"Is that true?" Cecilia asked.
"I have always believed it. That was the real thing."
"Yes. That was the real thing."
Cecilia's voice trembled a very little, and her eyes glistened.
"The truth is," said Guido, "that it is easier to have one's leg cut off than to make a fortune."
He was amused at his thought, but Cecilia was wondering what she would be willing to suffer, and able to bear, if any suffering could buy her freedom. At the same time, she knew that she would do a great deal to help him if he were in need or distress. She wondered, too, whether there could be any fixed relation between a sacrifice made for love and one made for friendship's sake.
"There must never be any question of money between us," she said, after a pause. "What is mine must be ours, and what is ours must be as much yours as mine."
"No," Guido answered gently. "That is not possible. I have quite enough for anything I shall ever need, but you must live in the way you like, and where you like, with your own fortune."
"And you will be a sort of perpetual guest in my house!"
For the first time there was a little bitterness in her laugh, and he looked at her quickly, for after the way she had spoken he had not thought that what he had said could have offended her. Of the two, he fancied that his own position was the harder to accept, the position of the "perpetual guest" in his wife's palace, just able to pay for his gloves, his cigarettes, and his small luxuries. He did not quite understand why she was hurt, as she seemed to be.
On her part she felt as if she had done all she could, and was angry with herself, and not with him, because all her fortune was not worth a tenth of what he was giving her, nor a hundredth part. For an instant she was on the point of speaking out frankly, to tell him that she had made a great mistake. Then she thought of what he would suffer, and once more she resolved to think it all over before finally deciding.
So nothing was decided. For when she was alone, all the old reasons came and arrayed themselves before her, with their hopeless little faces, like poor children standing in a row to be inspected, and trying to look their best though their clothes were ragged and their little shoes were out at the toes.
But they were the only reasons she had, and she coaxed them into a sort of unreal activity till they brought her back to the listless state in which she had lived of late, and in which it did not matter what became of her, since she must marry Guido in the end.
Her mother paid no attention to her moods. Cecilia had always been subject to moods, she said to herself, and it was not at all strange that she should not behave like other girls. Guido seemed satisfied, and that was the main thing, after all. He was not, but he was careful not to say so.
The preparations for the wedding went on, and the Countess made up her mind that it should take place at the end of July. It would be so much more convenient to get it over at once, and the sooner Cecilia returned from her honeymoon, the sooner her mother could see her again. The good lady knew that she should be very unhappy when she was separated from the child she had idolised all her life; but she had always looked upon marriage as an absolute necessity, and after being married twice herself, she was inclined to consider it as an absolute good. She would no more have thought of delaying the wedding from selfish considerations than she would have thought of cutting off Cecilia's beautiful hair in order to have it made up into a false braid and wear it herself. So she busied herself with the dressmakers, and only regretted that both Cecilia and Guido flatly refused to go to Paris. It did not matter quite so much, because only three months had elapsed since the last interview with Doucet, and all the new summer things had come; and after all one could write, and some things were very good in Rome, as for instance all the fine needle-work done by the nuns. It would have been easier if Cecilia had shown some little interest in her wedding outfit.
The girl tried hard to care about what was being made for her, and was patient in having gowns tried on, and in listening to her mother's advice. The days passed slowly and it grew hotter.
After she had become engaged to Guido, she had broken with her dream life by an effort which had cost her more than she cared to remember.
She had felt that it was not the part of a faithful woman to go on loving an imaginary man in her dreams, when she was the promised wife of another, even though she loved that other less or not at all.
It was a maidenly and an honest conviction, but at the root of it lay also an unacknowledged fear which made it even stronger. The man in the dream might grow more and more like Lamberti, the dream itself might change, the man might have power over her, instead of submitting to her will, and he might begin to lead her whither he would. The mere idea was horrible. It was better to break off, if she could, and to remember the exquisite Vestal, faithful to her vows, living her life of saintly purity to the very end, in a love altogether beyond material things. To let that vision be marred, to suffer that life to be polluted by mortality, to see the Vestal break the old promises and fall to the level of an ordinary woman, would be to lose a part of herself and all that portion of her own existence which had been dearest to her. That would happen if the man's eyes changed ever so little from what they were in the dream to the likeness of those living ones that glittered and were ruthless. For the dream had really changed on the very night after she had met Lamberti; the loving look had been followed by the one fierce kiss she could never forget, and though afterwards the rest of the dream had all come back and had gone on to its end as before, that one kiss came with it again and again, and in that moment the eyes were Lamberti's own. It was no wonder that she dared not look into them when she met him.
And worse still, she had begun to long for it in the dream. She blushed at the thought. If by any unheard-of outrage Lamberti should ever touch her lips with his in real life, she knew that she would scream and struggle and escape, unless his eyes forced her to yield. Then she should die. She was sure of it. But she would kill herself rather than be touched by him.
She did not understand exactly, that is to say, scientifically, how she put herself into the dream state, for it was not a natural sleep, if it were sleep at all. She did not put out the light and lay her head on the pillow and lose consciousness, as Lamberti did, and then at once see the vision. In real sleep, she rarely dreamed at all, and never of what she always thought of as her other life. To reach that, she had to use her will, being wide awake, with her eyes open, concentrating her thoughts at first, as it seemed to her, to a single point, and then abandoning that point altogether, so that she thought of nothing while she waited.
It was in her power not to begin the process, in other words not to hypnotise herself, though she never thought of it by that name; and when she had answered Guido's question, rightly or wrongly, she knew that it must be right to break the old habit. But she did not know what she had resolved to forego till the temptation came, that very night, after she had shut the door, and when she was about to light the candles, by force of habit. She checked herself. There was the high chair she loved to sit in, with the candles behind her, waiting for her in the same place. If she sat in it, the light would cast her shadow before her and the vision would presently rise in it.
She had taken the lid off the little Wedgwood match box and the candles were before her. It seemed as if some physical power were going to force her to strike the wax match in spite of herself. If she did, five minutes would not pass before she should see the marble court of the Vestals' house, and then the rest—the kiss, and then the rest. She stiffened her arm, as if to resist the force that tried to move it against her will, and she held her breath and then breathed hard again. She felt her throat growing slowly dry and the blood rising with a strange pressure to the back of her head. If she let her hand move to take the match, she was lost. As the temptation increased she tried to say a prayer.
Then, she did not know how, it grew less, as if a sort of crisis were past, and she drew a long breath of relief as her arm relaxed, and she replaced the lid on the box. She turned from the table and took the big chair away from its usual place. It was a heavy thing for a woman to carry, but she did not notice the weight till she had set it against the wall at the further end of the room.
She slept little that night, but she slept naturally, and when she awoke there was no sound of the door being softly closed. But she missed something, and felt a dull, inexplicable want all the next day.
A habit is not broken by a single interruption. It is hard for a man whose nerves are accustomed to a stimulant or a narcotic to go without it for one day, but that is as nothing compared with giving it up altogether. Specialists can decide whether there is any resemblance between the condition of a person under the influence of morphia or alcohol, and the state of a person hypnotised, whether by himself or by another, when that state is regularly accompanied by the illusion of some strong and agreeable emotion. Probably all means which produce an unnatural condition of the nerves at more or less regular hours may be classed together, and there is not much difference between the kind of craving they produce in those who use them. Moreover it is often said that it is harder for a woman to break a habit of that sort, than for a man.
Cecilia was young, fairly strong and very elastic, but she suffered intensely when night came and she had to face the struggle. Bodily pain would have been a relief then, and she knew it, but there was none to bear. The chair looked at her from its distant place against the wall, and seemed to draw her to it, till she had it taken away, pretending that it did not suit the room. But when it was gone, she knew perfectly well that it really made no difference, and that she could dream in any other chair as easily.
And then came a wild desire to see the man's face again, and to be sure that it had not changed. She was certain that she only wished to see it; she would have been overwhelmed with shame, all alone in her room, if she had acknowledged that it was the kiss that she craved and the one moment of indescribable intoxication that came with it.
Are there not hundreds of men who earn their living by risking their lives every night in feats of danger, and who miss that recurring moment when they cannot have it? They will never admit that what they crave is really the chance of a painful death, yet it is perfectly true.
Cecilia could not have been induced to think that she desired no longer the lovely vision of a perfect life; that she could have parted with that easily enough, though with much calm regret; and that, instead, she had a nervous, material, most earthly longing for the single moment in that life which was the contrary of perfect, which she despised, or tried to despise, and which she believed she feared.
She struggled hard, and succeeded, and at last she could go to bed quietly, without even glancing at the place where the chair had stood, or at the candles on the table.
Then, when it all seemed over, a terrible thing happened. She dreamed of the real Lamberti in her natural sleep, in a dream about real life.
Cecilia knelt in the church of Santa Croce, near one of the ancient pillars. At a little distance behind her, Petersen sat in a chair reading a queer little German book that told her the stories of the principal Roman churches with the legends of the saints to which they are dedicated. A thin, smooth-shaven lay brother in black and white frock was slowly sweeping the choir behind the high altar. There was no one else in the church.
Cecilia was kneeling on the marble floor, resting her folded hands upon the back of a rough chair, and there was no sound in the dim building, but the regular, soft brushing of the monk's broom. The girl's face was still and pale, her eyes were half closed, and her lips did not move; she did not hear the broom.
That was the first time she had ever tried to spend an hour in meditation in a church, for her religion had never seemed very real to her. It was compounded of habit and the natural respect of a girl for what her mother practises and has taught her to practise, and it had continued to hold a place in her life because she had quietly exempted it from her own criticism; perhaps, too, because her reading had not really tended to disturb it, since by nature she was strongly inclined to believe in something much higher than the visible world.
The Countess Fortiguerra believed with the simplicity of a child. Her first husband, freethinker, Garibaldian, Mazzinian, had at first tried to laugh her out of all belief, and had said that he would baptize her in the name of reason, as Garibaldi is said to have once baptized a new-born infant. But to his surprise his jests had not the slightest effect on the rather foolish, very pretty, perfectly frank young woman with whom he had fallen in love in his older years, and who, in all other matters, thought him a great man. She laughed at his atheism much more good-naturedly than he at her beliefs, and she went to church regularly in spite of anything he could say; so that at last he shrugged his shoulders and said in his heart that all women were half-witted creatures, where priests were concerned, but that fortunately the weakness did not detract from their charm. On her side, she prayed for his conversion every day, with clock-like regularity, but without the slightest result.
Fortiguerra had been a man of remarkable gifts, extremely tolerant of other people's opinions. He never laughed at any sort of belief, though his wife never succeeded in finding out what he really thought about spiritual matters. He evidently believed in something, so she did not pray for his conversion, but interceded steadily for his enlightenment. Before he died he made no objection to seeing a priest, but his wife never knew whether he consented because it would have given her pain if he had refused, or whether he really desired spiritual comfort in his last moments. He was always most considerate of others and especially of her; but he was very reticent. So she mourned him and prayed that everything might be well with both her departed husbands, though she doubted whether they were in the same place. She supposed that Fortiguerra had sometimes discussed religion with his step-daughter, but he always seemed to take it for granted that the latter should do what her mother desired of her.
It could hardly be expected that the girl should be what is called very devout, and as Petersen turned over the pages of her little book she wondered what had happened that Cecilia should kneel motionless on the marble pavement for more than half an hour in a church to which they had never come before, and on a week-day which was not a saint's day either.
It was something like despair that had brought her to Santa Croce, and she had chosen the place because she could think of no other in which she could be quite sure of being alone, and out of the way of all acquaintances. She wanted something which her books could not give her, and which she could not find in herself; she wanted peace and good advice, and she felt that she was dealt with unjustly.
Indeed, it was of little profit that she should have forced herself to give up what was dearest to her, unreal though it might be, since she was to be haunted by Lamberti's face and voice whenever she fell asleep. It was more like a possession of the evil one now than anything else. She would have used his own words to describe it, if she had dared to speak of it to any one, but that seemed impossible. She had thought of going to some confessor who did not know her by sight, to tell him the whole story, but her common sense assured her that she had done no wrong. It was advice she needed, and perhaps it was protection too, but it was certainly not forgiveness, so far as she knew.
Lamberti pursued her, in her imagination, and she lived in terror of him. If she had been already married to Guido, she would have told her husband everything, and he would have helped her. By a revulsion that was not unnatural, it began to seem much easier to marry him now, and she turned to him in her thoughts, asking him to shield her from a man she feared. Guido loved her, and she was at least a devoted friend to him; there was no one but him to help her.
As she knelt by the pillar she went over the past weeks of her life in a concentrated self-examination of which she would never have believed herself capable.
"I am a grown woman," she said to herself, "and I have a right to think what grown women think. I know perfectly well which thoughts are good and which are bad, just as I know right from wrong in other ways. It was wrong to put myself into that dream state, because I wanted him to come to me. Yes, I confess it, I wanted him to come and kiss me that once, in the vision every night. It would not have been wrong if I had not said that I would marry Guido, but that made the difference. Therefore I gave it up. I will not do anything wrong with my eyes open. I will not. I would not, if I did not believe in God, because the thing would be wrong just the same. Religion makes it more wrong, that is all. If I were not engaged to Guido, and if I loved the other instead, then I should have a right to wish and dream that the other kissed me."
She thought some time about this point, and there was something that disturbed her, in spite of her reasoning.
"It would have been unmaidenly," she decided, at last. "I should be ashamed to tell my mother that I had done it. But it would not have been wrong, distinctly not. It would be wrong and abominable to think of two men in that way.
"That is what is happening now, against my will. I go to sleep saying my prayers, and yet he comes to me in my dreams, and looks at me, and I cannot help letting him kiss me, and it is only afterwards that I feel how revolting it was. And in the daytime I am engaged to Guido, and I cannot help knowing that when we are married he will want to kiss me like that. It was different before, since I was able to give up seeing the marble court and being the Vestal, and did give it up. This is another thing, and it is bad, but it is not a wrong thing I am doing. Therefore it is something outside of my soul that is trying to do me harm, and may succeed in the end. It is a power of evil. How can I fight against it, since it comes when I am asleep and have no will? What ought I to do?
"I am afraid to meet Signor Lamberti now, much more afraid than I was a week ago, before this other trouble began. But when I am dreaming, I am not afraid of him. I do what he makes me do without any resistance, and I am glad to do it. I want to be his slave, then. He makes me sit down and listen to him, and I believe all he says. We always sit on that bench near the fountain in my villa. He tells me that he loves me much better than Guido does, and that he is much better able to protect me than Guido. He says that his heart is breaking because he loves me and is Guido's friend, and he looks thin and worn, just as he does in real life. When I dream of him, I do not mind the glittering in his eyes, but when I meet him it frightens me. Of course, it is quite impossible that he should know how I dream of him now. Yet, I am sure he knew all about the other vision. He said very little, but I am sure of it, though I cannot explain it. This is much worse than the other. But if I go back to the other, I shall be doing wrong, because I shall be consenting; and now I am not doing wrong, because it happens against my will, and I go to sleep praying that it may never happen again, and I am in earnest. God help me! I know that when I sit beside him on the bench I love him! And yet he is the only man in all the world whom I wish never to meet again. God help me!"
Her head sank upon her folded hands at last, and her eyes were closely shut. She threw her whole soul into the appeal to heaven for help and strength, till she believed that it must come to her at once in some real shape, with inspired wisdom and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. She had never before in her life prayed as she was praying now, with heart and soul and mind, though not with any form of words.
Then came a moment in which she thought of nothing and waited. She knew it well, that blank between one state and the other, that total suspension of all her faculties just before she began to see an unreal world, that breathless stillness of anticipation before the supreme moment of change. She was quite powerless now, for her waking will was already asleep.
The instant was over, and the vision had come, but it was not what she had always seen before. It was something strangely familiar, yet beautiful and high and clear. Her consciousness was in the midst of a world of light, at peace; and then, all round her, a brightness stole upwards as out of a clear and soft horizon, more radiant than the light itself that was already in the air. And as when evening creeps up to the sky the stars begin to shine faintly, more guessed at than really seen, so she began to see heavenly beings, growing more and more distinct, and she was lifted up among them, and all her heart cried out in joy and praise. And suddenly the cross shone out in a rosy radiance brighter than all, and from head to foot and from arm to arm of it the light flowed and flashed, and joined and passed and parted, in the holy sign. From itself came forth a melody, in which she was rapt and swept upwards as though she were herself a wave of the glorious sound. But of the words, three only came to her, and they were these: Arise and conquer![1]
[1: A free translation of some passages in the fourteenth canto of Dante'sParadiso.]
Then all was still and calm again, and she was kneeling at her chair, the sight still in her inward eyes, the words still ringing in her heart, but herself awake again.
She knew the vision now that it was past; for often, reading the matchless verses of the "Paradise," she had intensely longed to see as the dead poet must have seen before he could write as he wrote. It did not seem strange that her hope should have been fulfilled at last in the church of the Holy Cross. Her lips formed the words, and she spoke them, consciously in her own voice, sweet and low:
"Arise and conquer!"
It was what she had prayed for—the peace, the strength, the knowledge; it was all in that little sentence. She rose to her feet, and stood still a moment, and her face was calm and radiant, like the faces of the heavenly beings she had looked upon. There was a world before her of which she had not dreamt before, better than that ancient one that had vanished and in which she had been a Vestal Virgin, more real than that mysterious one in which she had floated between two existences, and whence the miserable longing for an earthly body had brought her back to be Cecilia Palladio, and to fight again her battle for freedom and immortality.
It mattered little that her prayer should have been answered by the imagined sight of something described by another, and long familiar to her in his lofty verse. The prayer was answered, and she had strength to go on, and she should find wisdom and light to choose the right path. Henceforth, when she was weak and weary, and filled with loathing of what she dreaded most, she could shut her eyes as she had done just now, and pray, and wait, and the transcendent glory of paradise would rise within her, and give her strength to live, and drive away that power of evil that hurt her, and made night frightful, and day but a long waiting for the night.
She came out into the summer glare with the patient Petersen, and breathed the summer heat as if she were drawing in new life with every breath; and they drove home, down the long and lonely road that leads to the new quarter, between dust-whitened trees, and then down into the city and through the cooler streets, till at last the cab stopped before the columns of the Palazzo Massimo.
Celia ran up the stairs, as if her light feet did not need to touch them to carry her upwards, while Petersen solemnly panted after her, and she went to her own room.
She had a vague desire to change everything in it, to get rid of all the objects that reminded her of the miserable nights, and the sad hours of day, which she had spent there; she wanted to move the bed to the other end of the room, the writing table to the other window, the long glass to a different place, to hang the walls with another colour, and to banish the two tall candlesticks for ever. It would be like beginning her life over again.
After this Cecilia no longer avoided Lamberti; on the contrary, she sought opportunities of seeing him and of talking with him, for she was sure that she had gained some sort of new strength which could protect her against her imagination, till all her old illusions should vanish in the clear light of daily familiarity. For some time she did not dream of Lamberti, she believed that the spell was broken, and her fear of meeting him diminished quickly.
She made her mother ask him to dinner, but he wrote an excuse and did not come. Then she complained to Guido, and Guido reproached his friend.
"They really wish to know you better," he said. "If the Contessina ever felt for you quite the same antipathy which you felt for her, she has got over it. I think you ought to try to do as much. Will you?"
The invitation was renewed for another day, and Lamberti accepted it. In the evening, in order to give his friend a chance of talking with Cecilia, Guido sat down by the Countess, and began to discuss matters connected with the wedding. It would have been contrary to all established custom that the marriage should take place without a contract, and that alone was a subject about which much could be said. Guido insisted that Cecilia should remain sole mistress of her fortune, and the Countess would naturally have made no objection, but the Princess had told her, and had repeated more than once, that she expected Cecilia to bring her husband a dowry of at least a million of francs. Baron Goldbirn thought this too much, but the Countess was willing to consent, because she feared that the Princess would make trouble at the last minute if she did not. Cecilia had of course never discussed the matter with the Princess, but she was altogether of the latter's opinion, and told her mother so. The obstacle lay in Guido's refusal to accept a penny of his future wife's fortune, and on this point the whole obstinacy of his father's race was roused. The Countess could manifestly not threaten to break off the engagement because Guido would not accept the dowry, but on the other hand she greatly feared Guido's aunt. So there was ample matter for discussion whenever the subject was broached.
It was a hot evening, and all the curtains were drawn back before the open windows, only the blinds being closed. Cecilia and Lamberti gravitated, as it were, to the farther end of the room. A piano stood near the window there.
"Do you play?" Lamberti asked, looking at the instrument.
He thought that she did. All young girls are supposed to have talent for music.
"No," Cecilia answered. "I have no accomplishments. Do you play the piano?"
"Only by ear. I do not know a note of music."
"Play me something. Will you? But I suppose the piano is out of tune, for nobody ever uses it since we stopped dancing."
Lamberti touched the keys, standing, and struck a few soft chords.
"No," he said. "It is not badly out of tune. But if I play, it will be the end of our acquaintance."
"Perhaps it may be the beginning," Cecilia answered, and their eyes met for a moment.
"If it amuses you, I will try," said Lamberti, looking away, and sitting down before the keys. "You must be easily pleased if you can listen to me," he added, laughing, as he struck a few chords again.
Cecilia sat down in a low chair between him and the window, at the left of the key-board. Her mother glanced at Lamberti with a little surprise, and then went on talking with Guido.
Lamberti began to play a favourite waltz, not loud, but with a good deal of spirit and a perfect sense of time. Cecilia had often danced to the tune in the spring, and liked it. He broke off suddenly, and made slow chords again.
"Have you forgotten the rest?" Cecilia asked.
"No. I was thinking of something else. Did you ever hear this?"
He played an old Sicilian melody with one hand, and then took it up in a second part, and then a third, that made strange minor harmonies.
"I never heard that," Cecilia said, as he looked at her. "I like it. It must be very ancient. Play it again."
By way of answer, he began to sing the old song, accompanying himself with the same old harmonies. He had no particular voice, and it was more like humming than singing, so far as the tone was concerned, but he pronounced every word distinctly, and imitated the peculiar intonation of the southern people to perfection.
"Do you understand?" he asked, when he came to the end.
"Not a word." Cecilia asked, "Is it Arabic? It sounds like it."
"No. It is our own beloved Italian," laughed Lamberti, "only it is the Sicilian dialect. If that sort of thing amuses you, I can go on for hours."
Many Italians have the facility he possessed, and the good memory for both words and music, and he had unconsciously developed what talent he had, in places where time was long and there was nothing to do. He changed the key and hummed a little Arab melody from the desert.
Cecilia sat quite still and watched the outline of his head against the light. It was an energetic head, but the face was not a cruel one, and this evening she had not seen what she called the ruthless look in his eyes. She was not at all afraid of him now, nor would she have been even if they had been quite alone in the room. She almost wished to tell him so, and then smiled at the thought.
So this was the reality of the vision that had haunted her dreams and had caused her such unutterable suffering until she had found strength to break the habit of her imagination. The reality was not at all terrible. She could imagine the man roused to action, fighting for his life, single-handed against many, as she had been told that he had fought. He looked both brave and strong. But she could not imagine that she should ever have cause to be afraid of him again. There he sat, beside her, humming snatches of songs he remembered from his many voyages, his hands moving not at all gracefully over the keys; he was evidently a very simple and good-natured man, willing to do anything that could amuse her, without the slightest affectation. He was just the kind of friend for Guido, and it was her duty to like Guido's friend. It would not be hard, now that she had got out of the labyrinth of absurd illusions that had made it impossible. She resolutely put aside the recollection of that afternoon at the Villa Madama. It belonged to the class of things about which she was determined never to think again. "Arise and conquer!" She had come back to her real self, and had overcome.
He stopped singing, but his hands still lay on the keys and he struck occasional chords; and he turned his face half towards her, and spoke in an undertone.
"I am very sorry if I offended you by not coming more often to your house," he said. "Guido told me. I thought perhaps you would understand why I did not come."
Cecilia looked at him and was silent for a moment, but she felt very strong and sure of herself.
"Signor Lamberti," she said presently, "I want to ask you to do something—for me."
There was a little emphasis on the last word. He turned quite towards her now, but he still made chords on the instrument, for he knew that the Countess had extraordinary ears. His impulse was to tell her that he would do anything she asked of him, no matter how hard it might be; but he controlled it.
"Certainly," he answered. "What is it?"
"Forget that we met in the Forum, and forget what we said to each other at the garden party. Will you? It was all a coincidence, of course, but I behaved very foolishly, and I do not like to think that you remember it. Will you try and forget it all?"
"I will try," Lamberti answered, looking down at the keys. "At all events, I can promise never to remind you of it, as I did just now."
"That is what I meant," Cecilia said. "Let us never remind each other of it. Of course we cannot really forget, in our own selves, but we can begin again from the beginning, this evening, as if it had never happened. We can be real friends, as we ought to be."
"Can we?" Lamberti asked the question in a doubtful tone, and glanced uneasily at her.
"I can, if you can," she answered courageously, "and I mean to be."
"Then I can, too," Lamberti said, but his lips shut tightly as if he regretted the words as soon as they were spoken.
"It will be easy, now," Cecilia went on. "It will be much easier because—" She stopped.
"Why will it be so much easier?" Lamberti asked, looking down again.
"We were not going to speak of those things again," Cecilia said. "We had better not begin."
"I only ask that one question. Tell me why it will be easier now. It may help me to forget."
"It will be easier—because I do not dream of you any more—I mean of the man who is like you." She was blushing faintly, but she knew that he would not look at her, and she was sitting in the shadow.
"On what day did you stop dreaming?" he asked, between two chords.
"It was last week. Let me see. It was a Wednesday. On Wednesday night I did not dream." He nodded gravely over the keys, as if he had expected the answer.
"Did you ever read anything about telepathy?" he asked. "I did not dream of you on Wednesday night either. It seemed to me that I tried to find you and could not."
"Were you trying to find me before?" Cecilia asked, as if it were the most natural question in the world.
"Yes. In my dreams I almost always found you. There was a break—I forget when. The old dream about the house of the Vestals stopped suddenly. Then I missed you and tried to find you. You were always sitting on that bench by the fountain in the villa. Last Wednesday I dreamt I was there, but you did not come."
Cecilia shuddered, as if the night air from the open window chilled her.
"Are you cold?" he asked. "Shall I shut the window?"
"No, I was frightened," she answered. "We must never talk about all that again. Do you know, I think it is wrong to talk about them. There is some power of evil—"
"I do not deny the existence of the devil at all," Lamberti answered, with a faint smile. "But I think this is only a strange case of telepathy. I will do as you wish; though my own belief is, after this evening, that it is better to talk about it all quite fearlessly, and grow used to it. We shall be much less afraid of it if we look upon it as something not at all supernatural, which could easily be explained if we knew enough about those things."
"Perhaps," Cecilia answered doubtfully. "You may be right. I do not know."
"You are going to marry my most intimate friend," Lamberti continued, "and I am unfortunately condemned to stay in Rome for some time, for a year, I fancy, and perhaps even longer."
"Why do you say that you are 'unfortunately condemned' to stay?"
"Because I did my best to get away. You look surprised. I begged the Minister to shorten my leave and send me to sea at once, with or without promotion. Instead, I was named a member of a commission which will sit a long time. Since we are talking frankly, I wanted to get away from you, and not to see you again for years. But now that I must stay here, or leave the service, we cannot help meeting; so I think it is more sensible not to take any solemn oaths never to allude to these strange coincidences, or whatever they are, but to talk them out of existence; all the more so, as they seem to have suddenly come to an end. I only tell you what would be easier for me; but I will do whatever makes it most easy for you."
"I prayed that they might stop," said Cecilia, in a very low voice. "I want you to be my friend, and as long as I dreamt of you—in that way—I felt that it was impossible."
"Of course," Lamberti answered, without hesitation. Then, with an attempt at a laugh, he corrected himself. "I apologise for all the things I said to you in my dreams."
"Please do not laugh about it." Her voice was a little unsteady, and she was looking down, so that he could not see her face.
"It is better not to take it too seriously," he replied gravely. "Could anything be more absurd than that two people who were mere acquaintances then should fall in love with each other in their dreams? It is utterly ridiculous. Any sane person would laugh at the idea."
"Yes; no doubt. But there is more than that. Call it telepathy, or whatever you please, it cannot be a mere coincidence. Do you know that, until last Wednesday, I met you in my dream, just where you dreamed of meeting me, at the bench in the villa?"
He did not seem surprised, but listened attentively while she continued.
"I am sure that we really met," she went on gravely. "It may be in some natural way or not. It does not matter. We must never meet again like that—never. Do you understand? We must promise never to try and find each other in our dreams. Will you promise?"
"Yes; I promise." Lamberti spoke gravely.
"I promise, too," Cecilia said.
Then they were both silent for a time. It was like a real parting, and they felt it, and for a few moments each was thinking of the bench by the fountain in the Villa Madama.
"We owe it to Guido," Lamberti said at last, almost unconsciously.
"Yes," the girl answered; "and to ourselves. Thank you."
With an impulse she did not suspect, she held out her hand to him, and waited for him to take it. Neither her mother nor Guido could see the gesture, for Lamberti's seated figure screened her from them; but he could not have taken her hand in his right without changing his position, since she was seated low on his other side; so he took it quietly in his left, and the two met and pressed each the other for a second.
In that touch Cecilia felt that all her fear of him ended for ever, and that of all men she could trust him the most, and that he would protect her, if ever he might, even more effectually than Guido. His hand was cool, and steady, and strong, and enfolding—the hand of a brave man. But if she had looked she would have seen that his face was paler than usual, and that his eyes seemed veiled.
She rose, and he followed her as she moved slowly forward.
"What a charming talent you have!" cried the Countess in an encouraging tone, when Lamberti was near her.
"Have you made acquaintance at last?" Guido was asking of Cecilia, in an undertone.
"Yes," she answered gravely. "I think we shall be good friends."
People said that Guido had ceased to be interesting since he had been engaged to be married. Until that time, there had been an element of romance about him, which many women thought attractive; and most men had been willing to look upon him as a being slightly superior to themselves, who cared only for books and engravings, though he never thrust his tastes upon other people, nor made any show of knowing more than others, and whose opinion on points of honour was the very best that could be had. It was so good, indeed, that he was not often asked to give it.
Now, however, they said that he was changed; that he was complacent and pleased with himself; that this was no wonder, because he was marrying a handsome fortune with a pretty and charming wife; that he had done uncommonly well for himself; and much more to the same purpose. Also, the mothers of impecunious marriageable sons of noble lineage said in their maternal hearts that if they had only guessed that Countess Fortiguerra would give her daughter to the first man who asked for her, they would not have let Guido be the one.
The judgments of society are rarely quite at fault, but they are almost always relative and liable to change. They are, indeed, appreciations of an existing state of things, rather than verdicts from which there is no appeal. The verdict comes after the state of things has ceased to exist.
Guido was happy, and nothing looks duller than the happiness of quiet people. Nobody will go far to look at the sea when it is calm, if he is used to seeing it at all; but those who live near it will walk a mile or two to watch the breakers in a storm.
In the first place, Guido was in love, and more in love with Cecilia's face and figure than he guessed. In the early days of their acquaintance he had enjoyed talking with her about the subjects in which she was interested. Such conversation generally brought him to that condition of intellectual suspense which was peculiarly delightful to him, for though she did not persuade him to accept her own points of view, she made him feel more doubtful about his own, so far as any of them were fixed, and doubt meant revery, musing, imaginative argument about questions that might never be answered. But he and she had now advanced to another stage. Unconsciously, all that side of his nature had fallen into abeyance, and he thought only of positive things in the immediate future. When he was with Cecilia, no matter how the conversation began, it soon turned upon their plans for their married life; and he found it so infinitely pleasant to talk of such matters that it did not occur to him to ask whether she regarded them as equally interesting.
She did not; she saw the change in him, and regretted it. A woman who is not really in love, generally likes a man less after he has fallen hopelessly in love with her. It is true that she sometimes likes herself the better for her new conquest, and there may be some compensation in that; but there is something tiresome, if not repugnant to her, in the placid, possessive complacency of a future husband, who seems to forget that a woman has any intelligence except in matters concerning furniture and the decoration of a house.
Cecilia was not capricious; she really liked Guido as much as ever, and she would not even admit that he bored her when he came back again and again to the same topics. She tried hard to look forward to the time when all the former charm of their intercourse should return, and when, besides being the best of friends, he would again be the most agreeable of companions. It seemed very far off; and yet, in her heart, she hoped that something might happen to hinder her marriage, or at least to put it off another year.
Her life seemed very blank after the great struggle was ended, and in the long summer mornings before Guido came to luncheon, she was conscious of longing for something that should take the place of the old dreams, something she could not understand, that awoke under the listlessness which had come upon her. It was a sort of sadness, like a regret for a loss that had not really been suffered, and yet was present; it was a craving for sympathy where she had deserved none, and it made her inclined to pity herself without reason. She sometimes felt it after Guido had come, and it stayed with her, a strange yearning after an unknown happiness that was never to be hers, a half-comforting and infinitely sad conviction that she was to die young and that people would mourn for her, but not those, or not that one, who ought to be most sorry that she was gone. All her books were empty of what she wanted, and for hours she sat still, doing nothing, or stood leaning on the window-sill, gazing down through the slats of the blinds at the glaring street, unconscious of the heat and the strong light, and of the moving figures that passed.
Occasionally she drove out to the Villa Madama in the afternoon with her mother, and Guido joined them. Lamberti did not come there, though he often came to the house in the evening, sometimes with his friend, and sometimes later. The two always went away together. At the villa, Cecilia never sat down on the bench by the fountain, but from a distance she looked at it, and it was like looking at a grave. In dreams she had sat there too often with another to go there alone now; she had heard words there that touched her heart too deeply to be so easily forgotten, and there had been silences too happy to forget. She had buried all that by the garden seat, but it was better not to go near the place again. What she had laid out of sight there might not be quite dead yet, and if she sat in the old place she might hear some piteous cry from beneath her feet; or its ghost might rise and stare at her, the ghost of a dream. Then, the yearning and the longing grew stronger and hurt her sharply, and she turned under the great door, into the hall, and was very glad when her mother began to chatter about dress and people.
But one day the very thing happened which she had always tried to avert. Guido insisted on walking up and down the path with her, and they passed and repassed the bench, till she was sure that he would make her sit down upon it. She tried to linger at the opposite end, but he was interested in what he was saying and did not notice her reluctance to turn back.
Then it came. He stood still by the fountain, and then he sat down quite naturally, and evidently expecting her readiness to do the same. She started slightly and looked about, as if to find some means of escape, but a moment later she had gathered her courage and was sitting beside him.
The scene came back with excessive vividness. There was the evening light, the first tinge of violet on the Samnite mountains, the base of Monte Cavo already purple, the glow on Frascati, and nearer, on Marino; Rome was at her feet, in a rising mist beyond the flowing river. Guido talked on, but she did not hear him. She heard another voice and other words, less gentle and less calm. She felt other eyes upon her, waiting for hers to answer them, she felt a hand stealing near to hers as her own lay on the bench at her side.
Still Guido talked, needing no reply, perfectly confident and happy. She did not hear what he said, but when he paused she mechanically nodded her head, as if agreeing with him, and instantly lost herself again. She could not help it. She expected the touch, and the look, and then the blinding rush that used to come after it, lifting her from her feet and carrying her whole nature away as the south wind whirls dry leaves up with it and far away.
That did not come, and presently she was covering her face with both hands, shaking a little, and Guido was anxiously asking what had happened.
"Nothing," she answered rather faintly. "It is nothing. It will be over in a moment."
He thought that she had felt the sudden chill of the evening which is sometimes dangerous in Rome in midsummer, and he rose at once.
"We had better go in before you catch cold," he said.
"Yes. Let us go in."
For the first time, his words really jarred on her. For the rest of her life, he would tell her when to go indoors before catching cold. He was possessive, complacent; he already looked upon her as a person in his charge, if not as a part of his property. Unreasoningly, she said to herself it was no concern of his whether she caught cold or not, and besides, there was no question of such a thing. She had covered her eyes with her hands for a very different reason, and was ashamed of having done it, which made matters worse. In anger she told herself boldly that she wished that he were not himself, only that once, but that he were Lamberti, who at least took the trouble to amuse her and never put on paternal airs to enquire about her health.
It was the beginning of revolt. Guido dined with them that evening, and she was silent and absent-minded. Before the hour at which he usually went away, she rose and bade him good night, saying that she was a little tired.
"I am sure you caught cold to-day," he said, with real anxiety.
"We will not go to the villa again," she answered. "Good night."
It was late before she really went to bed, for when she was at last rid of the conscientious Petersen, she sat long in her chair at the writing table with a blank sheet of letter paper before her and a pen in her hand. She dipped it into the ink often, and her fingers moved as if she were going to write, but the point never touched the paper. At last the pen lay on the table, and she was resting her chin upon her folded hands, her eyes half closed, her breath drawn in short sighs that came and went between her parted lips. Then, though she was all alone, the blood rose suddenly in her face and she sprang to her feet, angry with herself and frowning, and ashamed of her thoughts.
She felt hot, and then cold, and then almost sick with disgust. The vision that had delighted her was far away now; she had forced herself not to see it, but the man in it had come back to her in dreams; she had driven him out of them, and for a time she had found peace, but now he came to her in her waking thoughts and she longed to see his living face and to hear his real voice. With utter self-contempt and scorn of her own heart, she guessed that this was love, or love's beginning, and that nothing could save her now.
Her first impulse was to write to him, to beg him to go away at any price, never to see her again as long as she lived. As that was out of the question, she next thought of writing to Guido, to tell him that she could not marry him, and that she had made up her mind to retire from the world and spend her life in a convent. But that was impossible, too.
There was no time to be lost. Either she must make one supreme effort to drive Lamberti from her thoughts and to get back to the state in which she had felt that she could marry Guido and be a good wife to him, or else she must tell him frankly that the engagement must end. He would ask why, and she would refuse to tell him, and after that she did not dare to think of what would happen. It might ruin his life, for she knew that he loved her very much. She was honestly and truly much more concerned for him than for herself. It did not matter what became of her, if only she could speak the truth to him without bringing harm to him in the future. The world might say what it pleased.
It was right to break off her engagement, beyond question, and she had done very wrong in ever agreeing to it; it was the greatest sin she had ever committed, and with a despairing impulse she sank upon her knees and poured out her heart in full confession of her fault.
Never in her life had she confessed as she did now, with such a whole-hearted hatred of her own weakness, such willingness to bear all blame, such earnest desire for forgiveness, such hope for divine guidance in making reparation. She would not plead ignorance, nor even any omission to examine herself, as an excuse for what she had done. It was all her fault, and her eyes had been open from the first, and she was about to see the whole life of a good friend ruined through her miserable weakness.
As she went over it all, burying her face in her hands, the conviction that she loved Lamberti grew with amazing quickness to the certainty of a fact long known. This was her crime, that she had been too proud to own that she had loved him at first sight; her punishment should be never to see him again. She would abase herself before Guido and confess everything to him in the very words she was whispering now, and she would implore his forgiveness. Then, since Lamberti could not leave Rome, she and her mother would go away on a long journey, to Russia, perhaps, or to America, or China, and they would never come back. It must be easy enough to avoid one particular person in the whole world.
This she would do, but she would not deny that she loved him. All her fault had lain in trying to deny it in spite of what she felt when he was near her, and it must be still more wrong to force the fact out of sight now that it had brought her into such great trouble. There was nothing to be done but to acknowledge it, though it was shame and humiliation to do so. It stared her in the face, now that she had courage to own the truth, and a voice called out that she had lied to herself, to her mother, and to Guido for many weeks, and persistently, rather than admit that she could fall so low. But even then, in the midst of her self-abasement, another voice answered that it was no shame to love a good and true man, and that Lamberto Lamberti was both.
That night seemed the longest in all Cecilia's young life. She was worn out with fatigue, and could have slept ten hours, yet she dreaded to fall asleep lest she should dream of Lamberti, and speak to him in her dream as she meant never to speak to any man now. Just when she was losing consciousness, she roused herself as one does who fears a horrible nightmare that comes back again and again. She was afraid to be alone in the dark with her fear, and she had left one light burning where it could not shine into her eyes. If she did not sleep before daylight, she might not dream after that. When she shut her eyes she saw Lamberti looking at her.
She rose and bathed her face and temples. The water was not very cold in July, after standing in the room half the night, but it cooled her brows a little and she lay down again, and tried to repeat things she knew by heart. She knew all the fourteenth canto of the "Paradise," for instance, and said it over, and tried to see what it described as she had seen it all in the church of Santa Croce. While she whispered the words she looked forward to those she loved best, the ones that bade her rise and get the victory, and she went on with intense anticipation. Before she reached them she lost herself, and they formed themselves on her lips unnoticed as she saw Lamberti's face again.
It was unbearable. She sat up on the edge of the bed and stared into the shadow, and presently she grasped her left arm above the elbow and tried to force her nails into the flesh, with the instinctive idea that pain must bring peace after it. But she could hardly hurt herself at all in that way. Again she rose, and she went and looked at her reflection in the tall glass.
There was not much light in the room, but she could see that she was very pale, and that her eyes had a strange look in them, more like Lamberti's than her own. It was a possession; she found him everywhere. Behind her image in the glass she saw the door of the room, the only one there was, which she had so often heard closed softly just as her dream ended. She shivered, for the Palazzo Massimo is a ghostly place at night, and her nerves were unstrung by what she had suffered. She knew that she was dizzy for a moment, and the glass grew misty and then clear, and reflected nothing to her sight, nothing but the whole door, as if she herself were not standing there, all in white, between it and the mirror.
It was going to open, she felt sure. It was going to open softly, though she knew it was locked, and then some one would enter. She shivered again, and felt her loose hair rising on her head, as if lifted by a cool breeze. It was a moment of agony, and her teeth chattered. He was coming, and she was paralysed, helpless to move, rooted to the spot. In one second more she must hear the slipping of the latch bolt, and he would be behind her.
No, nothing came. Gradually she began to see herself in the glass again, a faint ashy outline, then a transparent image, like the wraith of her dead self, with staring eyes and dishevelled colourless hair. Her terror was gone; she vaguely wondered where she had been, and looked curiously at her reflected face.
"I think I am going mad," she said aloud, but quite quietly, as she turned away from the mirror.
She lay down again on her back, her arms straightened by her sides, and she looked at the ceiling. Since she must think of something, she would try to think out what she was to say and do on the morrow. She would telephone to Guido in the morning to come and see her, of course, and in twenty minutes he would be sitting beside her on the little sofa in the drawing-room. Then she would tell him everything, just as she had confessed it all to herself that evening. She would throw herself upon his mercy, she would say that she was irresistibly drawn to his friend; but she would promise never to see Lamberti again, since that was to be the punishment of her fault. There was clearly nothing else to do, if she had any self-respect left, any modesty, any sense of decency. It would be hard in the beginning, but afterwards it would grow easier.
Poor Guido! he would not understand at first, and he would look at her as if he were dazed. She would give anything to save him the pain of it all, but he must bear it, and in the end it would be much better. Of course, the cowardly way would be to make her mother tell him.
She had not thought of her mother till then, but she had grown used to directing her, and to feeling that she herself was the ruling spirit of the two. Her mother would accept the decision, though she would protest a good deal, and cry a little. That was to be regretted, but it did not really matter since this was a question of absolute right or absolute wrong, in which there was no choice.
She would not see Lamberti again, not even to say good-bye. It would be wicked to see him, now that she knew the truth. But it was right to own bravely that she loved him. If she hesitated in that, there would be no sense in what she meant to do. She loved him with all her heart, with everything in her, with every thought and every instinct, as she had loved long ago in her vision. And as she had overcome then, for the sake of a vow from which she was really freed, so she would conquer again for the sake of the promise she had given to Guido d'Este, and was going to revoke to-morrow.
A far cry echoed through the silent street, and there was a faint grey light between the slats of the blinds. The darkness was ended at last, and perhaps she might allow herself to sleep now. She tried, but she could not, and she watched the dawn growing to cold daylight in the room, till the single lamp hardly glimmered in the corner. She closed her lids and rested as well as she could till it was time to get up.
She was very pale, and there were deep violet shadows under her eyes and below the sharp arches of her brows, but Petersen was very near-sighted, and noticed nothing unusual. Cecilia told her to telephone to Guido, asking him to come at ten o'clock. When the maid returned, Cecilia bade her arrange her hair very low at the back and to make it as smooth as possible. There was not the slightest conscious desire for effect in the order; when a woman has made up her mind to humiliate herself she always makes her hair look as unobtrusive as possible, just as a conscience-stricken dog drops his tail between his legs and hangs down his ears to avert wrath. We men are often very unjust to women about such things, which depend on instincts as old as humanity. Eastern mourners do not strew ashes on their heads because it is becoming to their appearance, and a woman's equivalents for ashes and sackcloth are to do her hair low and wear grey, if she chances to dislike that colour.
"Are you going to confession, my dear?" asked the Countess in some surprise when they met.
"No," Cecilia answered. "I could not sleep last night. I have telephoned to Guido to come at ten." The Countess looked at her and instantly understood that there was trouble.
"You are as white as a sheet," she said, with caution. "You had better let him come after luncheon to-day."
"No. I must see him at once."
"Something has happened," the Countess said nervously. "I know something has happened."
"I will tell you by-and-by. Please do not ask me now."
Her mother's look of anxiety turned slowly to an expression of real fear, her eyes opened wide, she grew pale, and her jaw fell as her lips parted. She looked suddenly old and grey.
"You are not going to marry him after all," she said, after a breathless little silence.
Some seconds passed before Cecilia answered, and then her voice was sad and low.
"How can I? I do not love him."
The Countess was horror-struck now, for she knew her daughter well. She began to speak rather incoherently, but with real earnestness, imploring Cecilia to think of what she was doing before it was too late, to consider Guido's feelings, her own, everybody's, to reflect upon the view the world would take of such bad faith, and, finally, to give some reason for her sudden decision.
It was in vain that she pleaded. Cecilia, grave and suffering, answered that she had taken everything into consideration and knew that she was doing right. The world might call it bad faith to break an engagement, but it would be nothing short of a betrayal to marry Guido since she had become sure that she could never love him. That was reason enough, and she would give no other. It was better that Guido should suffer for a few days than be made to suffer for a lifetime. She had not consulted any one, she said, when her mother questioned her; she would have done so if this had been a matter needing judgment and wisdom, but it was merely one of right and wrong, and she knew what was right, and meant to do it.
The Countess began to cry, and when Cecilia tried to soothe her, she pushed the girl aside and left the room in tears. A few minutes later Petersen telephoned for the carriage, and in less than half an hour the Countess was on her way to see Princess Anatolie, entirely forgetful of the fact that Cecilia would be quite alone when Guido came at ten o'clock.
Cecilia sat quite still in the drawing-room waiting for him. She was very tired and pale, and her eyes smarted for want of sleep, but her courage was not likely to fail her. She only wished that all might be over soon, as condemned men do when they are waiting for execution.
She sat still a long time and she heard the little French clock on her mother's writing table in the boudoir strike its soft chimes at the third quarter, and then ring ten strokes at the full hour. She listened anxiously for the servant's step beyond the door, and now and then she caught her breath a little when she thought she heard a sound. It was twenty minutes past ten when the door opened. She expected the man to stand still, and announce Guido, and she looked away; but the footsteps came nearer and nearer and stopped beside her. The man held out a small salver on which lay a note addressed in Guido's hand. It was like a reprieve after the long tension, for something must have happened to prevent him from coming, something unexpected, but welcome, though she would not own it.
In answer to her question, the man said that the messenger had gone away, and he left the room. She tore the envelope with trembling fingers.
Guido was ill. That was the substance of the note. He had felt ill when he awoke early in the morning, but had thought it nothing serious, though he was very uncomfortable. Unknown to him, his man had sent for a doctor, who had come half an hour ago, after Cecilia's message had been received and answered. The doctor had found him with high fever, and thought it was a sharp attack of influenza; at all events he had ordered Guido to stay in bed, and gave him little hope of going out for several days.
The note dropped on Cecilia's knees before she had read the words of loving regret with which it closed, and she found herself wondering whether Lamberti would have been hindered from coming by a mere touch of fever, under the same circumstances. But she would not allow herself to dwell on that long, for it gave her pleasure to think of Lamberti, and all such pleasure she intended to deny herself. It was quite bad enough to know that she loved him with all her heart. She went back to her own room.
There was nothing to be done but to write to Guido at once, for she would not allow the day to pass without telling him what she meant to do. She sat down and wrote as well as she could, weighing each sentence, not out of caution, but in fear lest she should not make it clear that she was altogether to blame for the mistake she had made, and meant to bear all the consequences in the eyes of the world. She was truly and sincerely penitent, and asked his forgiveness with touching humility. She did not mention Lamberti, but she confessed frankly that since she had been in Rome she had begun to love another man, as she ought to have loved Guido, a man whom she rarely saw, and who had never shown the least inclination to make love to her.
That was the substance of what she wrote. She read the words over, to be sure that they said what she meant, and she told Petersen to send a man at once with the letter. There was no answer, he was not to wait. She gave the order rather hurriedly, for she wished her decision to become irrevocable as soon as possible. It was a physical relief, but not a mental one, to feel that it was done and that she could never recall the fatal words. After reading such a letter there could be nothing for Guido to do but to accept the situation and tell his friends that she had broken the engagement. As for the immediate effect it might have on him, she did not even take his slight illness into consideration. The fact that he could not come and see her might even make it easier for him to bear the blow. Of course, if he came, she should be obliged to receive him, but she hoped that he would not. It would hurt her to see how much he was hurt, and she was suffering enough already. In time she trusted that he and she might be good friends, as young girls have an unreasonable inclination to hope in such cases.
When the Countess came back from her visit to the Princess Anatolie she was a little flushed, and there was a hard look in her face which Cecilia had never seen before, and which made her expect trouble. To her surprise, her mother kissed her affectionately on both cheeks.
"That old woman is a harpy," she said, as she left the room.