Part 30

"Don't," Mary implored, "use such words to me. Oh, Marie, how strange--how strange everything is! The night before I left the convent, Peter--dear Peter, who loves you too, always--said that perhaps my dreams meant that you thought of me sometimes--that we might meet. Then I didn't expect to come here. She told me not to come. But she said, 'Anything can happen at Monte Carlo.'"

"Anything can happen anywhere," the Princess answered in a muffled voice. "It is a terrible world. It's been a terrible world for me since I saw you. And now--just when it's turned into heaven, you can send me down to hell."

"It kills me to hear you talk so," Mary said, tears rising in her eyes, and falling slowly. "_I!_ Why, Marie dearest, didn't you just hear me say I'd rather die than hurt you? I don't know what you mean."

"Do you understand that I'm married to the brother of the man you're engaged to marry?"

"Why--yes. You told me that you--that you're the Princess Della Robbia."

"Well, my husband _doesn't know_. Nobody in my life now, knows anything about--the part that came before. Nobody must know. I'd kill myself rather than have Angelo find out, or even suspect. He thinks I----" She stopped, and choked. "He thinks I am----" The sob would come. She broke down, crying bitterly. "Oh, Mary, I love him so. I worship him. He thinks I'm everything sweet and good and innocent, that I'd give my soul to be, for his sake. And now you've come----"

"You don't think I'll tell!"

"Not if you say you won't. But I didn't know. You were always so good. You might have thought it your duty. Mary--you won't tell Vanno? I couldn't bear it!"

"I won't tell Vanno, or any one at all."

"You're sure--_sure_ you won't let anything drop, by mistake?"

"Explain to me exactly what you want me to do," Mary said, "and I'll do it. Are we to have been strangers to each other till to-day--is that it?"

"Yes, that's the best thing: less complicated. It will save telling lies."

"I should hate to tell lies," said Mary.

"You needn't. Oh, the hundreds and thousands I've had to tell! The dreary, uphill work! But now I'm on the hill, the beautiful hill in the sunshine where my husband lives. And I'm going to stay there if I have to wade in lies."

Mary shivered a little at the words and the look in Marie's eyes as they stared behind the spider web veil. But she tried not to show that she was shocked. She felt she would give her hand to be cut off rather than hurt this miserable girl who had sinned and suffered, and now stood desperately at bay.

"Try to be happy; try to trust me," she said. "We used to be such friends."

"That was my only hope when I found that Vanno was engaged to you, and that we should have to meet," Marie confessed. "I hated to come, but I had to brave it out. And I thought it just possible you mightn't recognize me, after all these years." She pushed up her veil nervously. "Haven't I changed? Do say I've changed!"

"Your hair looks lighter. There's more red in it, surely," Mary reflected aloud. "It used to be a dark brown. Now it's almost auburn."

"I bleach it. I began to do that when I first thought of trying to--get back to things. I wanted to make myself different, so that if any of the people who saw me when I--was down, came across me again, they mightn't be sure it was I--they might think it was just a resemblance to--another woman. I took the name of Gaunt instead of Grant, because it was so nearly the same, it might seem to have been a very simple mistake, if any complication came. And I went to live far away from every one I'd ever known. I chose Dresden. I can hardly tell why, except that I'd never been there, and I wanted to paint. I stayed at first in a pension kept by an artist's wife. The artist helped me, and I did very well with my work. That's what saved me. If I hadn't had that talent, there would have been only one of two things for me to do: kill myself, or--worse."

"Let's not think of it, since it's all over," said Mary, gently. She took Marie by the hand again, and made her sit down on Rose Winter's chintz covered sofa. Then she sat beside her friend and almost timidly slid an arm round her waist.

"All over!" the Princess echoed, in a voice so weary and old, so unlike the bright sleigh-bell gayety Angelo knew, that he would hardly have recognized his wife. "That's the horrible part--that's the punishment: never to know whether it's 'all over,' or whether at any minute, just as one begins to dare feel a little happy and safe, one isn't going to be found out. For instance, when my husband wanted a villa at Cap Martin. Once, before I knew we would be coming here, I told him that I'd never been to the Riviera. It was necessary to tell him that. But, Mary, I had been. It makes me sick when I think what a short time ago it was. I came to Monte Carlo with--_him_, and we stopped for weeks at a big hotel. Every day and all day we were in the Casino. Afterward we went to Russia, and it was in Russia he left me--in St. Petersburg. Often I go back there in dreams, and to Monte Carlo too. I suppose you _knew_ about me, always--you and--Peter?"

"Neither of us knew much. But I know all I want to know--unless you feel there's anything it would do you good to tell."

"It does me a little good to be able to speak out to some one for the first time in years, now the worst is over, and I haven't to be afraid of you. If you could dream what I went through to-day! Mary, are you sure--sure of yourself--that you won't give me away?"

"Very, very sure," Mary answered steadily. "I think it would have been better if you'd told the Prince before you married him, and then you'd have nothing to fear now, but----"

"He wouldn't have married me. One of my great attractions in his eyes was--what I have not. You don't know that family yet, Mary. I think the brothers are a good deal alike in some ways, though Angelo is more of a saint than Vanno. They adore purity in women. I think they both have a sort of pitying horror for women who aren't--innocent."

Mary was silent. She had reason to believe that the Princess was right.

"And I couldn't give him up," Marie went on. "It was too much even for God to expect. It was such a beautiful romance--the first true romance in my life. It seemed to be recreating me. I almost felt as if his love would _make_ me worthy if I could only take and keep it. It was a dreadful risk, but--I dared it, and I'd do it again, if I had it to do, even if I paid by losing my soul. I used to think at first that perhaps when we'd been married a long time, and I was sure of his love, I might tell him--a little, not everything. But now I know that I never, never can. It would be a thousand times worse than before, if he found out. It would mean my death, that's all. I couldn't look into his eyes, his dear, beautiful eyes that adore me, that I adore. You haven't seen him yet. But you know Vanno's eyes, and what it would be to see them turn cold after they have been--stars of love. That expresses them."

"Yes, that expresses them," Mary almost whispered. She closed her eyelids for an instant and Vanno's eyes looked into hers, as they had looked in the curé's garden, after the first kiss. Nothing that Marie could have said would have made her understand as clearly. If she were as Marie was, she felt that she could not tell Vanno, now that his eyes had worshipped her. She would not marry him and _not_ tell, if there were things that ought to be told; but she would go away, far away, where the dear eyes might never look at her again.

"You don't know yet what it is to love," Marie went on; and Mary answered, as if she were speaking to herself, "I almost think I do know--now."

"If you do, you can understand me."

"I am beginning to understand," Mary said.

"You swear that you've said nothing to Vanno, to make him suspect? When he told you about his brother and sister-in-law, did he mention my name as--as a girl?"

"He said your name was Marie Gaunt----"

"Oh! And then?"

"I believe I talked about having a friend once with a name rather like yours, but not quite. That's all, truly. I had no idea that Marie Gaunt----"

"Did you speak about the convent?"

"I told him and the curé that I'd been brought up at a convent school, but I didn't say where it was, or anything about it at all. There was no time or chance then. I meant to tell Vanno lots of things when we were alone; but there was only our walk down the mountain together, and we had so much to say to each other about the present and future, I forgot about the past, and I think he did, too. The only thing I've had time to say about myself is that I've no relatives except a very disagreeable aunt and cousin. There was nothing, not a word, that you need be afraid of."

"Thank God!" exclaimed Marie, with a sigh as of one who wakes to consciousness free of pain, after an operation which might have opened the door of death. "And you'll swear to me that never will you tell Angelo, or Vanno, or any one else at all, that you'll not even confess to a priest that I was Marie Grant, a girl you knew at the convent of St. Ursula-of-the-Lake."

"I'll swear it, if that will make you happier."

"It will--it does. Swear that nothing can tempt you to break your word."

"Nothing shall tempt me to break my word."

"Swear by your love for Vanno, and his for you."

"I swear by my love for Vanno and his love for me."

Marie bent down suddenly, seized Mary's hand, and kissed it.

"Thank you," she said. "Now I can be at peace, for a little while. Now I can be glad that you're engaged to Vanno. And we may see each other, and all four be happy together. The ordeal's over."

XXIX

In a few days most of the people between Nice and Mentone who had been interested in the beautiful and rather mysterious Mary Grant knew that she was engaged to marry Prince Giovanni Della Robbia, a son of the Roman Duke di Rienzi.

Many of them, especially the women, said that she was very lucky, probably a great deal luckier than she deserved; and all the gossip about her which had been a favourite tea-time topic, before her losses at the Casino began to make her a bore, was revived again. The self-satisfied mother and bird-like girl who had travelled with her in the Paris train had a great deal to say. They wondered "if the poor Prince _knew_; but of course he couldn't know. He was simply infatuated. Very sad. He was such a handsome young man, so noble looking, and so, in a way, _historic_. A million times too good for Miss Grant, even if there were nothing against her. Of course, he had gambled too: but then everything was so different for a man."

They talked so much that the mother's bridge friends, and the girl's tennis friends, and the dwellers in villas who, for one cause or another, had admitted Mrs. and Miss Cayley-Binns to the great honour of "luncheon-terms" or the lesser honour of "tea-terms," asked them for

## particulars. Facts were demanded at a luncheon given for the purpose by

Lady Meason, whose husband had once been Lord Mayor of London. This lady had gone to bed and stopped there for a month at the end of Sir Henry's year of office, in sheer chagrin that "Othello's occupation" was gone, and her crown of glory set upon another's head, while she must retire to the obscurity of Bayswater. Being threatened with acute melancholia, a specialist had advised a change of air; and Lady Meason had begun once more to blossom like a rose--of the fully developed, cabbage order--in the joy of being "one of the most notable, popular and successful hostesses of the season at Mentone." She had bought several hundred copies of a Riviera paper which described her in this manner, and sent them to all the people who had cooled to her at the end of Sir Henry's Great Year; and living on her new reputation, she gave each week at her handsome villa two large luncheons, one small and select dinner where no untitled person was invited, and a huge Saturday afternoon tea at the Mentone Casino, with a variety entertainment thrown in. She had rented a villa last occupied by a notorious semi-royal personage, and engaged at great expense one of the best _chefs_ to be had on the Riviera; had indeed, figuratively speaking, snapped him out of the mouth of a duke; and somehow, no one quite knew how, had succeeded, after nerve-racking efforts, in capturing a few of the bright, particular stars whose light really counted in the social illumination of the Riviera. To get them in the first instance, she had been obliged to give a dance, and to offer cotillon favours worth at least five hundred francs each; and these things had been alluringly displayed in a fashionable jeweller's window for a week before the entertainment, just at the time when people were making up their minds whether or not to accept "that weird creature's" invitations. Afterward she had clinched matters by importing _en masse_ a world-famed troop of dancers from the theatre at Monte Carlo to her villa at Mentone, paying them a thousand pounds for the evening; but her reward had been adequate. She was becoming a sort of habit--like a comfortable old coat--among the great, who like comfortable old coats as well as do those who are not great, and quite important persons were already forgetting to allude to her as a weird creature in confessing that they had accepted her invitations. She had even become of consequence enough to snub Lady Dauntrey at the opera in Monte Carlo, although, early in the season, the Dauntreys had been the first members of the peerage who had adorned her villa. As for Mrs. Holbein, of whose acquaintance she had almost boasted in prehistoric days when Sir Henry was only an alderman, Lady Meason now loudly refused to know her.

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

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

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

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

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

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