"The day before yesterday it was, Principino."
"Did she say whether she was staying in the neighbourhood?"
"No, she said nothing about herself, except that she had known your family well for years."
"And about Angelo—what?"
"Nothing, except the questions. She wanted me to tell her whether I had ever met or heard anything of his bride."
"I suppose you didn't give her much satisfaction?"
"Not much, my Principino. I could not, if I would. But I did say that I believed they were expected in ten days or a fortnight. I hope I was not indiscreet?"
"Not at all. Only—but it doesn't matter."
"Then, if it doesn't matter, let us turn to a subject nearer our hearts. The favour you wished to ask? Which you may consider granted."
After all, it was not quite as easy to explain as Vanno had thought, in his moments of exaltation on the mountain. But he was still determined to carry out his plan.
"You know, Father, when I was a little boy I used to talk with you about what I should do when I grew up, and how I should never fall in love with any girl, no matter how beautiful, unless she had eyes like my favourite stars? How you used to laugh about those 'eyes like stars!' Yesterday I saw a girl in a train at Marseilles. I got into the train, meaning to follow her, no matter how far. It was not like me to do that."
"Pardon me. I think it was," chuckled the curé. "You would always act on impulse, you man of fire—and ice."
"Well, she got off at Monte Carlo, where I myself wanted to stop. I thought that was great luck, at first. I turned over in my mind ways of makingher acquaintance. I believed it would be hard to do, but I meant to do it. Now, I'm not sure—not sure of anything about her. I'm not even sure whether I want to know her or not. The favour I have to ask is, that you help me to judge—and help her, if you have to judge harshly."
"I?"
"Yes, you, Father. If she needs help, I'm not the one to help her. But you could do it." And Vanno plunged deeper into explanations, warming with his story and forgetting his first shy stiffness.
As he talked, the curé's gaze dwelt on him affectionately, appreciatively. He admired the clear look and its fire of noble purity, not often seen, he feared, on the face of a young man brought up to believe the world at his feet. He admired the dark eyes, profound as the African nights they had loved. He noted the rich brown of the swarthy young face, clear as the profile on old Roman coins, and thought, as he had thought before, that Murillo would have liked to paint that colouring. He approved his Prince's way of speaking, when he lost self-consciousness and his gestures became free and winged. "How his mother would have loved him as he is now, if she had lived," the priest thought, remembering the warm-hearted Irish-American girl, whose impulses had been held down by the sombre asceticism of her husband, which increased with years. No wonder Prince Vanno was his father's favourite! Angelo had written that the duke disapproved his marriage, but that Vanno when he hadmet the bride would "somehow make it all come right." It would be a terrible thing if this younger son should fall in love with the wrong woman; but it was too early yet to begin preachings and warnings. The curé's kind heart gave him great tact.
"I am to go downstairs and look at this lady, then?" he said.
"Downstairs?"
"Only my expression for going downthere. I always say that I live upstairs, here at Roquebrune. And I like the upstairs life best."
"Well, you must come down and dine with me, anyhow. Then you will see her, and tell me what you think."
The curé broke into a laugh, like a boy's. "Me dine at your Hôtel de Paris, my son? That is a funny thought. You're inconsistent. If you think it unsuitable for a lady alone, what about me, a poor country priest from the mountains?"
"You wouldn't be alone. And you're a man. Besides, it's a good object. When you've seen her, you must make acquaintance with her somehow.Iwon't do it. Not while I doubt her."
"Hm! My Principino, you don't know what you are asking me. I am a priest."
"That's why I ask you. She's—I'll tell you, Father, if she goes on winning money, you can write to beg for your poor. Then, if she's charitable, she'll give, and come up to see your church."
"And you think the rest is simple! Well, for your sake I will do what I can."
"Will you dine with me to-night?"
"Impossible. I cannot leave the village for so much as an hour for the present. I am shepherd of a mountain flock, remember, and my first duty is to them. At any moment I may have a summons to one who is dying. A black sheep he has been perhaps, but all the more should he be washed white at the last. And I must hold myself ready to give him the extreme unction when I am sent for, if it be now or not till next week."
Vanno had set his heart upon his plan, and could hardly bear to have it indefinitely postponed; but he had learned through old experience that his good friend was not one to be persuaded from duty.
"You'll let me know the moment you're free, in any case," he urged.
"That very moment. But, meanwhile, something may happen that will help you to judge the lady for yourself—something definite."
"I should have judged her already, if it weren't for her eyes," Vanno said, with a sigh. "They have a look as if she'd just seen heaven! I can hardly tell you how, but they are different from all other women's eyes. They send out a ray of light, like an arrow to your heart."
"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed the priest.
"Don't laugh, Father. It's true, or I wouldn't have felt about her as I did from the first moment we looked at each other. She's beautiful, but I assure you it wasn't her beauty that made me follow her. It was something more mysterious thanthat. I swear to you, it was as if her eyes said to me, 'Why, here you are at last, you whom I've known since the beginning of things. I am the one you've waited for all your life.'"
"All your life! Twenty-seven years, is it not?"
"Twenty-nine this month, Father. I'm not a boy, and I've cared very much only for one woman. I wasn't twenty then, and it's partly her fault that it's hard for me to believe in others."
"That's scarcely fair to the others. One woman isn't all womanhood."
"Ah, it's odd you should have said that, for the thought in my mind has been that this girl—this girl who has a child's face, I tell you, Father—seems somehow to represent womanhood, the woman of all time: the type, you know, that no man can resist. There's a kind of divine softness about her which calls to all there is in one of manhood—or romance. I can't describe it."
"You have made me understand," the curé answered quietly. "And you have made me—for your sake—want to find out as soon as I possibly can what truth is under all this sweetness."
The first question Mary asked on coming downstairs in the morning was, "At what hour does the Casino open?"
Ten o'clock, she was told.
It was not yet nine. A long time to wait!
Most people at the Paris breakfasted in their rooms, but never in her life had Mary eaten breakfast in her bedroom. She went to last night's table in the great glass window of the restaurant, and was hardly sure whether she felt relieved or disappointed not to see the young man with the Dante profile. She did not now think him in the least like Romeo.
From the window, to her surprise, she saw a crowd collecting in front of the Casino, whose doors were still closed.
"What is the matter?" she asked, almost alarmed, lest there had been an accident.
"It is the early ones waiting for the doors to open," her waiter explained. He brought her a poached egg on toast, but a superlative egg, poached and adorned according to the conception of a Frenchchef. The air with which the silver cover was taken off and the dish shown to Mary made her feel there was nothing she could do to show herappreciation, without disappointing the man, unless she bent down and kissed the egg passionately. Her smile seemed inadequate, and she ate with a worried fear of seeming ungrateful, especially as she was impelled to hurry, lest those people in front of the Casino should take all the places at the tables. She wanted to sit down to gamble, for the strenuous game she had played last night, with many stakes, would be impossible when stretching over people's heads.
By half-past nine she was in the crowd, all her money, with the exception of two hundred pounds she had put by, crushed into her big beaded hand-bag. She remembered how at Aberdeen the night she went to the theatre people stood like this, patiently waiting for the pit-door to open. What did she not remember about that, her first and only visit to a theatre?
At last the Casino doors yawned, as if they disliked waking up. The procession rolled toward them, like a determined and vigorous python. Mary was carried ahead with the rush. She had forgotten that she ought to have renewed her ticket, but fortunately she was not asked for it; and as she had come without a wrap, there was nothing to turn her aside from the rooms.
Once across the threshold of the big Salle Schmidt, the struggle began. It was not only the young and agile who raced each other to the tables. Men who looked as if they might have pulled one foot from the grave in order to reachthe Casino, hobbled wildly across the slippery floor. Fat elderly ladies waddled with indomitable speed, like women tied up in bags for an obstacle race; and an invalid gentleman, a famous player, with his attendant—the first to get in—was swept along in a small bath chair ahead of the crowd, an expression of fierce exhilaration on a gaunt face white as bleached bone. But the young and healthy gamblers had an advantage, especially those with long legs.
Only yesterday Mary would have let herself be passed by every one, rather than push into a place which somebody else wanted. Now, however, the gambler's fever was in her. Whatever happened, she must get a seat at the table where she had played last night. To do so was the most important thing on earth. Slender and tall and long-limbed, she ran like a young Diana; though not since she had become Sister Rose had she ever been undignified enough to run. Straight as an arrow she aimed for the table she wanted, and convulsively seized the back of the last unclaimed chair. It was grasped at the same instant by a young man of rather distinguished appearance, who would in other circumstances no doubt have yielded place to a woman, especially a young and pretty girl. But he too had the gambler's fever. He struggled with Mary for the chair, and would have secured it by superior strength if she had not dropped limply into it as he drew it out for himself.
"Well done!" muttered a woman already settledin a neighbouring seat. "That's one of the Pretenders to the throne of Portugal."
Instead of being overawed, Mary found herself laughing in the joy of her triumph. "He can't have this throne, anyhow," she panted, out of breath.
Then she noticed that Lord Dauntrey was with her defeated rival. He had secured a chair, but getting up, gave it to the royal personage, who was his paying guest at the Villa Bella Vista. Lord Dauntrey had not seen, or had not recognized, Mary. He appeared to be more alive than he had been before, almost a different man. Though his features were stonily calm as the features of a mask, Mary felt that he was intensely excited, and completely absorbed in the game about to begin. He had a notebook over which his sleek brown head and Dom Ferdinand de Trevanna's short black curls were bent eagerly. It was evident that they had some plan of play which they were working out together.
It was just as thrilling, Mary thought, to be in the Casino by day as by night, and even more interesting now, because she knew how to play, instead of having to depend upon Madame d'Ambre. She had feared that her too solicitous friend might be lying in wait for her this morning, but she need have had no anxiety. Madeleine never appeared before noon. Perhaps she might have made a superhuman effort had there been reasonable hope of anything to gain. But Madame d'Ambre had learned to read faces: and Mary's had told her that for a timethere was nothing more to expect. She would be comfortably lazy while her money held out.
Mary's seat was near the spinner, one of the croupiers who had seen her sensational wins twelve hours ago. He smiled recognition. "Take zero again, and the neighbours," he mumbled cautiously. "I'll try and make you win."
Mary wanted to know what "neighbours" meant, and was told hastily that they were the numbers lying nearest to zero on the wheel.
"But I feel as if twenty-four would come," she objected.
"Very well, if Mademoiselle prefers twenty-four, I will see what I can do," replied the obliging croupier, like most of his fellow-spinners wishing to give the impression that he could control the ball.
Twenty-four did not respond to his efforts, but twenty-two was the first number spun, and as Mary had staked maximums on everything surrounding her number, she won heavily. Throughout the whole morning luck still favoured her. She lost sometimes, and her wins were not as sensational as those of last night, but they made people stare and talk, and added so many notes to the troublesome contents of her bag that, to the amusement of everybody, when the time came to go she stuffed gold and paper into the long gloves she had taken off while playing. Both gloves were full and bulged out in queer protuberances, like Christmas stockings. But this was not until nearly two o'clock, when Mary had grown so hungry that she could nolonger concentrate her thoughts upon the game. Meanwhile, different relays of croupiers and inspectors had come and gone, and the crowd round the table had changed. Very few remained of the players who had raced for chairs at the opening hour. Many had lost and taken themselves off, discouraged; others had a habit of darting from table to table "for luck"; some had won as much as they wanted to win, and departed quietly as a man goes home from his office. But among the few faithful ones were Lord Dauntrey and his royal friend, who was stared at a good deal, and evidently recognized. By this time Lord Dauntrey had noticed Mary, his attention being attracted to her by Dom Ferdinand, but as he had not been introduced to the girl in the train, he did not bow. The excitement had died from his face, leaving it gray as the ashes in a burnt-out fire, and his cheeks looked curiously loose on the bones, as if his muscles had fallen away underneath. Mary had not taken time to watch his game, but she saw that most of the silver and gold once neatly piled in front of the two players had disappeared, and she was afraid that they had lost a good deal. It seemed unnecessary and almost stupid to her that people should lose. She did not see why every one could not play as she did.
As she reluctantly rose to go away, driven by hunger, she had to pass close to Dom Ferdinand and Lord Dauntrey. There was no crowd round the chairs, as the morning throng had thinned fordéjeuner, and she heard Lord Dauntrey say: "I assure you, Monseigneur, it never went as badly as this on my roulette at home. You saw the records. But nobody can win at every séance. Don't be discouraged. I'm confident my system's unbreakable in the end."
It was half-past two when Mary began luncheon, and she had to finish in a hurry when Schuyler and Carleton called for her with the motor-car. She was sorry that she had promised to look at anything so irrelevant as an aeroplane, and felt nervously irritable because she could not at once go back to her game. She could almost hear the Casino calling her in a musical, golden voice: "I have something nice to give you. Why don't you come and take it?" But it was interesting to tell the two men about her luck of the morning. Each detail of the play was so fascinating to her that she would hardly have believed it possible for the story to bore any one else. She did not ask a single question about the remarkable hydro-aeroplane in which Carleton was to compete for an important prize next week; nor did she see the pitying smile the men exchanged while she entertained them with an exact account of how she had staked, what she had lost, and what she had won. "Poor child!" the look said. But neither man blamed the girl for her selfish absorption. Both understood the phase very well, and it was not long since Carleton had lived it down, thanks to some friendly brutality on Jim's part. As for Schuyler, though he never played atthe Casino, it was because he had played too often when a younger man, in America. Roulette and trente et quarante bored him now, though the great game in Wall Street still had power over his nerves, when he was in the thick of it. One reason that he avoided society at Monte Carlo and invited few people to his house was because the constant babble about the "Rooms" and the "tables" exhausted his vitality, making him feel, as he said, "like a field-mouse in a vacuum." Sometimes it had seemed to him that, if once again he heard any one say, "Oh, if only I had played on seventeen!" he would be forced to strike the offender, or rush away in self-defence.
Already Mary's eyes were losing the starlike clearness of their delight in all things novel or beautiful. They looked mistily introspective, as if they were studying some combination going on in the brain behind them; and when she could not talk about roulette she relapsed at once into absent-mindedness. But even her absorbed interest in the new pursuit was not proof against the hydro-aeroplane lurking in its hangar. It looked wonderful, yet she could not believe that it was able really to rise out of the water into air.
"I assure you it does, though, and it can run on land, too," said Carleton, eagerly. "Surely you must have read of Glenn Curtiss and hisTriad, that made such a sensation in America? You can ask Jim. He saw my first successful experiment in the Hudson River six weeks ago."
"And one or two unsuccessful ones, too," laughed Jim. "But I really think, Miss Grant, that Carleton's got his pet dragon into pretty good training now, both as a land and water and air animal. I shouldn't wonder if we'd see something worth seeing nest week at Nice?—and it will be new on this coast, for there've been no hydro-aeroplanes tried here before."
"Next week?" echoed Mary. "Shan't I see anything now? I thought Mr. Carleton meant to go up in the air to-day."
"I hadn't thought of it, but I will if you like. That is, I'll try," said Carleton, modestly.
"I—oh, how I should love to go with you!" Mary exclaimed. "Can you carry people?"
"One passenger at a time, yes. You wouldn't really like it, would you?" he asked, flushing under the compliment of her trust in him, and admiring her pluck. "You don't mean that you'd go up with me?"
"I would if you'd take me." Her eyes were shining once more. "It would be—like all one's most marvellous dreams come true."
"You wouldn't be afraid?"
"Oh, no, not with you."
This was delicious flattery. Carleton promptly fell in love with Mary. Not to have done so would have been base ingratitude. No woman had ever paid him so great a compliment. He had thought her bewilderingly pretty before. Now she was the most beautiful woman in the world.
"You're the bravest girl on earth!" he exclaimed, ardently.
"Better leave her on earth, then," Schuyler said dryly. "We need brave women."
"There's no danger," Carleton protested with indignation. "Do you think I'd take her, if I thought there were?"
"Not if you thought there were. And I don't say there is. But Miss Grant's here without her people——"
"I have no people," Mary cut him short. "Because you can't count aunts, can you, especially if they dislike you very much?"
Both men laughed.
"I must be your passenger," she said. "Now I've seen the hydro-aeroplane, I shan't eat or sleep till I've been up in it."
Carleton looked at his host. "You know, at worst she could only get a wetting if I kept over the sea," he said. "And very likely theFlying Fishwill be cranky and refuse to rise."
"Here's hoping!" mumbled Schuyler. He did not define the exact nature of his hope, but offered no further objections.
Mary, seeing that she was to have her wish, was anxious to start at once, and almost surprised at herself for her own courage. But Carleton explained that she could not "make an ascent," as he laconically called it, dressed as she was. She must have a small, close fitting hat, and a veil to tie it firmly down, also a heavy wrap. He had an oilskincoat which he could lend her, to put over it. Mary was not, however, to be turned from her desire by small obstacles. She had no very thick coat, but knew where to buy a lovely moleskin, very long, down to her feet. She could secure it and be ready in ten minutes if Mr. Schuyler would send her up the hill in his car. Permission was granted and she went spinning off with the chauffeur, both Schuyler and Carleton awaiting her return at the hangar, down on the beach by the harbour.
The "ten minutes" prolonged themselves to twenty, and while they were slowly passing, three men who had been on the Rock, writing their names in the visitors' book at the palace, came strolling down the long flight of paved steps to the harbour. One of these was Captain Hannaford. The other Englishman was also an officer, Major Norwood, who had known Hannaford long ago. And the third member of the party was the Maharajah of Indorwana, an extremely troublesome young Indian royalty who was "seeing Europe" under the guardianship of his reluctant bear leader, Norwood. Since the pair had landed at Marseilles, three weeks ago, Norwood had passed scarcely a peaceful moment by night or day. His authority over his charge was officially absolute; but in practise it could only be enforced by violence, which the unfortunate officer had not yet brought himself to exert. If he did not wish the Maharajah (who was twenty and had never before been out of his native land) to fall into some new mischief every hour, he was obligedto find for the youth a ceaseless succession of amusements. Monte Carlo was to have been but the affair of a day. The Maharajah, however, had decided differently. He liked the place, and firmly refused to move. The two had now been staying for a week at the Metropole, and Major Norwood had telegraphed to the India Office in London for instructions.
The night before, he had been dragged by his charge to three dances at open-all-night restaurants, where professionals entertained the audience. The Maharajah had insisted on learning to dance, his instructress being an attractive Russian girl; then, as the fun grew furious, he had forgotten his eastern dignity, and pirouetted for a wager, with a valuable jar containing a palm. This jar he had promptly broken, and had not been conciliatory to the proprietor. At five o'clock he had driven his own car—bought at Marseilles—to Nice, full to overflowing with his late partners. There had been a slight accident, and to console the girls for their fright the Maharajah had divided all his ready money among them. Since then he had had one fight with a German, whom he had jostled, and who had called him a black man. Major Norwood had been obliged to use the most nerve-racking exertions to keep his princeling out of a French prison. Slightly subdued, the Maharajah had consented to call at the palace at Monaco, to walk through the beautiful gardens on the Rock with Hannaford, and to visit the Fish Museum; but there was a yearning for newexcitements in his dangerous dark eyes, and Norwood had been thankful to see Carleton the airman standing on the beach by his hangar. The two Americans were introduced to the Indian royalty, and Carleton, not too eagerly, had just begun to explain the features of hisFlying Fish, when the big blue car brought Miss Grant back.
At sight of Mary in a newly bought motor-bonnet, the Maharajah's eyes lit up. He had seen her the night before at the Casino, and had started the applause after her first sensational win. Now he asked to be introduced, and Major Norwood's weary heart sank. Judging from the expression of the plump olive face, this was going to be another case of infatuation, and already there had been one on the ship, and one at Cannes, both of which had necessitated the most delicate diplomacy. The Maharajah was passionately fond of jewels, and had brought with him from home some of the finest in his collection, which he intended to wear in London. But on board ship he had given an emerald worth five hundred pounds to the pretty young wife of an old Indian judge, who could not resist accepting it; and at Cannes he had bestowed a diamond aigrette on a second-rate actress. Major Norwood had tried to get these valuables back, in vain; and now felt symptoms of heart failure whenever his charge looked at a beautiful woman.
The Maharajah had an extraordinarily winning manner, however, almost like that of a dignified child, and his way of speaking English was engaging.Mary had never seen an East Indian before, and was much interested to meet one. She gave him her prettiest smiles and looks, while the other men stood round her, each secretly annoyed to see her treating a "black fellow" as if he were the equal of a European.
"I'm hanged if I'll stand on ceremony with the chap, if he is some kind of potentate," Carleton grumbled; and, interrupting the conversation, asked Mary if she were of the same mind about being his passenger for a flight.
"Of course!" she answered. But Carleton had not yet stepped into the hangar when Prince Vanno Della Robbia passed on foot, going to the palace on the Rock.
He had returned to his hotel after lunching with the curé, had dressed and, as he was told there might be a small revolution in progress at Monaco—something worth seeing—he had started out to walk.
The revolution of Monegasques demanding the vote seemed after all not to be taking place that day; but if Vanno missed the miniature warlike demonstration he had been promised, at least his walk was not uneventful. Noticing a group round Carleton's hangar on the beach, he drew nearer, and to his astonishment saw Mary in a long coat of moleskin, and a little red motor-bonnet, surrounded by five men, one of them the somewhat notorious Maharajah of Indorwana. Vanno retreated hastily, and went on toward the steps which led up to the Rockof Monaco; but he had not gone far when a combination of sounds stopped him: the whirr of a propeller and the throb of an engine. Carleton was evidently on the point of trying his machine, the curious invention which could be used, it was said, on land as well as in air and on the water.
Vanno looked back, and saw a biplane on wheels, fitted with a kind of float. It was moving out of the hangar, down an inclined plane that bridged the beach as far as the water's edge. In the aviator's seat sat Dick, and behind him the red motor-bonnet was decorative as a flower.
She was going with Carleton! Vanno had hardly time to realize that he had seen her, before the hydro-aeroplane ran, rather than plunged, into the water. It ploughed deeply and almost painfully for the first moment, sending up a great spout of foam like an immense plume of spun glass; but as Carleton increased the speed daringly, hisFlying Fishrose higher on the little waves, the float barely skimming the surface of the water. The aviator tilted the control, as if to watch the action, and suddenly, to the amazement of all the spectators, what had been an unusual looking double-decked motor-boat sprang out of the harbour into the air. It rose gracefully and gradually to a height of perhaps four hundred feet, flying as if it aimed straight for the far-distant pearl-cluster of Bordighera, on the Italian coast.
Vanno had an extraordinary sensation, as if his heart stopped beating, and as if at the same time an iron band across his chest stopped the expansionof his lungs. It was such a sensation as a man might have in the moment of death, and it was so unlike anything he had ever felt before that, for a few seconds of physical agony, he asked himself dazedly what was the matter. Then, suddenly, he knew that he was afraid—afraid for the girl. And he hated Carleton for risking her life. He felt a savage longing to do the young airman some bodily injury as a punishment for what he, Vanno, was made to suffer.
The relief was so great when theFlying Fishdropped slowly down and settled again into the water that Vanno was slightly giddy with the rush of blood through his veins. He watched the hydro-aeroplane turn and head back for the mouth of Monaco harbour; and it seemed to him that he had lived through years in a few minutes, as one can have a lifetime's experience in one short dream. He sickened as he thought what would be his feelings now if the machine had fallen and turned over, too far off for any hope of rescue from land. If those "eyes like stars" had been closed until eternity, with no hope that he could ever learn the secret of the soul behind them, nothing the future might have to give could make up for the loss. It was only when theFlying Fishswam safely into the harbour that Vanno remembered his irritation at seeing Mary with all those men, the only woman among them. After what he had gone through since then, this annoyance seemed a ridiculously small thing; but no sooner was she on land again, received with acclamations fromher new friends and applause by the crowd which had quickly collected, than Vanno felt the same tingling anger.
The girl was making herself notorious! At this rate she would be talked of everywhere. Strangers would snapshot her as she passed. Her picture would be for sale on one of those Monte Carlo postcards of celebrities which were newly taken every day; she would be in the local English illustrated newspaper. He walked off quickly, with his head down, so as to lose himself in the crowd and not be seen by Mary or her companions.
She was pale as a drowned girl when Carleton and Hannaford helped her out of the oilskin which had protected her new fur cloak; and never, perhaps, had she been so beautiful. There was something unearthly about her, as if she had seen a vision and the blinding light of it still shone white upon her face. As he touched her, Hannaford felt a thrill as of new life go through him. By his own wild recklessness he had spoilt his career and put himself, so he believed, beyond the pale of any woman's love. He had thought that he had trained himself not to care; but in that instant, while Mary, dazed by her vision, almost hung in his arms and Carleton's, he knew that he was as other men. He wondered why last night she had meant no more to him than a pretty new face at Monte Carlo, a rather amusing problem which would soon lose its abstruse charm. It was like tearing out a live nerve to feel that she could think of him only with disgust or maybehorror. Yet he knew that, now he had seen her face with the wonderful light on it, he would have to try and win something from her, if only pity. The idea came to him that she and he, and these men with them, and Madeleine d'Ambre, and others who would gather round the beautiful and lucky player, were figures being woven into a web of tapestry together; that they were forced to group themselves as the weaver of the web decreed. He saw his own figure woven into an obscure and shadowy corner far from that of Mary, and, rebelling against the choice of the weaver, wished to tear the tapestry in pieces. But the next moment he was ready to smile at himself with the quiet, cynical smile which had become familiar to all those who knew him. "Nothing is tragic unless you think so," he said to himself. Yet he could not put out of his mind the fancy of the web with figure after figure being woven into it, against the background of sea and mountain. It was not unlike the idea which had come to Peter in a half-waking dream the night after Mary went away. And at the convent in the north of Scotland the same thought still came back to Peter, though no news had yet been received there from Monte Carlo.
"Were you afraid?" the Maharajah of Indorwana asked Mary, as the colour slowly flowed back to her face.
"No," she said, dreamily, "not afraid. But it was like dying and going to another world. When we were rushing through the water with the loudnoise of machinery in our ears, and the glassy screen of spray over our heads, I lost my breath. I couldn't think clearly; but I supposed that was all. I couldn't believe we should go up. But then came the spring, and we were in the air, bounding higher—it was like something imagined after death. And the rest was being in heaven, till we began to drop. Then, just for a few seconds, it felt as if my body were falling and leaving my soul poised up there in the sky. I shall never forget—never. And when the time does come to die, I don't believe I shall mind now, for I know it will be like that, with the wonder of it after the shrinking is over."
Hannaford looked at her closely as she spoke. He was continually thinking of death as a dark room, behind a shut door which he would perhaps choose to open. He felt that he would like to talk to her some day about what she really expected to find on the other side of the door.
Nothing else was quite real to him in the scene, when everybody pressed round Carleton, congratulating him on his machine and the exploit of which the airman seemed to think little. It was not real when Schuyler invited Hannaford and his two companions to crowd into the big car, and be spun up the hill to Monte Carlo. He remembered the illumined look on Mary's face (though it was gone now) and the faint ray of hope it had sent into that secret place where his real self lived wearily.
If Mary had died and waked up in another world, it could hardly have been more of a contrast to her old existence than the new life at Monte Carlo to the life at St. Ursula's-of-the-Lake.
And the Mary at Monte Carlo was a different person from the Mary at the Scotch convent. She had a new set of thoughts and feelings of which she would not have believed herself capable in Scotland. She would have been surprised and shocked at them in another, a few weeks ago. Now she was not shocked or surprised at them even in herself. They seemed natural and familiar. She was at home with them all, and with her new self, not even realizing that it was a new self. And she grew more beautiful, like a flower taken from a dark northern corner of the garden and planted in a sheltered, sunny spot.
She no longer thought of turning her back upon Monte Carlo in a few days, and journeying on to Florence. She stayed, without making definite plans; but she did not write to the convent. She knew that Reverend Mother would not like her to be here, gambling, and it would be too difficult to explain. There was no use in trying, and she could not bear the thought of having to read a reproachful letter, when she was so happy and every one was being so nice to her. It was different about her Aunt Sara. She knew, if she did not arrive in Florence, Mrs. Home-Davis's friend would write and say that she had never appeared. Then perhaps her aunt would follow to see what had become of her. Rather than run the risk of this dreadful thing happening, Mary telegraphed to Cromwell Road; "Have changed my mind. Staying on the Riviera. Am well and safe; will write when decide to leave." And she put no address. After sending off this message she felt relieved for a few days, as if she were secure from danger; but sometimes she waked in the night to worry lest Aunt Sara knew any one on the Riviera who might be instructed to look up a stray niece. Then she would comfort herself by reflecting that Mrs. Home-Davis was not at all the sort of woman to know people at Monte Carlo. She was too dull and uninteresting.
And just now most things seemed dull and uninteresting to Mary which were not connected with gambling.
Her winnings were not in themselves out of the common, for every season at Monte Carlo there are at least six or seven players who win great sums, whose gains are talked about and watched at the tables, and who go away with from ten to fifty thousand pounds. But it was the combination of personality with great and persistent good luck which made Mary Grant remarkable, and her behaviour was puzzling and piquantly mysterious tothose who had no clue to her past. Everybody talked about her: the croupiers who spun her numbers or put on her stakes, and received her generous tips: the shopkeepers with whom she spent the money she won, buying expensive hats and furs, dresses and jewellery: clerks at the bank where she deposited her winnings: people of all sorts who frequented the Casino, and even those who were there seldom but heard what was going on through acquaintances at the many luncheon parties and "At Homes" which make up the round of life at Monte Carlo. And Mary knew that she was stared at and talked about, and liked it as a child likes to be looked at when walking out with a splendid new doll. She had no idea that any one could say unkind things of her, or that there was anything in her conduct to call for harsh comments. It was so delightful to be winning every day at roulette, and spending the easily gained money in amusing ways, that Mary thought every one who came near her must be almost as much pleased with her luck as she was—all but the one man who had snubbed her, the man whose name she had not heard, but who, she had been told by her devoted waiter, was a Roman prince. He disapproved of or disliked her, she did not know which, or why; and because he kept the table near hers in the restaurant his look, which was sometimes like a vehement reproach, always depressed her, bringing a cold sense of failure where all might have been joy. The thought of this stranger's disapproval was the fly in her amber; and the idea floated throughher mind sometimes that they might have known each other in a forgotten state of existence. When their eyes met, it was as if there were a common memory between them, something that had happened long ago, drawing them together.
Days passed, and Vanno's project which concerned Mary and the curé was still in abeyance, for the priest was not free yet to leave Roquebrune. The man whose death was daily expected had not died, and the curé spent as much time with him as could be spared from other duties. But Vanno Della Robbia was not the only one who sought the services of a friend in order to "help" Mary.
One afternoon at the end of the Nice aviation week Dick Carleton ran up three flights of marble stairs in a huge square house on the left or seaward side of the Boulevard d'Italie at Monte Carlo. It was a building given up to flats, and the corridors were almost depressingly clean and cold looking, with their white floors and stairways of crude, cheap marble, and their white walls glittering with the washable paint called "Ripolin." On each étage were two white doors with openwork panels of iron over glass, which in most cases showed curtains on the other side. The door before which Carleton stopped on the third floor had a semi-transparent rose-coloured curtain; and just above the bell push was neatly tacked a visiting card with the name "Reverend George Winter" engraved upon it.
Carleton had never met the new incumbent of St. Cyprian's, but the chaplain had lately marriedan American girl, Dick's cousin. This was the first time that Carleton had found a chance to call, although he had been staying with Schuyler for over a fortnight. He felt rather guilty and doubtful of his reception, as a neat little Monegasque maid told him that Madame waschez elle. But he need not have been anxious. As the maid announced his name with a pronunciation all her own, a pretty girl sprang up from a chintz-covered window seat, in a drawing-room which in an instant took Carleton across the sea to his native land.
The girl had been sitting on one foot, and as she jumped up quickly she stumbled a little, laughing.
"Oh, Dick, you nice thing!" she exclaimed. "Iamglad to see you. But my foot's asleep. Goodness, what needles and pins!"
She stamped about on the polished floor, with two small feet in silk stockings and high-heeled, gold-buckled slippers, a novel tucked under her arm, and one hand clasping her cousin's.
"Well," he said, "if any creature could be less like a parson's wife than you, madam, I'd like to see it."
"I know I'm the exact opposite of what one ought to be," she laughed, "and it almost makes me feel not legally married. But don't—don't, please, if you love me, use that awful word 'parson' again. I can't stand it. Don't you think it sounds just like the crackle of cold, overdone toast?"
"Can't say I ever thought about it," said Carleton.
"Well, I have, constantly. It was a long time before I could make up my mind to say 'yes' to St. George, on account of that word."
"Is St. George his name?" Dick asked.
"It's my name for him. The 'saint' part's my private property. But he is a saint, if ever there was one: and a good thing too, as he's got a dragon on the hearth to tame; but alittleinconvenient sometimes for the poor dragon. Oh, Dick, you've no idea how good and pure-minded and absolutely Alpine and on the heights he is. Often I expect to pick edelweiss in his back hair."
Carlton gave one of his sudden, boyish laughs. "That sounds like you. How did you come to marry such a chap?"
"I was so horribly afraid some other girl would get him, if I left him lying about. But do let's sit down. My foot's wide awake again now."
They sat on the cushioned window seat and smiled into each other's eyes.
"How brown you are!" she exclaimed.
"How pretty you are!" he retorted.
And it was true. She was very pretty, a girlish creature, thin and eager looking, with large tobacco-brown eyes full of a humorous, observant interest in everything. Her skin was dark and smooth as satin. Even her long throat and nervous hands, and the slim, lace-covered arms, were of the same satin-textured duskiness as the heart-shaped face, with its laughing red mouth. Her cheekbones were rather high and touched with colour, as if a geraniumpetal had been rubbed across them, just under the brown shadows beneath the eyes. Her chin was small and pointed, her forehead low and broad, and this, with the slight prominence of the cheekbones and the narrowing of the chin, gave that heartlike shape to her face which added piquancy and made it singularly endearing.
She was very tall and graceful, with pretty ways of using her hands, and looking from under her lashes with her head on one side, which showed that she had been a spoiled and petted child.
"Yes, I'm quite pretty," she agreed gayly, "and I have on a pretty dress, which is part of my trousseau, and I hope it will last a long time. But the thing I am principally interested in just now is our flat. Call this a 'living-room' at once, or I shall feel homesick and burst into tears. The question is, do you thinkitis pretty?"
"Awfully pretty; looks like you somehow," answered Dick, gazing around appreciatively. "Jolly chintz with roses on it, and your rugs are ripping. Everything goes so well with everything else."
"It ought to. I have taken enough trouble over it all, introducing wedding presents to each other and trying to make them congenial. I have no boudoir, so I can't boude. But St. George has a study with books up to the ceiling, and lots still on the floor, because we are not settled yet, though we arrived—strangers in a strange land—in November. I expect you'll recognize some of the things here, because old colonial furniture doesn'tgrow on blackberry bushes in this climate, and I brought over everything Grandma Carleton left me: that desk, and cabinet and mirror, and those three near-Chippendale chairs. Wouldn't the poor darling make discords on her golden harp, or moult important feathers out of her wings, if she could see her parlour furniture in a room at Monte Carlo?"
"Nice way for a par—I mean a chaplain's wife to talk," said Dick.
"I've beensoprim for three whole months," Rose Winter excused herself, "except, of course, when I'm alone with St. George."
"Ever since you were married. Poor kid! But don't you have to be prim with him?"
"Good gracious, no! That would be death. I arranged with him the day I definitely said yes, and again on our wedding eve, so as to havenomisunderstanding, that I might keep all my pet slang, and even uselanguageif I felt it really necessary; otherwise he would certainly have been the 'Winter of my discontent.'"
"What do you call language?" Dick wanted to know.
"Oh, well, I have invented some and submitted it for St. George's—if not approval—tolerance. 'Carnation' for instance, and 'split my infinitives,' are the most useful, and entirely inoffensive, when one's excited. Also I may have a cigarette with him after dinner, if I like, when we're alone. Only I haven't wanted it yet, for we have so much to say, it won't stay lighted. But now tell me about yourself. Of course we knew you'd come. It was in a paper here, that tells us all the news about everybody, in English: who's who (but who isn't who nowadays who can play bridge?), also what entertainments Who gives to Whom."
"Sounds complicated," said Dick.
"So it is, complicated with luncheon parties and tea parties, and knowing whether to invite So and So with Thing-um-bob, or whether they've quarrelled over bridge or something, and don't speak. It's most intricate. But I've kept track of you—as much as onecankeep track of an airman. We knew how busy you'd be, so we didn't expect you to call. And St. George didn't like to go and worry you at Stellamare, as he isn't acquainted with Mr. Schuyler."
"I believe Schuyler sends subscriptions to the church at Monte Carlo and at Mentone, and to the Catholic priest at Roquebrune as well, and thinks he's quit of religious duties," said Carleton. "Yet he's an awfully good fellow—gives a lot away in charities, all around here. He is great chums with some of the peasants. It's quite an experience to take a walk with him: He says how-de-do to the quaintest creatures. But he can't be bothered with society. Vows most of the people who come back here every winter to the villas and hotels are like a lot of goldfish going round and round in a glass globe."
"I hopeweshan't get like that," said Rose. "At present, I am quite amusing myself. And it seemsto me there are many different kinds of life here. You have only to take your choice, just as you do in other places, only here it's curiously concentrated and concrete."
"Now, I ask you, is it the right spirit, to talk of 'amusing yourself' in taking up your new parochial duties?" Carleton teased her.
"Perhaps one does things better if it amuses one to do them," she argued. "And really I'm a success as shepherd's assistant, or sheep-dog-in-training. I don't go barking and biting at the poor sheep's heels (havesheep heels?), for the sheep here are pampered and sensitive, and their feelings have to be considered, or they jump over the fence and go frisking away. Besides, I always think it must give dogs such headaches to bark as they do! Instead, I make myself agreeable and do pretty parlour tricks, which would be far beneath St. George's dignity; and, anyhow,hecouldn't do tricks to save his life. His place is on the mountain tops, so I sit in the valley below, and give the weakest sheep tea and smile at them or weep with them, whichever they like better."
The cousins laughed, both looking very young and happy, and pleased with themselves and each other. They were almost exactly of the same age, twenty-three, and as children had played together in the pleasant old Kentucky town which had given them both their soft, winning drawl. But Dick's people had moved North, and hers had stayed in the South, until three years ago, when Rose and herfather had started off on a tour of Europe. In England she met George Winter, and did the one thing of all others which she would have vowed never to do: she fell in love with a clergyman. They had been married three months ago in Louisville, had then visited his parents in Devonshire; and because Winter had not fully recovered tone since an attack of influenza, he had accepted a chaplaincy in the south of France. Rose Fitzgerald and Dick Carleton, children of sisters, had put a marker in the book of their old friendship, and were able to open it at the page where they had left off years ago. She was not in the least hurt because he had let more than a fortnight go by before calling, for she knew that he had come for the aviation, and must have had head and hands full. She was not aware that he found time to see a good deal of another young woman who had no claim of old friendship; but even if she had known, she would have understood and forgiven almost as one man understands and forgives another. For quaintly feminine as she was, Rose often said, and felt, that "before a woman can be a true lady she must be a gentleman." And, being a gentleman, she can learn to be a "good fellow"—an invaluable accomplishment for a woman.
"I saw you fly, you know," she said, when they had finished laughing. "I went to Nice on purpose—that is, nearly on purpose. I combined it with buying a dress, a perfectly sweet Paris dress, which I shall try to wear with a slight English accent, so asnot to be too smart for a well-regulated sheep-dog. Every one declared the honours of the aviation week were yours, with that wonderfulFlying Fish. I wouldn't have believed a machine made by man could do such weird things, if I hadn't heard all about the Glenn Curtiss experiments and successes with theTriadat home. I was proud of you. Except that man who tested the Della Robbia parachute, you were quite the most distinguished thing in the air, although it was really crowded—all sorts of quaint creatures giving you their airwash. I want to have a Skye terrier now, and name him after you. St. George was going to give me a dachshund, but they do look so bored to tears, I think it would depress me having one about. And, besides, I draw the line at an animal which can't know whether its ancestors were lizards or dogs."
"Look here, Rosie," Dick began when she paused, with an introspective look which told her that he had not heard a word she said, "there's something I want you to do for me."
"It won't be the first time," she replied pertly. "I 'spect I'll like to do it. But if it's anything important, better begin now, for some of my own specially collected sheep will be drifting in to tea."
"Sheep at tea! A new subject for an artist," mumbled Carleton.
"My special ones are so shorn it would be scarcely decent to paint them, and a few are already quite black. But they all like tea—from my hands. It knits them together in a nice soft woolly way.And St. George will probably stroll in with the Alpine glow of a sermon-in-the-making still lighting up his eyes. And he will be introduced to you and drop crumbs on my lovely Persian rug, and ask to have the gramophone started. He loves it. Often I think our friends must go away and complain of being gramophoned to death by a wild clergyman. So out with what you have to ask me, my dear man, or the enemy will be upon us."
Carleton got up, with his hands in his pockets, and stared out of the window which looked down from a seemingly great height over the turquoise sea. He could see a train from Italy tearing along a curve of the green and golden coast, like a dark knight charging full tilt toward the foe, a white plume swept back from his helmet. Suddenly the smooth blue surface of the sea was broken by the rush of a motor-boat practising for a forthcoming race, a mere buzzing feather of foam, with a sound like the beating of an excited heart, heard after taking some drug to exaggerate the pulsation. Yet Carleton was hardly conscious of what he saw or heard. He was thinking how best to ask Rose Winter to make Miss Grant's acquaintance. Several ways occurred to him, but at last he blurted out something quite different from what he had planned.
"There's a girl—a lady—I—I want to get your opinion about," he stammered, turning red, because he knew that Rose was looking at him with a dangerously innocent expression in her eyes."That is, I should like to know how you'd classify her," he finished.
Rose answered lightly. "There are just three sorts of women, Boy—counting girls: Perfect Dears, Poor Dears, and Persons. Men of course are still easier to classify, because there are only two kinds of them—nice and horrid. But under which of the three heads would you yourself put your friend? I suppose you think she's a Perfect Dear, or you wouldn't have to go and look out of the window while you lead up to asking if I'll make her acquaintance."
"No," said Dick. "I'm afraid she's rather more like a Poor Dear. That's why I want you to help her."
"Oh, you want me to help her? You'requitesure she isn't a Person?"
"I should think not, indeed!" Dick broke out indignantly. "She's a lady, whatever else she may be."
"It sounds like a Deserving Case. Oh, dear, I dohopeshe isn't a deserving case? I've had so many thrust under my nose in the last seven weeks, and I'm sorry to say the undeserving ones are usually more interesting. They're all undeserving ones who're coming to tea."
"If you'd call on her, you could see for yourself whether you thought she was deserving or not."
"That's the way I'm to help her—by calling? I thought perhaps I was to get her out of pawn, or something, by buying her jewellery. But I had totell you, ifthatwas what you wanted, I couldn't do much, for all my pocket money is exhausted, owing to so many people coming and crying tears as large as eggs all over the living-room—quite strange people I've never seen before. You can't conceive, Dick, the cataracts of tears that have poured over this rug you admire so much."
"I don't understand," said Carleton, looking blank. "Unless you want to switch me off the subject of——"
"The Poor Dear? No, indeed. But you couldn't be expected to understand, not being a chaplain's wife at Monte Carlo. You see, they hear we're kind, so they call, and then begin to cry and offer me pawn tickets as security."
"Who are 'they'?"
"Oh, poor creatures—seldom poor dears—who'velost, you know. As I suppose your one has?"
"On the contrary," said Dick, almost sharply. "She's won tremendous sums. She simply can't lose—anything except her head."
"Not her heart? But without joking, if she isn't a 'case,' why do you want me to——"
"Because I think she ought to have some one to look after her, some one who knows the ropes. Honestly, Rose, I'd be awfully obliged if you'd call."
"I will of course," Rose answered. "Have I got to be agreeable to any mothers or aunts she may have lurking in the background?"
"That's the trouble. She hasn't got a soul."
"Oh! And she is quite young?"
"Sometimes she looks a baby. Sometimes I think she's a little older."
"Then she probably is. Where's she staying?"
"At the Hôtel de Paris."
"My gracious!Aloneat a big Monte Carlo hotel! A young girl! No wonder you glare out of the window while you ask me to call on her, and stick your hands deep in your pockets. People won't allow me for an instant to forget I'm a clergyman's wife.Et tu Brute!"
"I told you she was a lady." Dick turned rather white. "She doesn't know what she's doing. I'm sure she doesn't. She—even Schuyler, who reads most people at sight like A B C, can't make her out. She's a mystery."
"Forgive me," said Rose. "I was half in fun. I wouldn't hurt yourFlying-Fishfeelings for anything on earth or in air. Is she pretty, and is she American—or what?"
"She's perfectly beautiful, and she's English, I think."
"Hasn't she told you?"
"No. She says nothing about herself—I mean about herself before she came here."
"What's past is past. Dark or fair?—not her past, but her complexion?"
"Fair."
"Notone of those pink and white girls picked out in blue and gold, one sees about so much?"
"As different from them as moonlight from footlights. If ever you went into the Casino, youcouldn't have helped having her pointed out to you. She's always there, and she's so awfully pretty and dresses so—so richly, and wins such a lot that everybody stares and talks. She's the sensation of the place."
"But I never do go into the Casino, of course—that is, not into the Rooms. I go to the Thursday Classical Concerts, and even that St. George shakes his head over, as it's inside the fatal door. You see he's here to preach against gambling, among other things."
"I don't suppose the gamblers go to hear his sermons?"
"Oh, yes, they do. A good many of them feel that if they attend church and put money in the plate, and don't play on Sunday, the rest's all right. They can keep up a bowing acquaintance with religion that way, anyhow. But I'll go and call on your mystery. What's her name?"
"Miss Grant."
Rose's face changed. "Oh, is itthatgirl? Iamglad! Virtue is its own reward. I shall love to have an excuse to make her acquaintance."
Dick, who had faced round in the window but was still standing, came and sat down by his cousin.
"What do you know about her?" he asked.
"I'll tell you. It's a sort of story," she answered thoughtfully; "a story about a picture."
"You know the two beggars who stand by the bridge, just over the Monegasque frontier as you go toward Cabbé-Roquebrune and Mentone?" Rose said, her eyes no longer on Carleton, but fixed upon something she alone could see. "Of course you know they keep off Monaco territory by half an inch or so, because begging is forbidden in the principality. There's an old white-haired man with rather a sinister face. I'm not sure if he's deformed in any way, or if he just produces on the mind an odd effect of some obscure deformity. He's one of the beggars; and the other's a little humpbacked elf of a creature, hardly human to look at, with his big head and ragged red eyelids; but he's always smiling and gay, bowing and beckoning. It's hismétierto be merry, just as it's the other's pose to be overwhelmed with gloom."
"I know them both," said Dick. "I can't resist throwing the little humpback a fifty-centime piece now and then, from Jim's automobile, though Jim scolds me for it in a superior way—the way people have who take a firm moral stand against beggars. Jim's on the firm moral stand about a lot of things. He's a strong man, body and soul and mind, but I have a whole brood of pet weaknesses running aboutthat I hate to destroy. The other day when I was going over to Nice to try my luck with theFlying Fishfor the first time, I'm ashamed to say I chucked that little red-eyed, grinning imp five francs for luck—my luck, not his?"
"It's a wonder you didn't get out and rub his hump, as a lot of gamblers do. They say he's quite a rich man, owing to that sort of silly superstition, but I can't resist him, either. And I feel it quite a feather in my cap of fascination that I've made the other one—the gloomy beggar—smile, though I've never given him a sou. He has quite a sense of humour, when you get to know him—and when he's realized that he can't fool you. I often walk to the bridge and back, just for a chat with the two beggars, instead of everlastingly promenading up and down the Terrace, bowing to every one I know, when I want exercise. I thought I was the only person original enough or brave enough or depraved enough to visit the beggars socially; but the other morning I was on my way to pay them a call, when I saw that somebody else was ahead of me. It was quite a picture. You remember the blazing hot day we had last week?"
"Wednesday. The best we had at Nice. Not a breath of wind. The day Rongier tried the Della Robbia parachute the second time and made his sensational descent."
"Well, then it was Wednesday. It was like June. The beggars were having a lovely time. They'd taken off their comfortable winter overcoats withthose wing-like, three-leaved capes which they've been wearing ever since the beginning of December, and had gone back to summer things: nice, shady, flapping felt hats and cool clothes; and they were having one of their pleasant little feasts which I used quite to envy them when we first came, while the weather was still very warm. A rough table in the road, close to the stone wall, with thick chunks of black bread, and cheese and salad, and chestnuts instead of the figs they had in autumn, all spread out on a paper tablecloth. They had wine of the country, too, with slices of lemon in it; and when I came along a girl was there, peeling a big chestnut for herself which the beggars had given her. She'd taken off her gloves and laid them on the table, with a perfectly gorgeous gold chain bag blazing with jewels, and a gold vanity box to keep the gloves down. Just imagine! On the beggars table! And they didn't seem to grudge her such splendid possessions one tiny bit. They were grinning at her in the most friendly way, as if they loved her to have pretty things and be rich and beautifully dressed. You could see by their air that they considered themselves chivalrous knights of the road being gallant to a lovely lady. That gloomy old wretch was grinning at least an inch wider for her than he ever did for me; and she was smiling, with heaven knows how many dimples flashing as brilliantly as her rings, while she peeled the chestnut."
"Yes, that must have been Miss Grant!" exclaimed Dick, delightedly. "I never saw such dimples as she's got."
"Or else you've forgotten the others. Well, I walked slowly so as not to break up the picture. She had on a thin veil, so I thought maybe she wouldn't be as pretty or young without it, but it was like a pearly mist with the sun shining on it, and it gave her that kind of mysterious, magic beauty of things half seen which stirs up all the romance in you."
"Don't I know?" Dick muttered. "But she's always got that, with or without a veil. It's a peculiar quality of her features or her expression—I don't know which—that can't be described exactly, any more than the lights on the clouds can, that I see sometimes when I've got up a few hundred feet high in the sunrise. I wouldn't have said all this about her if you hadn't begun. But anybody must feel it."
"I believe the beggars did, without knowing it. I did—even I, a woman. I felt I must see if she'd be as pretty when she lifted her veil to eat the chestnut, so I stopped not far off, on the Monaco end of the bridge, and pretended to tie up my shoe-string. I thought I'd never seen a face like hers—not at all modern, somehow. Who is it says romance is the quality ofstrangenessin beauty? Hers has that. It seemed to me when she got her veil up that she was more wonderful, not belonging to any century in particular, but to all time, as if thousands of lovely ancestresses had given her something of themselves as a talisman."
"Rose, what a darling you are!" Dick said, seizing her hands and squeezing them hard.
"Oh," she laughed, wincing a little. "You couldn't do that toherwith all her rings. I was just trying todrawyou! Now I've found out all I want to know. You're dreadfully, frightfully in love with Miss Grant."
"Am I?" he asked. "Perhaps. I'm not sure. Only I see that there's something rare about her, and she's too precious to be living as she does, surrounded by a weird gang who all want to get something out of her, or else to give her something she oughtn't to take. Like that Indian chap, the Maharajah of Indorwana—confound the little beast! He's tried to make her take a diamond star and a rope of pearls."
"I suppose she needn't, unless she wants to."
"Oh, I don't know, she's so good-natured, and somehow childlike. She had both the things on at the Casino last night; said he insisted on lending them to her, for luck, and she didn't like refusing them, as he almost cried. And then there's that jeweller man from Paris—has a shop in the Galerie Charles Trois. She strolled into his place to buy the gold bag you saw on the beggars' table and he went wild about her. Cheek of him! Sent her a bracelet she had to send back. How dare a fellow like that have the impudence to fall in love with a girl like her?"
"Cats may look at kings, and I suppose kings embrace queens, don't they? You needn't be so mad.You come from a democratic country, and Grandma Carleton's father was a grocer."
"He was a super-grocer. And, anyhow, Americans are different."
"Some of them fly high nowadays, eh, Mr. Air-pirate?"
Dick laughed. "You haven't told me yet what happened next at the beggars' feast, and how you found out whoshewas."
"Nothing happened to any one except me. They went on feasting and gave her some more chestnuts. I don't know what she'd given them! But she'd probably rubbed the lucky hump and paid for it. I was dying to go up and speak to my pals, and perhaps be introduced to the girl, but I hadn't got quite cheek enough, and they seemed to be having such a good time, it was a shame to interrupt. The elf was talking, with explosive sort of gestures in between mouthfuls, evidently telling something very interesting. And you know, I always pretend to myself in a kind of fairy story that he's really a person of immense, mysterious influence, a weird power behind the throne, starting or stopping revolutions. Of course it's nonsense—all founded on my seeing him with one of the new revolutionary newspapers in his hand—the ones they allow nowadays to be sold in the principality, against the Prince, and the Casino, and everything. But if I were to write a sensational story of Monte Carlo, that little red-eyed dwarf at the bridge should be the hero. And just as I was thinking about all that, and tyingmy second shoe, along came a taxi with poor Captain Hannaford in it. He'd been into Italy to see Madame Berenger, the actress, at her villa, which he would like to buy, and was coming back to lunch; so he made the chauffeur pull up while he asked if he could drive me home? I said yes, because I saw him lift his hat to that girl, and I hoped he could tell me something about her."
"What did he tell you?"
"Not so very much. He didn't seem to want to talk about her, I thought. That didn't surprise me, because he has an idea that women feel disgust for him and can't bear to look at him if they can help it—all but me, for I've convinced him that I'm really his friend. He only said that her name was Miss Grant, and that she was very lucky at the Casino. And in about three minutes we were at the door of this house."