled. So would it be with him and the girl he loved.

XXVII

The motor was ordered for the Princess at a quarter to three. She wished to arrive early at Mrs. Winter's, in order to have her chat with Miss Grant before tea time. Her idea was to ask only for the guest, not for the hostess, and be ready to leave before the hour when extraneous and irrelevant guests might be expected to invade the chaplain's drawing-room. There was, it appeared, a telephone in the apartment-house where the Winters lived, and Vanno, getting into communication with Mary after numerous difficulties, begged her to be in, and if possible alone, for a visit from his sister-in-law. It was arranged that the cure, who had never been in a motor-car, should be dropped at the foot of a convenient short cut to Roquebrune, and Angelo and Vanno would go on with Marie to Monte Carlo. Having left her at the Winters' door, Angelo meant to walk with Vanno to his hotel, expecting later to pick up his wife again. When the cure had bidden them goodbye, however, Marie proposed a modification of the plan.

"Poor Angelo has been pining for Monte Carlo, I'm sure," she said, laughing, her bright eyes and unusually pink cheeks alluring and mysterious, under the thickly patterned black veil she had put on with a large black velvet hat. "He's concealed his feelings well, I must say, out of compliment to me, because I was so good about the villa. At first I didn't want to have a house at Cap Martin. From all I'd heard, I thought the Riviera must be so sophisticated--and somehow I've always detested the idea of Monte Carlo. But you know, Vanno, how Angelo fell in love with the Villa Mirasole when he visited the Grand Duke years ago. He must have written you how he set his heart, even then, on having it for his honeymoon if he married. I gave up my objections provided he would promise that I needn't go to Monte Carlo, and that he wouldn't be always running over there himself. Now, I'm glad, for I love the villa.

And you see, I'm on the way to Monte Carlo of my own accord! The next thing is to tell Angelo he may play about there as long as he likes. I shall keep the motor waiting while I'm at Miss Grant's, and go back in it alone whenever I feel inclined. You needn't come to fetch me. I'd rather not."

Both men looked disappointed: Vanno because he wanted to hear Marie's impressions of his adored one without delay, confident that they would be favourable; Angelo, because since their marriage he and his wife had not been parted for a single hour. This was the first sign Marie had shown of wishing to a.s.sert independence.

"Are you sure you're not saying this for my sake?" Angelo inquired anxiously. "I don't want to hang about Monte Carlo. I----"

"It will do you good to have a little change," she said. Then she flashed him a meaning, intimate glance which he thought that he interpreted, and therefore raised no more objections. Her eyes seemed to say: "I have a reason. I'll explain to you when we're alone. It has something to do with your brother."

"Come and dine with us if you care to, Vanno," she went on. "Or if you have an engagement with Miss Grant, spin over in a taxi for coffee and a few minutes' chat afterward. That is, if you'd like to hear how beautiful and altogether perfect I think she is--and make some plan about bringing her to Cap Martin--sooner or later."

Vanno explained that he was to dine at the Winters, but would accept for the "chat," with great pleasure. Dinner was early at the chaplain's. He would leave at eight-thirty, and then go back again for a quarter of an hour, to bid Miss Grant farewell.

He leaned suddenly from the window just in time to direct his brother's chauffeur, and the car pulled up before the ugly square building which Rose Winter called a "quadrupedifice." Angelo sprang out, helping Marie to alight with as much care and tenderness as if she might break with a rough touch. Next came the parting at the door; and Vanno smiled to see how Marie lingered with her hand in her husband's. They had as many last words to say to each other as if Angelo were to be absent for three days, although he was a.s.suring her--with needless insistence--that even if he looked into the Casino he would certainly be back long before dinner.

The two men watched the Princess begin to mount the stairs, before they turned away. Then, leaving the car at the door as Marie had wished, they walked off together in the direction of the Hotel de Paris.

"Idina Bland called yesterday on Marie," Angelo said abruptly, with a slight suggestion of constraint in his voice. "It was--rather a surprise to me. I supposed she was in America."

"Diavolo! She is still here, then?"

"Still? Did you know she was on the Riviera?"

"I knew she came--weeks ago. She went up to Roquebrune to see the cure.

She'd heard he was an old friend of ours--and she inquired for you--wouldn't say who she was. That was before I arrived."

"How do you know it was Idina, if she didn't give her name?"

"The cure's description. There was no mistaking it. He said at a little distance her eyes looked white, like a statue's."

"Ah--that was good! They are like that. Curious eyes. Curious woman. Why didn't you tell me before about her visit to the cure?"

"I meant to. But you put off coming so long. And I--well, I confess I forgot."

"You're excusable in the circ.u.mstances, my dear boy. After all, it's of no importance."

"No. And then, as I never saw her anywhere about, there was reason to suppose she'd left. If I thought of her at all, I thought she'd gone."

"It seems she's been staying for weeks at the Annonciata--I fancy she called it--a hotel on a little mountain close to Mentone. She says the air's very fine--and she's been ordered south by an American doctor. Had pneumonia in the autumn."

"What about the distant cousin over there who was going to leave her money?"

"He's dead, and she's got the money. She is wearing a kind of second mourning--gray and black. It made her look rather hard, I thought."

"She always did look hard, except----"

"Except? What's the rest, Vanno?"

"I was going to say, 'Except for you.'"

"I--er--she seems to have got over that nonsense now. I must confess it gave me rather a start when I came in from a smoke in the garden yesterday, and found her sitting with Marie in the yellow salon. For a minute I was afraid--well, I hardly know of what."

"Dio! You didn't think she'd try to do Marie a mischief?"

"No. Hardly that. But it pa.s.sed through my mind that she might try to make trouble between us. Not that she could."

"Did you--don't answer unless you care to--ever tell Marie about Idina?"

"Not till yesterday, after her call. It never occurred to me. Idina had gone out of my life before Marie came into it, and she was never anything to me."

"I know. It was the other way round. But--you were good to her, and cousinly, and I suppose she misunderstood a little."

"I never realized that, until she was going to America, and she hinted--er--that she wouldn't care about getting the money if it weren't for--well, you know. Or you can guess."

"She thought father would approve of a marriage between you if she became an heiress."

"Partly that, and partly she seemed to believe that I'd have spoken to her of love if she hadn't been a kind of dependent on my father. I tried to make her understand without putting it into brutal words, that I did love her of course, but only as a cousin. It's the devil having to tell a woman you don't want her! I'm not sure she did entirely understand, for she wrote me a letter afterward--it followed me to Dresden, and came the day after Marie had promised to be my wife. I didn't answer. I thought when Idina heard of my marriage she'd see why I hadn't replied, and why it was kinder not to write. I knew she would hear through father, for she corresponds with him. He is very punctilious about answering letters; and suspecting nothing he would tell the news. When I found her with Marie yesterday--but I see now I was a fool. These melodramatic things don't happen. And after all, Idina's a cold woman."

"I wonder?"

"Well, anyhow, she was very civil to me and pleasant to Marie, whom I questioned afterward about what Idina had said before I came in. It seems there was nothing--but I explained to my wife that there'd been a boy and girl friendship between Idina and me, a sort of cousinly half flirtation, nothing more. And really there _was_ nothing more."

"Certainly not," Vanno agreed, emphatically. "But it's just as well to tell Marie, so that in case Idina should do something--one of those things women call 'catty'--she'd be prepared."

"Yes, it is better to have no concealments," said Angelo. "Luckily I have no other complications in my past. Nothing to dread. And Marie is an angel. She would forgive me anything, I believe, if there were anything I had to ask her to forgive."

"As you would her," Vanno added, impulsively.

"With her, there could be nothing to forgive," Angelo replied, stiffening. "She is an angel. And now, enough of my affairs. Let us talk about yours."

XXVIII

When her husband and brother-in-law had left her, Princess Della Robbia began to go upstairs very slowly. She mounted with her hand on the bal.u.s.ters, as if she were weak or tired. At last, when she had reached the etage of the Winters' flat, she paused, and rested for several minutes before the door which displayed the chaplain's card. She was breathing rather fast, which was but natural perhaps, as she had ascended three flights of stairs, was wearing an immensely long and wide ermine stole, and carrying a huge m.u.f.f to match. Before she touched the electric bell she pulled her large hat forward a little over her face, and adjusted the thick veil, which had a pattern like a spider's web.

Then she opened a gold vanity box suspended from her wrist by a chain, and looked at herself in the small mirror it contained. Her face was so shadowed by the hat and disguised by the veil that at a little distance it might be difficult for any one not very familiar with her features and figure to recognize her at all.

When she had shut the vanity box with a sharp snap, she pressed the electric bell, and waited with her head bowed. She kept it bowed when the beautiful Storm-cloud opened the door, and still while she inquired in French for Miss Grant.