Part 29

Marie blushed, a sudden bright blush. "Oh, you have told me about them--how they shoot under the terrace. That's one reason why I love staying here at Cap Martin, or taking excursions where everything is purely beautiful, and nothing to make one sad."

"I don't remember telling you about the pigeon-shooting," Angelo said.

"Well, if you didn't tell me, somebody else must have, mustn't they--else how could I know?"

"Highnesses, Mister the Stereo-Mondaine."

A frail wisp of a man was ushered by the butler on to the loggia: a man very shabby, very thin, very proud, with a camera out of proportion to his size and strength, hugged under one arm. He would have been known as a Frenchman if found dressed in furs at the North Pole.

He explained passionately that, had he been a mere photographer, he would not have ventured to intrude upon such distinguished company; but he was unique in his profession, a Stereo-Mondaine, a traveller who knew his world and had a _métier_ very special. He was, in short, an artist in colour photography; and before asking the privilege that he desired, he would beg to show a sample of his most successful work at Monte Carlo.

"Here, for instance," he went on hurriedly in his French of the Midi, "is a treasure of artisticness; a marvel of a portrait, a poem!" And he displayed a large glass plate, neatly bound round the edges with gilt paper. His thin hand, on which veins rose in a bas relief, held the plate up tremulously against the light. All bent forward with a certain interest, for none of the three had seen many specimens of colour photography. Vanno and the curé both gave vent to slight exclamations. They were looking at a picture of Mary Grant, dressed in pale blue, with a blue hat. She was standing in the _Place_ of the Casino at Monte Carlo, feeding pigeons.

It seemed to Vanno that his sister-in-law also uttered a faint, "Oh!" But turning to her, he saw that she was leaning back among the cushions of the hammock, having ceased to take an interest in the prettily coloured photograph. She met his eyes. "I thought I heard Americo coming to call us to luncheon," she said. "It must be nearly time. But it wasn't he, after all. Yes, indeed, it is a charming photograph." Breaking from English into French, she complimented the Stereo-Mondaine.

"Will you sell me that picture?" Vanno asked.

"But, Monsieur, it is my best. I should have to demand a good price; for it could be produced in a journal, and I would be well paid. When the plate of a coloured photograph is gone--biff! _all_ is gone. There is an end."

"I will give you three louis."

The Stereo-Mondaine accepted at once, lest the Monsieur should change his mind; and Vanno having taken the plate from him, he proceeded to produce others.

"Nothing more, thanks--unless you have any of the same lady."

"No, unfortunately, Monsieur. She would have posed again, for she was a most sympathetic as well as beautiful personality. But the crowd closed around us. I may induce her to stand again, however."

"I hardly think that is likely to happen," Vanno muttered.

"Let him go into the garden, and take half a dozen of the prettiest views--things we should like to carry away with us," the Princess said, hastily, as if she were anxious now to be rid of her protégé. "When they are ready, he can send them to us--and the bill."

The Stereo-Mondaine was disposed of, while Angelo took the glass plate from Vanno, and looked at the picture.

"Do you know the lady, by any chance," he asked lightly, "or did you buy merely as an admirer of beauty?"

"I--am going to marry her, I hope," said Vanno. "We have been engaged since last night. I came over early to tell you."

* * * * * * *

There was a pause. Each one seemed waiting for another to break the silence. Then the curé stepped into the breach.

"I speak from knowledge when I say that the Principino's fiancée is as good as beautiful--a most rare lady. He is to be congratulated."

"Of course we congratulate him!" Angelo said cordially. He got up and shook hands warmly with his brother, like an Englishman: then he patted him affectionately on the shoulder. "Dear boy," he added, "you have given us a great surprise. But I am sure it is a happy one. And we can feel for you because of our own happiness, which is so new: though I think it always will be new. Can we not sympathize, Marie mia?"

"Yes," said the Princess. "Yes, of course. I congratulate you." There was a different quality in her voice. It did not ring quite true; and Vanno was disappointed. He thought that to please Angelo and him she was affecting more interest than she was able to feel.

Angelo still had the coloured photograph on the glass plate, but now he handed it to his wife. "What a lovely girl!" he exclaimed. "I don't believe that in your artist days, dearest, you ever had a prettier model."

"No, never," said Marie. She took the plate that Angelo held out, and looked at it with a slight quivering of the eyelids as if the sun, which was very bright, shone too strongly. Then, quickly, she sprang up, leaving the photograph in the hammock. "An awfully pretty girl," she went on. "Vanno must tell us all about her, at luncheon. Here comes Americo to announce it."

She hurried to the door, smiling at the three men over her shoulder. The sun had given her a bright colour. Even her ears were rose-pink. Vanno, in following, retrieved the glass plate from among the cushions. He was not sure whether or no his announcement had been a success, but the method of it seemed to have been thrust on him by Fate.

For a few minutes after they were seated at the table Marie chatted of other things, talking very fast about a _Blinis au caviar_ for which she had given Filomena the recipe. "I tasted it first in Russia," she remarked, immediately adding "when I was very young." Then abruptly she jumped back to the subject of Vanno's great news. "Tell us about _her_," she commanded, giving her brother-in-law a charming smile. But as he began, rather jerkily, to supply the information asked for, the Princess looked down at her plate, eating slowly and daintily, as a child eats when it wishes to make some delicious food last as long as possible. Not once did she raise her thick, straight eyelashes, as Vanno said that the girl was a Miss Grant, now staying with the wife of the chaplain at Monte Carlo. Her first question seemed to have satisfied the Princess' curiosity, for all those that followed were asked by her husband.

"Miss Grant!" he echoed, deeply interested in his brother's love affair, though still puzzled by its suddenness, and a little uneasy. He felt that it would not be well for both the Duke's sons to marry women unknown socially; and almost unconsciously he was influenced by a selfish consideration. Vanno was expected to make his, Angelo's, peace with the father, who worshipped the younger, tolerated the elder, of his sons. It was Vanno's duty to describe Marie in glowing terms, to induce the Duke to feel that despite her social unimportance she was a pearl among women. But if Vanno had his own peace to make, his own pearl to praise, other interests might suffer. "Miss Grant! It is odd, isn't it, that we should choose girls of names so much alike? Marie Gaunt, and--but what is your Miss Grant's Christian name?"

Vanno had to confess ignorance; and this forced him to explain that he had known Miss Grant for a very short time. "But I felt from the beginning that I'd known her always," he added bravely. "It was--love at first sight. You--I think you'll understand when you see her. The curé sees. And that's what I want to ask. Will you both go to call upon her with me--and be kind?"

"Of course," said Angelo. "It can't be too soon. When shall we go?"

"Well," said Vanno, almost shamefacedly, "I thought if you could manage it this afternoon----"

Angelo laughed a pleasant but teasing laugh. "He doesn't want any grass to grow between Cap Martin and Monte Carlo before our motor-car has rushed us to his lady's bower. We can go this afternoon, I'm sure, can't we, Marie?"

The eyes of the three men were turned upon the Princess, who was still delicately eating her _Blinis au caviar_, though the others had finished. For an instant she did not answer. Then she looked up suddenly, first at Angelo, her glance travelling to Vanno almost pleadingly before she spoke. "I should love to go," she said to him, emphatically. "Only, I do think it would be so much more proper and better in every way for me to call on--on Miss Grant first alone, without either of you. Do let me. It will be far more of a compliment, I assure you. And she will prefer it."

"I don't quite see that," observed Angelo.

"Because you are a man! Why, she can talk to me, and tell me little confidential things that she will love telling, and couldn't so much as mention before you. Vanno says she has no relatives with her, but is staying with friends; and I will try to make her feel as if I were a sister."

"Marie, you _are_ good!" exclaimed Vanno, his eyes warm with gratitude. After all, his sister-in-law was not disapproving, as he had begun to fear. "She's perfectly right, Angelo. It will be splendid of her to go alone."

"I begin to see the point of view," said Angelo. "I might have known. She's always right."

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 curé, 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 curé 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 assert 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 assuring 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 Hôtel 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 curé. 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 curé'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 curé?"

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

"You're excusable in the circumstances, 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 passed 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 balusters, as if she were weak or tired. At last, when she had reached the étage 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 muff 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.

There was no one in the pretty American-looking drawing-room when Nathalie ushered her in. Throwing a quick glance around, the Princess chose a chair so placed that her back was turned not only to the window but to a table with an electric lamp on it, which would in all probability soon be lighted. Hardly was she seated, when the door was thrown open quickly, and Mary came in.

Princess Della Robbia rose, her left arm thrust into her big ermine muff, so that her right hand might be free if it must be given in greeting. But she did not step forward as if eager to greet Vanno's fiancée.

"Princess Della Robbia?" Mary said, rather shyly. "How good of you to come to see me."

She put out her hand and took that of the Princess. This brought them close together, and as they were of nearly the same height, they looked into each other's faces, though the Princess still kept her head slightly bent, her eyes and forehead in shadow.

"Marie Grant!"

Mary cried out the name sharply.

"Hush!" said the Princess, with a convulsive pressure on the other's hand. "For God's sake! Don't ruin me!"

Mary, with the last rays of afternoon light full on her face, turned pale to the lips, and the pupils of her eyes seemed to dilate.

"Oh, Marie, darling!" she faltered. "I wouldn't ruin you for the world--not to save my life. I--it was only that I was so surprised. I'm glad--very glad to see you. I've dreamed of you a thousand times--and just before coming to Monte Carlo, too. I expected some one else when I came into this room, a Princess Della Robbia----"

"I am Princess Della Robbia," Marie said in a veiled, dead voice.

"You--but I don't understand----"

"I'll tell you. I want to tell you," the Princess broke in quickly, the words almost jumbled together in her haste. "We must talk before any one comes. Will any one come?"

"No, no," Marie soothed her. "Mrs. Winter is out. She won't be back till four. It's only a little after three."

The Princess thrust her arm through her muff so that she could take both Mary's hands. She pressed them tightly, her fingers jerking as if by mechanism. "I've come--I've got to throw myself on your mercy," she said.