← catalogue

Pietro Ghisleri

by F. Marion Crawford · English · Gutenberg #40922 · 860,873 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Pietro Ghisleri
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Pietro Ghisleri

Author: F. Marion Crawford


        
Release date: October 3, 2012 [eBook #40922]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40922

Credits: Produced by Bruce Albrecht, Cathy Maxam, and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PIETRO GHISLERI ***

PIETRO GHISLERI




[Illustration: Publisher's logo]




  PIETRO GHISLERI

  BY
  F. MARION CRAWFORD

  AUTHOR OF "SARACINESCA," "THE THREE FATES," ETC.


  New York
  MACMILLAN & CO.
  AND LONDON

  1893

  _All rights reserved_




  COPYRIGHT, 1892,
  BY MACMILLAN & CO.

  Norwood Press:
  J.S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith.
  Boston, Mass., U.S.A.




PIETRO GHISLERI.




CHAPTER I.


The relation of two step-sisters is unusual. When the Honourable Mrs.
Carlyon came to Rome twenty years ago, a young widow and the mother of a
little girl named Laura, she did not foresee the complications which her
second marriage was to produce. She was a good woman in her way, and if
she had guessed what it would mean to be the step-mother of Adele
Braccio she might have hesitated before marrying Camillo of that name,
commonly known as the Prince of Gerano. For the Prince had also been
married before, and his first wife had left him this one child, Adele,
who was only a year and a half older than little Laura Carlyon. No
children were born to the Gerano couple, and the two girls were brought
up together as though they were sisters. The Prince and Princess were
deeply attached to each other and to them both, so that for many years
Casa Gerano was justly looked upon as a model household.

Mrs. Carlyon was very poor when she came to Rome. Her husband had been a
careless, good-humoured, and rather reckless younger son, and when he
broke his neck in coming down the Gross Glockner he left his widow about
as much as men of his stamp generally leave to their families; to wit, a
fearful and wonderful confusion of unpaid debts and a considerable
number of promises to pay money, signed by persons whose promises were
not of much consequence, even when clearly set down on paper. It seems
to be a peculiarity of poor and good-natured men that they will lend
whatever money they have to impecunious friends in distress rather than
use it for the paying of the just debts they owe their tailors.

Gerano was rich. It does not by any means follow that Mrs. Carlyon
married him for his money, though she could not have married him without
it. She fell in love with him. He, on his part, having made a marriage
of interest when he took his first wife, and having led by no means a
very peaceful existence with the deceased Princess, considered that he
had earned the right to please himself, and accordingly did so.
Moreover, Mrs. Carlyon was a Catholic, which singularly facilitated
matters in the eyes of Gerano's numerous relations. Jack Carlyon had
been of the Church of England; and though anything but a practising
believer, if he believed in anything at all, he had nevertheless
absolutely insisted that his daughter should be brought up in his own
creed. On this one point he had displayed all the tenacity he possessed,
and the supply then seemed to be exhausted so far as other matters were
concerned. His wife was a very conscientious woman, altogether superior
to him in character, and she continued to respect his wishes, even after
his death. Laura, she said, should choose for herself when she was old
enough. In the meantime she should go to the English Church. The
consequence was that the little girl had an English nurse and afterwards
an English governess, while Adele was taken care of and taught by
Catholics. Under these circumstances, and as the step-sisters were not
related by blood or even by race, it is not strange that they should
have grown up to be as different as possible, while living under the
same roof and calling the same persons father and mother.

The question of religion alone could certainly not have brought about
the events here to be chronicled, and it may be as well to say at once
that this history is not in the least concerned with matters of faith,
creed, or dogma, which are better left to those good men whose business
it is to understand them. The main and striking points of contrast were
these. Adele was barely more than pretty. Laura was all but beautiful.
Adele was a great heiress, and Laura had nothing or next to nothing to
expect at her mother's death. Adele was quick-witted, lively, given to
exaggeration in her talk, and not very scrupulous as to questions of
fact. Laura was slow to decide, but tenacious of her decisions, and, on
the whole, very truthful.

In appearance, so far as generalities were concerned, the contrast
between the two girls was less marked. Both were of the dark type, but
Laura's complexion was paler than Adele's and her hair was blacker, as
well as thicker and more glossy. Laura's eyes were large, very deep set,
and dark. There was something strange in their look, something quite
unusual, and which might almost be called holy, if that were not too
strong a word to use in connexion with a woman of the world. Spicca, the
melancholy duellist, who was still alive at that time, used to say that
no one could possibly be as good as Laura Carlyon looked; a remark which
showed that he was acquainted with the sayings of a great English wit,
and was not above making use of them. Probably some part of the effect
produced by Laura's eyes was due to the evenly perfect whiteness of her
skin and the straight black brows which divided them from the broad low
forehead. For her hair grew low, and she wore it in a simple fashion
without that abundance of little curls which even then were considered
almost essential to woman's beauty. Her pallor, too, was quite natural,
for she had a good constitution and had rarely even had a headache. In
figure she was well proportioned, of average height and rather strongly
made, with large, firm, well-shaped hands. On the whole, a graceful
girl, but not in that way remarkable among others of her own age. In her
face, and altogether in her presence, the chief attraction lay in the
look of her eyes, which made one forget to notice the well-chiselled
nose,--a little short perhaps,--the really beautiful mouth, and the
perfect teeth. The chin, too, was broad and firm--too firm, some might
have said, for one so young. Considering all these facts together, most
people agreed that Laura was not far from being a great beauty.

Adele was somewhat shorter than her step-sister, and more inclined to be
stout. Her black eyes were set nearer together, and her eyebrows almost
met, while her lustreless hair curled naturally in a profusion of tiny
ringlets upon her forehead. The small fine nose reminded one of a
ferret, and the white teeth looked sharp and pointed when the somewhat
thin lips parted and showed them; but she was undoubtedly pretty, and
something more than pretty. Her face had colour and animation, she
carried her small head well, and her gestures were graceful and easy.
She was fluent, too, in conversation and ready at all times with a quick
answer. Any one could see, in spite of her plump figure, that she was of
a very nervous constitution, restless, unsettled, and easily moved,
capable of considerable determination when really affected. She never
understood Laura, nor did Laura really understand her.

In the natural course of events, social and domestic, it became
necessary to choose a husband for Adele so soon as she made her first
appearance in society. At that time Laura was not yet seventeen. Gerano
had already looked about him and had made up his mind. He was a little
dark-eyed man, grey, thin and nervous, but gifted with an unusually
agreeable manner, a pleasant tone of voice, a frank glance, and an
extremely upright character--a man much liked in the world and a good
deal respected.

He had determined that if possible his daughter should marry Don
Francesco Savelli, a worthy young person, his father's eldest son, heir
to a good estate and a still better name, and altogether a most
desirable husband from all points of view. Gerano met with no serious
difficulty in bringing about what he wished, and in due time Don
Francesco was affianced to Donna Adele, and was privileged to visit at
the Palazzo Braccio almost as often as he pleased. He thus saw Laura
Carlyon often, and he very naturally fell in love with her. He had no
particular inclination to marry Donna Adele, but obeyed his father
blindly, as a matter of course, just as Adele obeyed Gerano. That was a
part of the old Roman system. Laura, however, did not fall in love with
Francesco. She was perhaps too young yet, or it is quite possible that
Francesco was too dull and uninteresting a personage in her eyes. But
Adele saw these things, and was very angry when she was quite sure that
her future husband would have greatly preferred to marry her
step-sister. She may be pardoned for having been jealous, for the
situation was hardly bearable.

Francesco did not, indeed, make love to Laura. Even had he been rash
enough for that, he was in reality too much a gentleman at heart to have
done such a thing. He knew very well that he was to marry Adele, whether
he cared for her or not, and he behaved with great propriety and with
not a little philosophy. The virtue of resignation had been carefully
developed in him from his childhood, and Francesco's parents now reaped
their reward: he would not have thought of opposing them by word or
deed.

But he could not hide what he felt. Like many good young men, he was
sensitive, and if he alternately blushed and turned pale when Laura
spoke to him, it was not his fault. His father and mother could
assuredly not expect him to control the circulation of his blood when it
chose to rise above the line of his collar, or seemed to sink to the
level of his boots. Adele was, however, at first very angry, and then
very jealous, and at last hated her step-sister with all her heart, as
young women can hate under circumstances of great provocation.

Meanwhile, Laura remained calmly unconscious of all that was happening.
Francesco Savelli's outward and worldly advantages did not appeal to her
in the least. The fact that he was fair had no interest for her any
more than the fact that the old Prince of Gerano was dark. She talked to
the young man a little, when the conversation was general, just as she
talked to every one else, when she had anything to say, because she was
not naturally shy. But she never attempted to manufacture remarks when
nothing came to her lips, because she was not yet called upon to do so.
Nor was her silence by any means golden, so far as Savelli was
concerned. When she was not speaking to him, she took no notice of him.
His hair might be as yellow as mustard and his eyes as blue as
periwinkles, as his admirers said; she did not care. If possible, Adele
hated her even more for caring so little.

In due time Francesco Savelli married Adele Braccio and took her to live
under his father's roof. After the great event peace descended once more
upon the household for a time, and Laura Carlyon saw much less of her
adorer. Not, indeed, that there had been any open conflict between the
step-sisters, nor even a declaration of war. Laura had attributed
Adele's coldness to her excitement about the marriage, natural enough
under the circumstances, and had not been hurt by it, while Adele had
carefully kept her jealousy to herself; but when the two met afterwards,
Laura felt that she was immeasurably far removed from anything like
intimacy or real friendship with the bride, and she was surprised that
Francesco should pay so much attention to herself.

The young couple came to the Palazzo Braccio at regular intervals, and
at all these family gatherings Savelli spent his time in making
conversation for Laura. He was a very worthy young man, as has been
said, and his talents were not of the highest order, but he did his
best, and succeeded at least in making Laura think him passably
agreeable. She was willing to hear him talk, and Adele noted the fact.
When she drove home from her father's house with her husband, he was
generally abstracted and gave random answers to her questions or
observations. At the end of a year it was clear that he still loved
Laura in a hopeless, helpless, sentimental fashion of his own, and Adele
hated her more than ever. A second year and a third went by, and Laura
had been some time in society; still the situation remained unchanged.
The world said that the young Savelli were a very happy couple, but it
always looked at Laura Carlyon with an odd expression, as though it knew
something strange about her; something not quite right, which it was
willing to tolerate for the sake of the amusement to be got by watching
her. The world is the generic appellation of all those who go down to
the sea of society in long gowns or white ties, and live and move and
have their being therein. Other people do not count, even when they are
quite bad, although they may have very big names and a great deal of
money. The world, therefore, wagged its head and said that Laura Carlyon
was in love with her brother-in-law, or, to be quite accurate, with her
step-brother-in-law, because she was dark and his hair was so
exceedingly yellow. The world also went on to say that Donna Adele
behaved very kindly about it, and that it was so good of Francesco
Savelli to talk to Laura just as if there were nothing wrong; for, it
added, if he were to avoid her, there would certainly be gossip before
long. No one who does not live in society need attempt to follow this
sequence of ideas. As usual, too, nobody took the least trouble to find
out the origin of the story, but everybody was quite sure of having
heard it at first hand from the one person who knew.

The Princess of Gerano took her daughter everywhere. She had
conscientiously done her duty towards Adele, and was sincerely fond of
her besides; but she loved Laura almost as much as the good mother in
the story-book loves her only child when the latter has done something
particularly disgraceful. She was at first annoyed and then made
seriously anxious by the young girl's total failure in society, from the
social point of view. Laura was beautiful, good, and accomplished. Ugly,
spiteful, and stupid girls succeeded better than she, though some of
them had no better prospect of a dowry. The good lady sought in vain the
cause of the trouble, but failed to find it out. Had she been born in
Rome, she would doubtless have had many kind friends to help her in the
solution of the difficulty. But though she bore a Roman name, and had
adopted Roman customs and had led a Roman life for nearly twenty years,
she was tacitly looked upon as a foreigner, and her daughter was treated
in the same way, though she, at least, spoke the language as her own.
Moreover, the girl was not a Catholic, and that was an additional
disadvantage where matrimony was concerned. It became evident to the
Princess that she was not likely to find a husband for her
daughter--certainly not such a husband as she had dreamed that Laura
might love, and who was to love her and make her happy.

It must not be supposed that Gerano himself would have been indifferent
if he had known the real facts of the case. But he did not. Like many
elderly Romans, he hardly ever went into society and took very little
interest in its doings. He was very much concerned with the
administration of his fortune, and for his own daughter's welfare in her
new surroundings. He spent a good deal of time at his club, and was
often in the country, even in the height of the season. He supposed that
no one asked for Laura's hand because she was dowerless, and he was
sincerely sorry for it; but it did not enter his mind to provide her
with a suitable portion out of his abundance. He was too conscientious
for that. What he had inherited from his father must go down intact to
his child and to her children,--a son had already been born to the young
Savelli,--and to divide the property, or to take from it anything like a
fortune for Laura, would be little short of actual robbery in the eyes
of a Braccio.

Laura herself was perhaps less disturbed by the coldness she encountered
than her mother was for her sake. She had a certain contempt for young
girls of her age and younger, whose sole idea was to be married as soon
as possible and with the greatest advantage to themselves. She was not
very vain and did not expect great admiration on the one hand, nor any
particular dislike on the other. Her character, too, was one that must
develop slowly, if it were ever to attain its mature growth. She
doubtless had moments of annoyance and even of depression; for few young
girls, and certainly no women, are wholly unconscious of neglect in
society. But although she was naturally inclined to melancholy, as her
eyes clearly showed, she was not by nature morbid, and assuredly not
more than usually imaginative.

The result of all this was, that she bore herself with considerable
dignity in the world, was generally believed to be older than she was,
and was to be seen more often dancing or talking with the foreigners at
parties than with the Romans.

"Who is that, Ghisleri?" asked Lord Herbert Arden of his old friend, one
evening early in the season, as he caught sight of Laura for the first
time.

"An English Roman girl," answered the Italian. "The daughter of the
Princess of Gerano by her first marriage--Miss Carlyon."

Lord Herbert had not been in Rome for three or four years, and was,
moreover, by no means acquainted with all Roman society.

"Will you introduce me?" he asked, looking up at Ghisleri.

Ghisleri led him across the room, introduced him and left the two
together, he being at that time very particularly engaged in another
quarter.

The contrast between the two men was very strong. Lord Herbert Arden was
almost, if not quite, a cripple, the victim in his infancy of a
serving-woman's carelessness. The nurse had let him fall, had concealed
the accident as long as she could, and the boy had grown up misshapen
and feeble. In despite of this, however, he was eminently a man at whom
every one looked twice. No one who had seen him could ever forget the
extreme nobility and delicacy of his pale face. Each feature completed
and gave dignity to the next--the broad, highly modelled forehead, the
prominent brow, the hollows at the temples, the clear, steady brown
eyes, the aquiline nose and sensitive nostrils, the calm, straight
mouth, and the firm, clearly cut chin--all were in harmony. And yet in
all the crowd that thronged the great drawing-rooms there was hardly a
man with whom the young Englishman would not have exchanged face and
figure, if only he might stand at the height of other men, straight and
square, and be free forever from the halting gait which made life in the
world so hard for him. He was very human, and made no great pretence of
resignation, nor indeed of any other virtue.

Pietro Ghisleri was a very different personage except, perhaps, in point
of humanity. He had seen and enjoyed much, if he had suffered much also,
and his face bore the traces of past pleasure and of past pain, though
he was not more than two-and-thirty years of age. It was a strong face,
too, and not without signs of superior intelligence and resolution. The
keen blue eyes had that trick of fixing themselves in conversation,
which belongs to combative temperaments. At other times they were sad in
expression, and often wore a weary look. Ghisleri's complexion might
almost have been called weather-beaten; for frequent and long exposure
to sun and weather had permanently changed its original colouring, which
had been decidedly fair. To adopt the simple style of his passport, he
might be described as six feet high, eyes blue, hair and moustache
brown, nose large, mouth normal, chin prominent, face somewhat
bony,--particular sign, a scar on the left temple. Like his old friend
Lord Herbert, he was one of the dozen men who always attract attention
in a crowded room. But of all those who looked at him, having known him
long, very few understood his character in the least, and all would have
been very much surprised if they could have guessed his thoughts,
especially on that particular evening when he introduced Arden to Miss
Carlyon. As for the rest, he was alone in the world, his own master, the
last of a Tuscan family that had refused to bear a title when titles
meant something and had not seen any reason for changing its mind in the
course of three or four centuries. He had a small fortune, sufficient
for his wants, and a castle somewhere, considerably the worse for war
and wear.

"I cannot dance, you see," said Arden, seating himself beside Laura,
"and I am afraid that I am not very brilliant in conversation. Are you a
very good-natured person?"

Laura turned her sad eyes upon her new acquaintance, and immediately
felt a thrill of sympathy for him, and of interest in his remarkable
face.

"No one ever told me," she answered. "Do you think you could find out? I
should like to know."

"What form of sin do you most affect?" asked Arden, with a smile. "Do
you more often do the things you ought not to do, or do you leave undone
the things which you ought to do?"

"Oh, I leave the good things undone, of course!" answered Laura. "I
suppose everybody does, as a rule."

"You are decidedly good-natured, particularly so in making that last
remark. I am less afraid of you than I was when I sat down."

The young girl looked at him again. His conversation was so far not like
that of the Englishmen she had known hitherto.

"Were you afraid of me?" she asked, beginning to smile.

"A little, I confess."

"Why? And if you were, why did you make Signor Ghisleri introduce you to
me?"

"Because nobody likes to own to being afraid. Besides, Ghisleri is a
very old friend of mine, and I can trust him not to lead me into
danger."

"Have you known him long?" asked Laura. "I have often wondered what he
is really like. I mean his character, you know, and what he thinks
about."

"He thinks a great deal. He is one of the most complicated characters I
ever knew, and I am not at all sure that I understand him yet, though we
have known each other ten years. He is a good friend and a rather
indifferent enemy, I should say. His chief apparent peculiarity is that
he hates gossip. You will not find it easy to get from him a
disagreeable remark about any one. Yet he is not good-natured."

"Perhaps he is afraid to say what he thinks," suggested the young girl.

"I doubt that," answered Arden, with a smile. "He has not a particularly
angelic reputation, I believe, but I never heard any one say that he was
timid."

"As you pretend to be," added Laura. "Do you know? You have not answered
my question. Why were you afraid of me, if you really were?"

Lord Herbert answered one question by another, and the conversation
continued pleasantly enough. It was a relief to him to find a young and
beautiful girl of his own nationality in surroundings with which neither
he nor she were really in sympathy. In the course of half an hour they
both felt as though they had known one another a long time. The
admiration Arden had felt for Laura at first sight had considerably
increased, and she on her side had half forgotten that he was a cripple.
Indeed, when he was seated, his deformities were far less noticeable
than when he stood or painfully moved about from place to place.

The two talked of a variety of subjects, but, with the exception of the
few words spoken about Ghisleri, there was no more reference to
personalities for a long time.

"I am keeping you away from the dancing," Arden said at last, as he
realised that the room was almost empty and that he had been absorbing
the beautiful Miss Carlyon's attention longer than might be pleasant to
her.

"Not at all," answered Laura. "I do not dance much."

"Why not? Do you not like dancing?" He asked the question in a tone of
surprise.

"On the contrary. But I am not taken out very often--perhaps because
they think me a foreigner. It is natural enough."

"Very unnatural, it seems to me. Besides, I believe you are
exaggerating, so as not to make me feel uncomfortable. It is of no use,
you know; I am not at all sensitive. Shall we go into the ball-room?"

"No; I would rather not, just yet."

"Shall I go and get Ghisleri to take you back?" inquired Arden, with a
little smile.

"Why?"

"Because I might make you look ridiculous," answered the cripple,
quietly.

He watched her, and saw a quick, pained look pass over her face. It was
at that particular moment that he began to love her, as he afterwards
remembered. She turned her eyes upon him as she answered after a
moment's hesitation.

"Lord Herbert, will you please never say anything like that to me
again?"

"Certainly not, if it offends you."

"It does not offend me. I do not mean that."

"What, then? Please tell me. I am not at all sensitive."

"It pains me. I do not like to fancy that any one can think such things
of me, much less...." she stopped short and looked down, slowly opening
and shutting her fan.

"Much less?"

Laura hesitated for some seconds, as though choosing her words with more
than ordinary care.

"Much less one whom it might pain to think them," she said at last.

The smile that had been on Arden's face faded away in the silence that
followed, and his lips moved a little as though he felt some kind of
emotion, while his large thin hands closed tightly upon his withered
knee.

"Have I said too much?" she asked, suddenly breaking the long pause.

"Or not quite enough, perhaps," he answered in a low voice.

Again they were both silent, and they both wondered inwardly that in
less than an hour's acquaintance they should have reached something like
a crisis. At last Laura rose slowly and deliberately, intending to give
her companion time to get to his feet.

"Will you give me your arm?" she said when he stood beside her. "I want
to introduce you to my mother."

Arden bent his head and held up his right arm for her hand. He was
considerably shorter than she. Then they walked away together, she erect
and easy in her girlish gait, he weak-kneed and awkward, seeming to
unjoint half his body at every painful step, helping himself along at
her side with the stick he held in his free hand--a strangely assorted
couple, the world said, as they went by.

"My mother's name is Gerano, Princess of Gerano," said Laura, by way of
explanation, as they came within sight of her.

"And is your father--I mean, is Prince Gerano--living?" asked Arden. He
had almost forgotten her name and her nationality in the interest he
felt in herself.

"Yes; but he rarely goes into society. I am very fond of him," she
added, scarcely knowing why. "Mother," she said, as they came up to the
Princess, "Lord Herbert Arden."

The Princess smiled and held out her hand. At that moment Pietro
Ghisleri came up. He had not been seen since he had left Laura and Arden
together. By a coincidence, doubtless, the Contessa dell' Armi had
disappeared at about the same time: she had probably gone home, as she
was not seen again in the ball-room that evening. But the world in its
omniscience knew that there was a certain boudoir beyond the
supper-room, where couples who did not care to dance were left in
comparative peace for a long time. The world could have told with
precision the position of the small sofa on which Ghisleri and the
lovely Contessa invariably spent an hour when they met in that
particular house.

"Will you give me a turn, Miss Carlyon?" asked Ghisleri, as Arden began
to talk with the Princess.

"Yes." Laura was really fond of a certain amount of dancing when a good
partner presented himself.

"What do you think of my friend?" inquired Pietro, as they moved away
together.

"I like him very much. He interests me."

"Then you ought to be grateful to me for bringing him to you."

"Do you expect gratitude in a ball-room?" Laura laughed a little, more
in pleasant anticipation of the waltz than at what she said.

"A little more than in the average asylum for the aged and infirm, which
most people call home," returned Ghisleri, carelessly.

"You have no home. How can you talk about it in that way?"

"For the sake of talking; shall we dance instead?"

A moment later they were in the thick of the crowd.

"There are too many people; please take me back," said Laura, after one
turn.

"Will you come and talk in the conservatory?" asked Ghisleri as they
reached the door.

"No; I would rather not."

"You were talking a long time with Arden. I saw you come out of the
drawing-room together. Why will you not sit five minutes with me?"

"Lord Herbert is different," said Laura, quietly. "He is an Englishman,
and I am English."

"Oh! is that the reason?"

He led her back and left her with her mother. Arden was still there.




CHAPTER II.


In spite of his own declarations to the contrary, Lord Herbert Arden was
a very sensitive man. When he said he was not, he was perhaps trying to
deceive himself, but the attempt was at best only partially successful.
Few men in his circumstances can escape the daily sting that lies in
comparing their unfortunate outward personality with the average
symmetry of the human race. Women seem to feel deformity less than men,
or perhaps one only thinks so because they bear it more bravely; it is
hard to say. If Darwin is right, men are far more vain of their
appearance than women; and there are many who believe that a woman's
passive courage is greater than a man's. Be that as it may, the
particular sufferer who made Laura Carlyon's acquaintance at the ball
was in reality as sensitive a man in almost all respects as could be met
with anywhere in ordinary life. When he discovered that he was seriously
in love with Laura Carlyon, his existence changed suddenly, and for the
worse, so far as his comfort was concerned.

He reviewed the situation as calmly as he could, when a fortnight or
more had passed and he had seen her a dozen times at her step-father's
house and in the world. One main fact was now quite clear to him. She
was not what is called popular in society; she had not even any intimate
friends. As for his own chances, he did not like to think of them.
Though only the younger brother of a peer of high rank, he was entitled
to expect a large fortune from an uncle on his mother's side, who had
never made any secret of his intentions in regard to his property, and
who, being over eighty years of age, could not be expected to live much
longer in the ordinary course of nature. At present his modest portion
was quite sufficient for himself, but he doubted whether it would
suffice for his needs if he married. That, however, was of minor
importance. The great fortune was safe and he was an exceedingly good
match from a financial point of view. Miss Carlyon was poor, as he knew
from Ghisleri, and Ghisleri had very probably told her that Arden was
rich, or would be before long. He refused to believe that Laura, of her
own free will, might marry him for his money; but it was intolerable to
think that her mother and step-father might try to force her into the
match from considerations of interest. He was not just to the Princess
of Gerano, but he knew her very slightly as yet and had no means of
forming a positive opinion.

In the meantime he had been introduced to Donna Adele Savelli, who had
received him with the greatest warmth, protesting her love for the
English people and everything English, and especially for her
step-mother and step-sister. He had also renewed his acquaintance with
young Savelli, whom he had known slightly during a former visit to Rome,
and who now, he thought, met him rather coldly. He attributed Adele's
gushing manner to a desire to bring about a marriage, and he did not
attempt to account for Don Francesco's stiffness; but he liked neither
the one manifestation nor the other, for both wounded him in different
degrees.

Above all other difficulties, the one which was most natural to his
delicately organised nature was of a purely disinterested kind. He
feared lest Laura, who evidently felt both pity and sympathy for him,
should take the two together for genuine love and sacrifice herself in a
life which would by and by become unbearable to her. He could not but
see that at every meeting she grew more interested in his conversation,
until when he was present, she scarcely paid any attention to any one
else. Such a friendship, if it could have been a real friendship, might
have made Arden happy so long as it lasted; but on his side, at least,
nothing of the kind was possible. He knew that he was hopelessly in
love, and to pretend the contrary to himself was real pain. He guessed
with wonderful keenness the direction Laura's heart was taking, and he
was appalled by the vision of the misery which must spread over her
young life if, after she had married him, she should be roused to the
great truth that pity and love are not the same, though they be so near
akin as to be sometimes mistaken one for the other.

His weak health suffered and he grew more and more restless. It would
have been a satisfaction to speak out a hundredth part of what he felt
to Ghisleri. But he was little given to making confidences, and Ghisleri
was, or seemed to be, the last man to invite them. They met constantly,
however, and talked upon all sorts of topics.

One day Ghisleri came to breakfast with Arden in his rooms at the hotel,
looking more weather-beaten than usual, for he was losing the tan from
his last expedition in the south, and there were deep black shadows
under his eyes. Moreover, he was in an abominably bad humour with
everything and with everybody except his friend. Arden knew that he
never gambled, and he also knew the man well enough to guess at the true
cause of the disturbance. There was something serious the matter.

They sat down to breakfast and began to talk of politics and the
weather, as old friends do when they are aware that there is something
wrong. Ghisleri spoke English perfectly, with an almost imperceptible
accent, as many Italians do nowadays.

"Come along with me, Arden," he said at last, as though losing patience
with everything all at once. "Let us go to Paris or Timbuctoo. This
place is not fit to live in."

"What is the matter with it?" asked Arden, in a tone of amusement.

"The matter with it? It is dull, to begin with. Secondly, it is a
perfect witches' caldron of scandal. Thirdly, we are all as bad as we
can be. There are three points at least."

"My dear fellow, I do not see them in the same light. Take some more
hock."

"Oh, you--you are amusing yourself! Thank you--I will--half a glass. Of
course you like Rome--you always did--you foreigners always will. You
amuse yourselves--that is it."

"I see you dancing every night as though you liked it," observed Arden.

"No doubt!"

Ghisleri suddenly grew thoughtful and a distant look came into his eyes,
while the shadows seemed to deepen under them, till they were almost
black. He had eaten hardly anything, and now, regardless of the fact
that the meal was not half over, he lit a cigarette and leaned back in
his chair as though he had finished.

"You are not looking well, Arden," he said at last. "You must take care
of yourself. Take my advice. We will go somewhere together for a couple
of months."

"There is nothing I should like better, but not just at present. I will
stay in Rome until the weather is a little warmer."

Arden was not in the least conscious that his expression changed as he
thought of the reason which kept him in the city and which might keep
him long. But Ghisleri, who had been watching for that particular
hesitation of manner and for that almost imperceptible darkening of the
eyes, knew exactly what both meant.

"Oh, very well," he answered indifferently. "We can go later. People
always invent absurd stories if one goes away in the middle of the
season without any apparent object."

The remark was a little less than general, and Arden was at once
confirmed in his suspicion that something unpleasant had happened in
Ghisleri's life, most probably in connection with the Contessa dell'
Armi. His friend was in such a savage humour that he might almost become
communicative. Arden was a very keen-sighted man, and not without tact,
and he thought the opportunity a good one for approaching a subject
which had long been in his mind. But he had been in earnest when he had
told Laura that he knew Ghisleri's character to be what he called
complicated, and he was aware that Pietro's intelligence was even more
penetrating than his own. He was therefore very cautious.

"You say that Rome is such a great place for gossip," he began, in
answer to Ghisleri's last observation. "I suppose you know it by
experience, but I cannot say that we strangers hear much of it."

"Perhaps not," admitted Ghisleri, rather absently.

"No, we do not hear much scandal. For instance, I go rather often to the
Gerano's. I do not remember to have heard there a single spiteful story,
except, perhaps,"--Arden stopped cautiously.

"Precisely," said Pietro, "the exceptions are rare in that house. But
then, the Prince is generally away, and both the Princess and her
daughter are English, and especially nice people."

Arden helped himself to something that chanced to be near him, and
glanced at his companion's rather impenetrable face. He knew that at the
present moment the latter was perfectly sincere in what he said, but he
knew also that Ghisleri spoke of most people in very much the same tone.
It was something which Arden could never quite understand.

"Do you think," he began presently, "that the fact of their being
English has anything to do with Miss Carlyon's unpopularity here?"

"My dear fellow, how should I know?" asked Ghisleri, with something
almost like a laugh.

"You do know, of course. I wish you would tell me. As an Englishman, the
mother interests me."

"From the point of view of our international relations, I see,
collecting information for an article in the Nineteenth Century, or else
your brother is going to speak on the subject in the Lords. What do you
think about the matter yourself? If I can put you right, I will."

"What an extraordinary man you are!" exclaimed Arden. "You always insist
upon answering one question by another."

"It gives one time to think," retorted Ghisleri. "These cigarettes are
distinctly bad; give me one of yours, please. I never can understand why
the government monopoly here should exist, and if it does why they
should not give us Russian--"

"My dear Ghisleri," said Arden, interrupting him, "we were talking about
the Princess Gerano."

"Were we? Oh, yes, and Miss Carlyon, too, I remember. Do you like them?"

"Very much; and I think every one should. That is the reason why I am
surprised that Miss Carlyon should not receive much more attention than
she does. I fancy it is because she is English. Do you think I am
right?"

"No," said Ghisleri, slowly, at last answering the direct question, "I
do not think you are."

"Then what in the world is the reason? The fact is clear enough. She
knows it herself."

"Probably some absurd bit of gossip. Who cares? I am sorry for her,
though."

"How can there be any scandal about a young girl of her age?" asked
Arden, incredulously.

"In this place you can start a story about a baby a year old," answered
Ghisleri. "It will be remembered, repeated, and properly adorned, and
will ultimately ruin the innocent woman when she is grown up. Nobody
seems to care for chronology here--anachronism is so much more
convenient."

"Why are you so absurdly reticent with me, Ghisleri?" asked Arden, with
some impatience. "You talk as though we had not known each other ten
years."

"On the contrary," answered Pietro, "if we were acquaintances of
yesterday, I would not talk at all. That is just the difference. As it
is, and because we are rather good friends, I tell you what I believe to
be the truth. I believe--well, I will allow that I know, that there is a
story about Miss Carlyon, which is commonly credited, and which is a
down-right lie. I will not tell you what it is. It does not, strictly
speaking, affect her reputation, but it has made her unpopular--since
you have used that word. Ask any of the gossips, if you care enough--I
am not going to repeat such nonsense. It never does any good to repeat
other peoples' lies."

Arden was silent, and his long white fingers played uneasily upon the
edge of the table. It had been a hard matter to extract the information,
but such as it was he knew that it was absolutely reliable. When
Ghisleri spoke at all about such things, he spoke the truth, and when he
said that he would positively say no more, his decision was always
final. Arden had discovered that in the early days of their
acquaintance. Perhaps Pietro went to absurd lengths in this direction,
and there were people who called it affectation and made him out to be
an even worse man than he was, but his friend knew that it was genuine
in its way. He was all the more disturbed by what he had heard, and it
was a long time before he spoke again.

Ghisleri smoked in silence and drank three cups of coffee while Arden
was drinking one. He looked at that time like a man who was living upon
his nerves, so to say, instead of upon proper nourishment.

An hour later the two men went out together, Arden taking Pietro with
him in his carriage. The air was bright and keen and the afternoon
sunlight was already turning yellow with the gold of the coming evening.
The carriage was momentarily blocked at the corner of the Pincio near
the entrance, by one that was turning out of the enclosure opposite the
band stand. It chanced to be the Princess of Gerano's landau, and she
and her daughter were seated in it, closely wrapped in their furs. It
was Arden's victoria that had to pull up to let the Princess drive
across, and by a coincidence the Savelli couple were in the one which
hers would have to follow in the descending line after crossing the
road.

Francesco Savelli bowed, smiled, and waved his hat, evidently to Laura
rather than to her mother. With a rather forced smile Adele slowly bent
her head. Arden bowed at the same moment, and looked from one carriage
to the other. Ghisleri followed his example, and there was the very
faintest expression of amusement on his face, which Arden of course
could not see. A number of men on foot lined the side of the road close
to the carriage.

"People always come back to their first loves!" said a low voice at
Arden's elbow.

He turned quickly and saw several men watching the Savelli across his
victoria. He knew none of them, and it was impossible to guess which had
spoken. Ghisleri, being on the right side, as Arden's guest, could not
have heard the words. Having just noticed the rather striking contrast
between Francesco Savelli's demonstrative greeting and his wife's almost
indifferent nod, it naturally struck the Englishman that the remark he
had overheard might refer to the person he was himself watching at that
moment. Donna Adele Savelli's expression might very well be taken for
one of jealousy, but her husband's behaviour was assuredly too marked
for anything more than friendship. Arden coupled the words with the
facts and concluded that he had discovered the story of which Ghisleri
had spoken. Francesco Savelli was said to be in love with Laura Carlyon.
That was evidently the gossip; but he had seen Laura's face, too, and it
was quite plain that she was wholly indifferent. On the whole, though
the tale reflected little credit on Savelli, it was not at all clear why
it should make Laura unpopular, unless people said that she encouraged
the man, which they probably did, thought Lord Herbert Arden, who was a
man of the world.

The more he considered the matter the more convinced he became that he
was right, and the conviction was on the whole a relief. He had been
uneasy for some time, and Ghisleri's guarded words had not satisfied
him; chance, however, had done what Ghisleri would not do, and the
mystery was solved. The Princess of Gerano was at home that evening, and
Arden of course went to the palace early, and was the last to leave.

Three times between half-past ten and half-past two o'clock Laura and he
installed themselves side by side at some distance from the
drawing-room, and each time their conversation lasted over half an hour.
It was not a set ball, but one of the regular weekly informal dances of
which there are so many in Rome during the season. The first
interruption of Arden's talk appeared in the shape of Don Francesco
Savelli, who asked Laura for a turn. Oddly enough she glanced at Lord
Herbert's face before accepting, and the action sent a strange thrill to
his heart. He struggled to his feet as she rose to go away with Savelli,
and then sank back again and remained some time where he was, absently
watching the people who passed. His face was very pale and weary now
that the excitement of conversation had subsided, and he felt that if he
was not positively ill, he was losing the little strength he had with
every day that passed. Late hours, heated rooms, and strong emotions
were not the best tonics for his feeble physical organisation, and he
knew it. At last he made an effort, got up, and moved about in the
crowd, exchanging a few words now and then with a passing acquaintance,
but too preoccupied and perhaps too tired to talk long with indifferent
people. He nodded as Ghisleri passed him with the Contessa dell' Armi on
his arm, and he thought there was a bad light in his friend's eyes,
though Pietro was looking better than in the afternoon. The two had
evidently been dancing together, for the Contessa's white neck heaved a
little, as though she were still out of breath. She was a short, slight
woman of exquisite figure, very fair, with deep violet eyes and small
classic features, almost hard in their regularity; evidently wilful and
dominant in character. Arden watched the pair as they went on in search
of a vacant sofa just big enough for two.

They had scarcely sat down and he could see that Ghisleri was beginning
to talk, when Anastase Gouache appeared and stood still before them. To
Arden's surprise the Contessa welcomed him with a bright smile and
pointed to a chair at her side of the sofa. Anastase Gouache was a
celebrated painter who had married a Roman lady of high birth, and was a
very agreeable man, but Arden had not expected that he would be invited
so readily to interrupt so promising a conversation. Ghisleri's face
expressed nothing. He appeared to join in the talk for a few minutes and
then rose and left the Contessa with Gouache. She looked after him, and
Arden thought she grew a shade paler and frowned. A faint smile appeared
on the Englishman's face and was gone again in an instant as Ghisleri
came near him, returning again to the ball-room. Ghisleri had glanced at
him as he passed and had seen that he was not talking to a lady.

"May I have the next dance, Miss Carlyon?" asked Pietro, when he found
Laura in a corner with Francesco Savelli. "Thanks," he said, as she
nodded graciously, and he passed on.

"Will you give me the dance after the next?" he inquired a few minutes
later, coming up with Donna Adele, who was moving away on young
Frangipani's arm.

"Certainly, caro Ghisleri," she answered, with alacrity, "as many as you
please."

"You are very good," he said, with a slight bow, and withdrew to a
window near Laura to wait until the waltz began. He could see Arden
through the open door from the place where he stood.

When the dance was over he led Laura out and took one turn through the
rooms, making a few commonplace remarks on the way. Coming back, he
stopped as though by accident close to Lord Herbert.

"I am afraid you will think me very rude if I ask you to let me leave
you," he said. "I am engaged for the next dance--it is a quadrille--and
I must find a vis-à-vis."

Arden of course heard and presented himself immediately in Ghisleri's
place. Laura was quite ready to go back with him to the sofa in the
corner, and they resumed their conversation almost at the point at which
it had been interrupted by Francesco Savelli. Neither of them ever knew
that Ghisleri had brought them together again by a little social skill,
just beyond what most people possess. Arden looked after him, half
believing that he had only given Laura an excuse for leaving her in
order to return to the Contessa dell' Armi, who was now surrounded by
half a dozen men, beginning with old Spicca, who, as has been said, was
still alive in those days, and ending with the little Vicomte de
Bompierre, a young French attaché with a pleasant voice, a bright smile,
and an incipient black moustache. But to Arden's surprise Ghisleri took
quite a different direction, and began to speak to one man after
another, evidently trying to secure a vis-à-vis for the square dance.

"You must not let me bore you, or rather you must not bore yourself with
me," said Arden to Laura, after a short pause in the conversation. "You
are altogether much too good to me."

"You never bore me," answered the young girl. "You are one of the few
people who do not."

Arden smiled a little sadly.

"I am glad to be one of the 'few people,'" he said, "even if I am the
last."

"You are too modest." She tried to laugh, but the effort was not very
successful.

"No, I am not. I have much more vanity than you would suppose, or think
possible, considering how little I have to be vain of."

"Opinions may differ about that," answered Laura, looking into his eyes.
"You have much that many men might envy, and probably do."

"What, for instance?"

Laura hesitated, and then smiled, without effort this time.

"You are very good looking," she said after a moment.

"No one has ever told me that before," he answered. A very slight flush
rose in his pale face.

"It is not of much importance, either. Would you like me to enumerate
your good qualities?"

"Of all things!"

"You are honest and kind, and you are very clever, I think, though I am
not clever enough to be sure. You have no right to be unhappy, and you
would not be if you were not so sensitive about--about not being so
strong and big as some men are. What difference does it make?"

"You will almost tempt me to think that it makes none, if you talk in
that way," said Arden.

"Do you mean to say that you would really and truly change places with
any one? With Signor Ghisleri, for instance?"

"Indeed I would, with him, and very gladly. I would rather be Ghisleri
than any man I know."

"I cannot understand that," answered Laura, thoughtfully. "If I were a
man, I would much rather be like you. Besides, they say Signor Ghisleri
has been dreadfully wild, and is anything but angelic now. You used that
very word about him the first evening we met; do you remember?"

"Of course I do; but what has that to do with it? Must I necessarily
choose a saint for my friend, and pick out one to exchange places with
me if it were possible? A woman saint may be lovable, too lovable
perhaps, but a man saint about town is like a fish out of water. But you
are right about Ghisleri, up to a certain point, only you do not
understand him. He is an exceedingly righteous sinner, but a sinner he
is."

"What do you mean by a righteous sinner?" asked Laura, gravely.

"Do not bring me down to definitions. I have not at all a logical mind.
I mean Ghisleri--that is all I can say. I would much rather talk about
you."

"No, I object to that. Tell me, since you wish so much to be Signor
Ghisleri, what do you think you would feel if you were?"

"What he feels--everything that a man can feel!" answered Arden, with a
sudden change of tone. "To be straight and strong and a match for other
men. Half the happiness of life lies there."

His voice shook a little, and Laura felt that the tears were almost in
her eyes as she looked earnestly into his.

"You see what I am," he continued, more and more bitterly, "I am a
cripple. There is no denying it--why should I even try to hide it a
little? Nature, or Heaven, or what you please to call it, has been good
enough to make concealment impossible. If I am not quite a hunchback, I
am very near it, and I can hardly walk even with a stick. And look at
yourself, straight and graceful and beautiful--well, you pity me, at
least. Why should I make a fool of myself? It is the first time I ever
spoke like this to any one."

"You are quite wrong," answered Laura, in a tone of conviction. "I do
not pity you--indeed I do not think you are the least to be pitied. I
see it quite differently. It hardly ever strikes me that you are not
just the same as other people, and when it does--I do not know--I mean
to say that when it does, it makes no painful impression upon me. You
see I am quite frank."

While she was speaking the colour rose in two bright spots on Arden's
pale cheeks, and his bright eyes softened with a look of wonderful
happiness.

"Are you quite in earnest, Miss Carlyon?" he asked, in a low voice.

"Quite, quite in earnest. Please believe me when I say that it would
hurt me dreadfully if I thought you doubted it."

"Hurt you? Why?"

She turned her deep, sad eyes to him, and looked at him without
speaking. He was on the point of telling her that he loved her--then he
saw how beautiful she was, and he felt his withered knee under his hand,
and he was ashamed to speak. It was a cruel moment, and his nerves were
already overstrained by perpetual emotion, as well as tired from late
hours and lack of sleep. He hesitated a moment. Then bent his head and
covered his eyes with his hand. Laura said nothing for several moments,
but seeing that he did not move, she touched his sleeve.

"Dear Lord Herbert, do not be so unhappy," she said softly. "You really
have no right to be, you know."

"No right?" He looked up suddenly. "If you knew, you would not say
that."

"I should always say it. As long as you have friends--friends who love
you, and would do anything for you, why should you make yourself so
miserable?"

"I want more than a friend--even than friendship."

"What?"

"I want love."

Again she gazed into his eyes and paused. Her face was very
white--whiter than his. Then she spoke.

"Are you so sure you have not got that love?" she asked. Her own voice
trembled now.

Arden started and a look of something almost like fear came into his
face. He could hardly speak.

"Love?" he repeated, and he felt he could say nothing more.

"Yes, I mean it." So she chose her fate.

She thought there was a touch of the divine in poor Arden's expression
as he heard the words. Then his face grew pale, the light faded from his
eyes, and his head sank on his breast. Laura did not at first realise
what had happened. She felt so strongly herself, that nothing in his
manner would have surprised her. She heard nothing of the hum of the
voices in the room, or if she did, she heard the harmony of a happy
hymn, and the great branches of candles were the tapers upon an altar in
some sacred place.

Still Arden did not move. Laura bent down and looked at his face.

"Lord Herbert!" She called him softly. "Herbert, what is the matter?"

No answer came. She looked round wildly for help. At that moment the
dance was just over and Ghisleri passed near her with Donna Adele on his
arm. Laura rose and overtook him swiftly, touching his arm in her
excitement.

"Lord Herbert has fainted--for heaven's sake, help him!" she cried, in a
low voice.

Pietro Ghisleri glanced at the sofa.

"Excuse me," he said hastily to Donna Adele, and left her standing in
the middle of the room. He bent down and felt Arden's forehead and
hands.

"Yes, he has fainted," he said to Laura. "Show me the way to a quiet
place."

Thereupon he took his unconscious friend in his arms and followed Laura
quickly through the surging crowd that already filled the room, escaping
in haste from the heat as soon as the dance was over in the ball-room
beyond.

For a few seconds one of those total silences fell upon the party which
always follow an accident. Then, as Ghisleri disappeared with his
burden, every one began to talk at once, speculating upon the nature of
Lord Herbert Arden's indisposition. Heart disease--epilepsy--nervous
prostration--most things were suggested.

"Probably too much champagne," laughed Donna Adele in the ear of the
lady nearest to her.




CHAPTER III.


It is perhaps useless to attempt to trace and recapitulate the causes
which had led Laura Carlyon to the state of mind in which she had found
courage to tell Arden that she loved him. There might be harder moments
in store for her, but this had been the hardest she had known hitherto.
Nothing short of a real and great love, she believed, could have carried
her through it, and she had been conscious for some days that if the
opportunity came she meant to do what she had done. In other words, she
had been quite sure that Arden loved her and that she loved him. This
being granted, it was in accordance with her character to take the
initiative. With far less sympathy than she felt in all her thoughts,
she would have understood that a man of his instincts would never speak
of his love to her unless almost directly bidden to do so. Laura was
slow to make up her mind, sure of her decision when reached, and
determined to act upon it without consulting any one. Many people said
later that she had sacrificed herself for Lord Herbert's expected
fortune, or for his position. A few said that she was a very good woman
and that, finding herself neglected, she had decided to devote her life
to the happiness of a very unhappy man for whom she felt a sincere
friendship. That was at least the more charitable view. But neither was
at all the right one. She honestly and really believed that she loved
the man: she saw beyond a doubt that he loved her, and she took the
shortest and most direct way of ending all doubts on the subject. On
that same night when Arden had quite recovered and had gone home with
Ghisleri, she spoke to her mother and told her exactly what had
happened.

The Princess of Gerano opened her quiet brown eyes very wide when she
heard the news. She was handsome still at five and forty, a little
stout, perhaps, but well proportioned. Her light brown hair was turning
grey at the temples, but there were few lines in her smooth, calm face,
and her complexion was still almost youthful, though with little
colouring. She looked what she was, a woman of the world, very far from
worldly, not conscious of half the evil that went on around her, and
much given to inward contemplation of a religious kind when not actively
engaged in social duty. She had seen Laura's growing appreciation of
Arden and had noticed the frequency of the latter's visits to the house.
But she had herself learned to like him very much during the last month,
and it never suggested itself to her that he could wish to marry Laura
nor that Laura could care for him, considering that he was undeniably a
cripple. It was no wonder that she was surprised.

"Dear child," she said, "I do not know what to say. Of course I have
found out what a really good man he is, though he is so fond of that
wild Ghisleri--they are always together. I have a great admiration for
Lord Herbert. As far as position goes, there is nothing better, and I
suppose he is rich enough to support you, though I do not know. You see,
darling, you have nothing but the little I can give you. But never mind
that--there is only that one other thing--I wish he were not--"

She checked herself, far too delicate to hurt her daughter by too direct
a reference to Arden's physical shortcomings. But Laura, strange to say,
was not sensitive on that point.

"I know, mother," she said, "he is deformed. It is of no use denying it,
as he says himself. But if I do not mind that--if I do not think of it
at all when I am with him, why should any one else care? After all, if I
marry him, it is to please myself, and not the people who will ask us to
dinner."

The young girl laughed happily as she thought of the new life before
her, and of how she would make everything easy for poor Arden, and make
him quite forget that he could hardly walk. Her mother looked at her
with quiet wonder.

"Think well before you act, dear," she said. "Marriage is a very serious
thing. There is no drawing back afterwards, and if you were to be at all
unkind after you are married--"

"O mother, how can you think that of me?"

"No--at least, you would never mean it. You are too good for that. But
it would break the poor man's heart. He is very sensitive, it is not
every man who faints when he finds out that a young girl loves
him--fortunately, not every man," she added with a smile.

"If every one loved as we do, the world would be much happier," said
Laura, kissing her mother. "Do not be afraid, I will not break his
heart."

"God grant you may not break your own, dear!" The Princess spoke in a
lower voice, and turned away her face to hide the tears that stood in
her eyes.

"Mine, mother!" Laura bent over her as she sat in her dressing-chair.
"What is it?" she asked anxiously, as she saw that her mother's cheek
was wet.

"You are very dear to me, child," murmured the Princess, drawing the
young head down to her breast, and kissing the thick black hair.

So the matter was settled, and Laura had her way. It is not easy to say
how most mothers would have behaved under the circumstances. There are
worldly ones enough who would have received the news far more gladly
than the Princess of Gerano did; and there are doubtless many who would
refuse a cripple for a son-in-law on any condition whatever. Laura's
mother did what she thought right, which is more than most of us can say
of our actions.

The Prince was almost as much surprised as his wife when he learned the
news, but he was convinced that he had nothing to say in the matter.
Laura was quite free to do as she pleased, and, moreover, it was a good
thing that she should marry a man of her own faith, and ultimately live
among her own people, since nothing could make either a Catholic or a
Roman of her. But he was not altogether pleased with her choice. He had
an Italian's exaggerated horror of deformity, and though he liked Lord
Herbert, he could never quite overcome his repulsion for his outward
defects. There was nothing to be done, however, and on the whole the
marriage had much in its favour in his eyes.

The engagement was accordingly announced with due formality, and the
wedding day was fixed for the Saturday after Easter, which fell early in
that year. Not until the day before the Princess told the news to every
one did Arden communicate it to Ghisleri. He had perfect confidence in
his friend's discretion, but having said that he would not speak of the
engagement to any one until the Princess wished it, he kept his word to
the letter. He asked Pietro to drive with him, far out upon the
campagna. When they had passed the last houses and were in the open
country he spoke.

"I am going to marry Miss Carlyon," he said simply, but he glanced at
Ghisleri's face to see the look of surprise he expected.

"Since you announce it, my dear friend, I congratulate you with all my
heart," answered Pietro. "Of course I knew it some time ago."

"You knew it?" Arden was very much astonished.

"It was not very hard to guess. You loved each other, you went
constantly to the house and you spent your evenings with her in other
people's houses, there was no reason why you should not
marry--accordingly, I took it for granted that you would be married. You
see that I was right. I am delighted. Ask me to the wedding."

Arden laughed.

"I thought you would never enter one of our churches!" he exclaimed.

"I did not know that I had such a reputation for devout obedience to
general rules," answered Ghisleri.

"As for your reputation, my dear fellow, it is not that of a saint. But
I once saw you saying your prayers."

"I dare say," replied Pietro, indifferently. "I sometimes do, but not
generally in the Corso, nor on the Pincio. How long ago was that? Do you
happen to remember?"

"Six or seven years, I fancy--oh, yes! It was in that little church in
Dieppe, just before you went off on that long cruise--you remember it,
too, I fancy."

"I suppose I thought I was going to be drowned, and was seized with a
passing ague of premature repentance," said Ghisleri, lighting a
cigarette.

"What a queer fellow you are!" observed Arden, striking a light in his
turn. "I was talking with Miss Carlyon about you some time ago, and I
told her you were a sinner, but a righteous one."

"A shade worse than others, perhaps, because I know a little better what
I am doing," answered Ghisleri, with a sneer, evidently intended for
himself.

He was looking at the tomb of Cecilia Metella, as it rose in sight above
the horses' heads at the turn of the road, and he thought of what had
happened to him there years ago, and of the consequences. Arden knew
nothing of the associations the ruin had for his friend, and laughed
again. He was in a very happy humour on that day, as he was for many
days afterwards.

"I can never quite make you out," he said. "Are you good, bad, or a
humbug? You cannot be both good and bad at once, you know."

"No. But one may be often bad, and sometimes do decently good deeds,"
observed Ghisleri, with a dry laugh. "Let us talk of your marriage
instead of speculating on my salvation, or more probable perdition, if
there really is such a thing. When is the wedding day?"

Arden was full of plans for the future, and they drove far out, talking
of all that was before the young couple.

On the following day the news was announced to the city and the world.
The world held up its hands in wonder, and its tongue wagged for a whole
week and a few days more. Laura Carlyon was to marry a penniless cripple
of the most dissipated habits. How shocking! Of course every one knew
that Lord Herbert had not fainted at all on that night at the Palazzo
Braccio, but had succumbed, in the natural course of events, to the
effects of the champagne he had taken at dinner. That was now quite
certain. And the whole world was well aware that his father had cut him
off with a pittance on account of his evil ways, and that his brother
had twice paid his gambling debts to save the family name from disgrace.
Englishmen as a race, and English cripples in particular, were given to
drink and high play. The man had actually been the worse for wine when
talking to Laura Carlyon in her mother's house, and Ghisleri had been
obliged to carry him out for decency's sake before anything worse
happened. Scandalous! It was a wonder that Ghisleri, who, after all, was
a gentleman, could associate with such a fellow. After all, nobody ever
liked Laura Carlyon since she had first appeared in society, soon after
dear Donna Adele's marriage. It was as well that she should go to
England and live with her tipsy cripple. She was good-looking, as some
people admitted. She might win the heart of her brother-in-law and
induce him to pay her husband's debts a third time. They were said to be
enormous.

The men were, on the whole, more charitable. Conscious of their own
shortcomings, they did not blame Lord Herbert very severely for taking a
little too much "extra dry." They did, however, abuse him somewhat
roundly at the club, for having gone to the Gerano party at all when he
should have known that he was not steady. Of the facts themselves they
had not the slightest doubt. Unfortunately for one of them who happened
to be declaiming on the subject, but who was really by no means a bad
fellow, he did not notice that Ghisleri had entered the room before he
had finished his speech. When he had quite done, Ghisleri came forward.

"Arden is my old friend," he said quietly. "He never drinks. He has a
disease of the heart and he fainted from the heat. The doctor and I took
him home together. I hope that none of you will take up this disgusting
story, which was started by the women. And I hope Pietrasanta, there,
will do me the honour to believe what I say, and to tell you that he was
mistaken."

Ghisleri was not a pleasant person to quarrel with, and moreover had the
reputation of being truthful. His story, too, was quite as probable as
the other, to say the least of it. Don Gianbattista Pietrasanta glanced
quickly from one to the other of the men who were seated around him as
though to ask their advice in the matter. Several of them nodded almost
imperceptibly, as though counselling him to do as Ghisleri requested.
There was nothing at all aggressive in the latter's manner, either, as
he quietly lit a cigarette while waiting for the other's answer.
Suddenly a deep voice was heard from another corner of the room. The
Marchese di San Giacinto, giant in body and fortune, had been reading
the paper with the utmost indifference during all the previous
conversation. All at once he spoke, deliberately and to the point.

"It is no business of mine," he said, "as I do not know Lord Herbert
Arden except by sight. But I was at the dance the other night, and half
an hour before the occurrence you are discussing, Lord Herbert was
standing beside me, talking of the Egyptian difficulty with the French
ambassador. I have often seen men drunk. Lord Herbert Arden was, in my
opinion, perfectly sober."

Having delivered himself of this statement, San Giacinto put his very
black cigar between his teeth again and took up the evening paper he had
been reading.

In the face of such men as Ghisleri and the Marchese, it would have been
the merest folly to continue any opposition. Moreover, Pietrasanta was
neither stupid nor bad, and he was not a coward.

"I do not know Lord Herbert Arden myself," he said without affectation.
"What I said I got on hearsay, and the whole story is evidently a
fabrication which we ought to deny. For the rest, Ghisleri, if you are
not quite satisfied--" He stopped and looked at Pietro.

"My dear fellow," said the latter, "what more could I have to say about
the affair? You all seemed to be in the dark, and I wanted to clear the
matter up for the sake of my old friend. That is all. I am very much
obliged to you."

After this incident there was less talk at the clubs, and in a few days
the subject dropped. But the world said, as usual, that all the men were
afraid of Ghisleri, who was a duellist, and of San Giacinto, who was a
giant, and who had taken the trouble to learn to fence when he first
came to Rome, and that they had basely eaten their words. Men were such
cowards, said the world.

Lord Herbert and Laura lived in blissful ignorance of what was said
about them. The preparations for the wedding were already begun, and
Laura's modest trousseau was almost all ordered. She and Arden had
discussed their future, and having realised that they must live in a
very economical fashion for the present and so long as it pleased Heaven
to preserve Arden's maternal uncle among the living, they decided that
the wedding should be as quiet and unostentatious as possible. The old
Prince, however, though far too conscientious to have settled a penny of
his inherited fortune upon Laura, even if she had chosen to marry a
pauper, was not ungenerous in other ways, and considered himself at
liberty to offer the pair some very magnificent silver, which he was
able to pay for out of his private economies. As for Donna Adele, she
presented them with a couple of handsome wine-coolers--doubtless in
delicate allusion to the fictitious story about the champagne Lord
Herbert was supposed to have taken. The implied insult, if there was
any, was not at all noticed by those who had never heard the tale,
however, and Adele had to bide her time for the present.

Meanwhile the season tore along at a break-neck pace, and Lent was fast
approaching. Everybody saw and danced with almost everybody else every
night, and some of them supped afterwards and gambled till midday, and
were surprised to find that their nerves were shaky, and their livers
slightly eccentric, and their eyes anything but limpid. But they all
knew that the quiet time was coming, the Lent wherein no man can dance,
nor woman either, and they amused themselves with a contempt for human
life which would have amounted to heroism if displayed in a good cause.
"They" of course means the gay set of that particular year. As the
Princess of Gerano gave regular informal dances, and two balls at the
end of Carnival, she and her daughter were considered to belong more or
less to the company of the chief merry-makers. The Savelli couple were
in it, also, as a matter of course. Gouache was in it when he pleased, a
dozen or fifteen young members of the diplomatic corps, old Spicca, who
always went everywhere, the Contessa dell' Armi, whose husband was in
parliament and rarely went into society, Ghisleri and twenty or thirty
others, men and women who were young or thought themselves so.

About three weeks before Ash Wednesday, Anastase Gouache, the
perennially young, had a brilliant inspiration. His studio was in an
historical palace, and consisted of three halls which might have passed
for churches in any other country, so far as their size was concerned.
He determined to give a Shrove Tuesday supper to the gay set, with a
tableau, and a long final waltz afterwards, by way of interring the
mangled remains of the season, as he expressed it. The supper should be
at the usual dinner hour instead of at one o'clock, because the gay set
was not altogether as scarlet as it was painted, and did not, as a
whole, care to dance into the morning of Ash Wednesday. The tableau
should represent Carnival meeting Lent. The Contessa dell' Armi should
be in it, and Ghisleri, and Donna Adele, and possibly San Giacinto might
be induced to appear as a mask. His enormous stature would be very
imposing. The Contessa, with her classic features and violet eyes, would
make an admirable nun, and there would be no difficulty in getting
together a train of revellers. Ghisleri, lean, straight, and tall, would
do for a Satanic being of some kind, and could head the Carnival
procession. The whole thing would not last five minutes and the dancing
should begin at once.

"Could you not say something, my friend?" asked Gouache, as he talked
the matter over with Ghisleri.

"I could, if you could find something for me to say," answered the
latter. "But of what use would it be?"

"The density of the public," replied the great painter, "is, to use the
jargon of science, as cotton wool multiplied into cast iron. You either
sink into it and make no noise at all, or you knock your head against
and cannot get through it. You have never sent a picture to the Salon
without naming it, or you would understand exactly what I mean. They
took a picture I once painted, as an altar piece, for a scene from the
Decameron, I believe--but that was when I was young and had illusions.
On the whole, you had better find something to say, and say it--verse,
if possible. They say you have a knack at verses."

"Carnival meeting Lent," said Ghisleri, thoughtfully. Then he laughed.
"I will try--though I am no poet. I will trust a little to my acting to
help my lame feet."

Ghisleri laughed again, as though an amusing idea had struck him. That
night he went home early, and as very often happened, in a bad humour
with himself and with most things. He was a very unhappy man, who felt
himself to be always the centre of a conflict between opposing passions,
and he had long been in the habit of throwing into a rough, impersonal
shape, the thoughts that crossed his mind about himself and others, when
he was alone at night. Being, as he very truly said, no poet, he quickly
tore up such odds and ends of halting rhyme or stumbling prose, either
as soon as they were written, or the next morning. Whatever the form of
these productions might be, the ideas they expressed were rarely feeble
and were indeed sometimes so strong that they might have even shocked
some unusually sensitive person in the gay set.

Being, as has been said, in a bad humour on that particular evening, he
naturally had something to say to himself on paper, and as he took his
pencil he thought of Gouache's suggestion. In a couple of hours he had
got what he wanted and went to sleep. The great artist liked the verses
when Ghisleri read them to him on the following day, the Contessa
consented to act the part of the nun, and the affair was settled.

It was a great success. Gouache's wife, Donna Faustina, had entered into
her husband's plans with all her heart. She was of the Montevarchi
family, sister to the Marchesa di San Giacinto, the latter's husband
being a Saracinesca, as every Italian knows. Gouache did things in a
princely fashion, and sixty people, including all the gay set and a few
others, sat down to the dinner which Anastase was pleased to call a
supper. Every one was very gay. Almost every one was in some fancy dress
or mask, there was no order of precedence, and all were placed where
they would have the best chance of amusing themselves. The halls of the
studio, with their magnificent tapestries and almost priceless objects
of art, were wonderful to see in the bright light. Many of the costumes
were really superb and all were brilliant. No one knew what was to take
place after supper, but every one was sure there was to be dancing, and
all were aware that it was the last dance before Easter, and that the
best dancers in Rome were all present.

One of the halls had been hastily fitted up as a theatre, with a little
stage, a row of footlights, and a background representing a dark wall,
with a deep archway in the middle, like the door of a church. When every
one was seated, a deep, clear voice spoke out a little prologue from
behind the scenes, and the figures, as they were described, moved out
from opposite sides of the stage to meet and group themselves before the
painted doorway. Let prologue and verse speak for themselves.

"It was nearly midnight--the midnight that ends Shrove Tuesday and
begins Ash Wednesday, dividing Carnival from Lent. I left the tables,
where all the world of Rome was feasting, and pretending that the feast
was the last of the year. The brilliant light flashed upon silver and
gold, dyed itself in amber and purple wine, ran riot amongst jewels, and
blazed upon many a fair face and snowy neck. The clocks were all
stopped, lest some tinkling bell should warn men and women that the day
of laughter was over, and that the hour of tears had struck. But I,
broken-hearted, sick in soul and weary of the two months' struggle with
evil fate, turned away from them and left them to all they loved, and to
all that I could never love again.

"I passed through the deserted ball-room, and my heart sank as I thought
of what was over and done. The polished floor was strewn with withered
blossoms, with torn and crumpled favours from the dance, with shreds of
gauze and lace; many chairs were overturned; the light streamed down
like day upon a great desolation; the heated air was faint with the sad
odour of dead flowers. There was the corner where we sat, she and I,
to-night, last week, a week before that--where we shall never sit again,
for neither of us would. I shivered as I went out into the night.

"Through the dark streets I went, not knowing and not caring whither,
nor hearing the tinkling mandolines and changing songs of the revellers
who passed me on their homeward way."

At this point a mandoline was really heard in the very faintest tones
from behind the scenes, playing scarcely above a whisper, as it were,
the famous "Tout pour l'amour" waltz of Waldteuffel.

"Suddenly," the voice resumed, above the delicate notes of the
instrument, "the bells rang out and I knew that my last Carnival was
dead." Here deep-toned bells struck twelve, while the mandoline still
continued. "Then, all at once, I was aware of two figures in the gloom,
advancing towards the door of a church in front of me. The one was a
woman, a nun in white robe and black hood, whose saintly violet eyes
seemed to shine in the darkness. The other was a monk."

The Contessa dell' Armi came slowly forward, her pale, clear face lifted
and thrown into strong relief by the black head-dress, grasping a heavy
rosary in her folded hands. Behind her came San Giacinto, recognisable
only by his colossal stature, his face hidden in the shadow of a black
cowl. Both were admirable, and a murmur of satisfaction ran through the
room.

"As they reached the door," continued the reader, "a wild train of
maskers broke into the street."

Ghisleri entered from the opposite side, arrayed somewhat in the manner
of Mephistopheles, a mandoline slung over his shoulder, on which he was
playing. Donna Adele and a dozen others followed him closely, in every
variety of brilliant Carnival dress, dancing forward with tambourines
and castanets, their eyes bright, their steps cadenced to the rhythm of
the waltz tune which now broke out loud and clear--fair young women with
flushed cheeks, all life, and motion, and laughter; and young men
following them closely, laughing, and talking, and singing, all dancing
in and out with changing steps. Then all at once the music died away to
a whisper; the nun and the monk stood back as though in horror against
the church door, while the revellers grouped themselves together in
varied poses around them, Ghisleri the central figure in the midst,
bowing with a diabolical smile before the white-robed nun.

"In front of all," said the voice again, "stood one whose face I shall
never forget, for it was like my own. The features were mine, but upon
them were reflected all the sins of my life, and all the evil I have
done. I thought the other revellers did not see him."

Again the music swelled and rose, and the train of dancers passed on
with song and laughter, and disappeared on the opposite side of the
stage. Ghisleri alone stood still before the saint-like figure of the
Contessa dell' Armi, bowing low and holding out to her a tall red glass.

"He who was like me stayed behind," continued the reader, "and the light
from his glass seemed to shine upon the saintly woman's face, and she
drew back as though from contamination, to the monk's side for
protection. I knew her face when I saw it--the face I have known too
long, too well. Then he who was like me spoke to her, and the voice was
my own, but as I would have had it when I have been worst."

As the reader ceased Ghisleri began to speak. His voice was strong, but
capable of considerable softness and passionate expression, and he did
his best to render his own irregular verses both intelligible and moving
to his hearers, in which effort he was much helped by the dress he wore
and by the gestures he made use of.

   "So we meet at the last! You the saint, I the time-proved sinner;
    You the young, I the old; I the world-worn, you the beginner;
    At the end of the season here, with a glass of wine
    To discuss the salvation and--well--the mine and thine
    Of all the souls we have met this year, and dealt with,
    Of those you have tried to make feel, and those I've felt with:
    Though, after all, dear Saint, had we met in heaven
    Before you got saintship, or I the infernal leaven
    That works so hot to kill the old angel in me--
    If you had seen the world then, as I was able to see
    Before Sergeant-Major Michael gave me that fall,--
    Not a right fall, mind you, taking the facts in all,--
    We might have been on the same side both. But now
    It is yours to cry over lost souls, as it's mine to show them how
    They may stumble and tumble into the infernal slough.
    So here we are. Now tell me--your honour true--
    What do you think of our season? Which wins? I? You?
    Ha, ha, ha! Sweet friend, you can hardly doubt
    The result of this two months' hard-fought wrestling bout.
    I have won. You have lost the game. I drive a trade
    Which I invented--perhaps--but you have made.
    Without your heaven, friend Saint, what would be my hell?
    Without your goodness, could I hope to do well
    With the poor little peddler's pack of original sin
    They handed me down, when they turned me out to begin
    My devil's trade with souls. But now I ask
    Why for eternal penance they gave me so light a task?
    You have not condescended from heaven to taste our carnival feast,
    But if you had tasted it, you would admit at least
    That the meats were passably sweet, and might allure
    The nicest of angels, whose tastes are wholly pure.
    Old friend--I hate you! I hate your saintly face,
    Your holy eyes, your vague celestial grace!
    You are too cold for me, whose soul must smelt
    In fires whose fury you have never felt.
    But come, unbend a little. Let us chatter
    Of what we like best, of what our pride may flatter,--
    Salvation and damnation--there's the theme--
    Your trade and mine--what I am, and what you seem.
    Come, count the souls we have played for, you and I,
    The broken hearts you have lost on a careless jog of the die,
    Hearts that were broken in ire, by one short, sharp fault of the head,
    Souls lifted on pinions of fire, to sink on wings of lead.
    We have gambled, and I have won, while you have steadily lost,
    I laughing, you weeping your senseless saintly tears each time you
      tossed.
    So now--give it up! Dry your eyes; your heaven's a dream!
    Sell your saintship for what it is worth, and come over--the Devil's
      supreme!
    Make Judas Iscariot envy the sweets of our sin--
    Poor Judas, who ended himself where I could have wished to begin!
    A chosen complexion--hell's fruit would not have been wasted
    Had he lived to eat his fill at the feast he barely tasted.
    Ah, my friend, you are horribly good! Oh! I know you of old;
    I know all your virtues, your graces, your beauties; I know they are
      cold!
    But I know that far down in the depths of your crystalline soul
    There's a spot the archangel physician might not pronounce whole.
    There's a hell in your heaven; there's a heaven in my hell. There we
      meet.
    What's perdition to you is salvation to me. Ah, the delicate sweet
    Of mad meetings, of broken confessions, of nights unblest!
    Oh, the shadowy horror of hate that haunts love's steps without rest,
    The desire to be dead--to see dead both the beings one hates,
    One's self and the other, twin victims of opposite fates!
    How I hate you! You thing beyond Satan's supremest temptation,
    You creature of light for whom God has ordained no damnation,
    You escape me, the being whose searing hand lovingly lingers
    On the neck of each sinner to brand him with five red-hot fingers!
    You escape me--you dare scoff at me--and I, poor old pretender,
    Must sue for your beautiful soul with temptation more tender
    Than a man can find for a woman, when night in her moonlit glory
    Silvers a word to a poem, makes a poem of a commonplace story!
    So I sue here at your feet for your soul and the gold of your heart,
    To break my own if I lose you--Lose you? No--do not start.
    You angel--you bitter-sweet creature of heaven, I love you and hate
      you!
    For I know what you are, and I know that my sin cannot mate you.
    I know you are better than I--by the blessing of God!--
    And I hate what is better than I by the blessing of God!
    What right has the Being Magnificent, reigning supreme,
    To wield the huge might that is his, in a measure extreme?
    What right has God got of his strength to make you all good,
    And me bad from the first and weighed down in my sin's leaden hood?
    What right have you to be pure, my angel, when I am foul?
    What right have you to the light, while I, like an owl,
    Must blink in hell's darkness and count my sins by the bead--
    While you can get all you pray for, the wine and the mead
    Of a heavenly blessing, showered upon you straight--
    Because you chance to stand on the consecrate side of the gate?
    Ah! Give me a little nature, give me a human truth!
    Give me a heart that feels--and falls, as a heart should--without
      ruth!
    Give me a woman who loves and a man who loves again,
    Give me the instant's joy that ends in an age of pain,
    Give me the one dear touch that I love--and that you fear--
    And I will give my empire for the Kingdom you hold dear!
    I will cease from tempting and torturing, I will let the poor sinner
      go,
    I will turn my blind eyes heavenward and forget this world below,
    I will change from lying to truth, and be forever true--
    If you will only love me--and give the Devil his due!"

It had been previously arranged that at the last words the nun should
thrust back his Satanic majesty and take refuge in the church. But it
turned out otherwise. As he drew near the conclusion, Ghisleri crept
stealthily up to the Contessa's side, and threw all the persuasion he
possessed into his voice. But it was most probably the Contessa's love
of surprising the world which led her to do the contrary of what was
expected. At the last line of his speech, she made one wild gesture of
despair, and threw herself backward upon Ghisleri's ready arm. For one
moment he looked down into her white upturned face, and his own grew
pale as his gleaming eyes met hers. With characteristic presence of
mind, San Giacinto, the monk, bent his head, and stalked away in holy
horror as the curtain fell.




CHAPTER IV.


As the curtain went down, a burst of applause rang through the room. The
poetry, if it could be called poetry, had assuredly not been of a high
order, and as for the sentiments it expressed, a good number of the
audience were more than usually shocked. But the whole thing had been
effective, unexpected, and striking, especially the ending, over which
the world smacked its lips.

"I do not like it at all," said Laura Carlyon to Arden, as they left the
seats where they had sat together through the little performance.

"They looked very well," he answered thoughtfully. "As for what he said,
it was Ghisleri. That is the man's character. He will talk in that way
while he does not believe a word he says, or only one out of ten."

"Then I do not like his character, nor him," returned the young lady,
frankly. "But I should not say it to you, dear, because he is your best
friend. He shows you all the good there is in him, I suppose, and he
shows us all the bad."

"No one ever said a truer thing of him," said Arden, limping along by
her side. "But I admire the man's careless strength in what he does."

"It is easy to use strong language," replied Laura, quietly. "It is
quite another thing to be strong. I believe he is weak, morally
speaking. But then, how should I know? One only guesses at such things,
after all."

"Yes, it is all guess-work. But I think I understand him better to-night
than before."

A moment later the sound of dance music came from the most distant and
the largest of the rooms. Ghisleri and the Contessa dell' Armi were
already there. She was so slight of figure, that she draped her nun's
dress over her gown, and had only to drop it to be herself again. They
took a first turn together, and Ghisleri talked softly all the time as
he danced.

"Shockingly delightful--the whole thing!" exclaimed Donna Adele,
watching them. "How well they acted it! They must have rehearsed very
often."

"Quite often enough, I have no doubt," said the Marchesa di San
Giacinto, with a laugh.

An hour or two passed away and Laura Carlyon found herself walking about
with Ghisleri after dancing with him. He was a very magnificent
personage in his scarlet, black and gold costume, and Laura herself
looked far more saintly in her evening gown than the Contessa dell' Armi
had looked in the dress of a nun. The two made a fine contrast, and some
one said so, unfortunately within hearing of both Adele Savelli and
Maddalena dell' Armi. The latter turned her cold face quickly and looked
at Laura and Ghisleri, but her expression did not change.

"What a very uncertain person that dear Ghisleri is!" observed Donna
Adele to Pietrasanta, as she noticed the Contessa's movement. She spoke
just so loud that the latter could hear her, then turned away with her
companion and walked in the opposite direction.

Meanwhile Ghisleri and Laura were together. The young girl felt an odd
sensation as her hand lay on his arm, as though she were doing something
wrong. She did not understand his life, nor him, being far too young and
innocent of life's darker thoughts and deeds. She had said that she
disliked him, because that seemed best to express what she felt--a
certain vague wish not to be too near him, a certain timidity when he
was within hearing which she did not feel at other times.

"You did not mean any of those things you said, did you, Signor
Ghisleri?" she asked, scarcely knowing why she put the question.

"I meant them all, and much more of the same kind," answered Pietro,
with a hard laugh.

"I am sorry--I would rather not believe it."

"Why?"

"Because it is not right to think such things, nor even to say them in a
play."

Ghisleri looked at her in some surprise. Laura felt a sort of impulse of
conscience to say what she thought.

"Ah! you are horribly good!" laughed Ghisleri, quoting his own verse.

Laura felt uncomfortable as she met his glance. He really looked very
Satanic just then, as his eyebrows went up and the deep lines deepened
between his eyes and on his forehead.

"Either one believes or one does not," she said. "If one does--" She
hesitated.

"If one does, does it follow that because God is good to you, He has
been good to me also, Miss Carlyon?"

His expression changed, and his voice was grave and almost sad. Laura
sighed almost inaudibly, but said nothing.

"Will you have anything?" he asked indifferently, after the short pause.
"A cup of tea?"

"Thanks, no. I think I will go to my mother."

Ghisleri took her to the Princess's side and left her.

"You seemed to be having a very interesting conversation with Miss
Carlyon just now," said the Contessa dell' Armi as he sat down beside
her a quarter of an hour later. "What were you talking about?"

"Sin," answered Ghisleri, laconically.

"With a young girl!" exclaimed the Contessa. "But then--English--"

"You need not raise your eyebrows, nor talk in that tone, my dear lady,"
replied Ghisleri. "Miss Carlyon is quite beyond sarcasms of that sort.
Since you are curious, she was telling me that it was sinful to say the
things you were good enough to listen to in the tableau, even in a
play."

"Ah? And you will be persuaded, I dare say. What beautiful eyes she has.
It is a pity she is so clumsy and heavily made. Really, has she got you
to promise that you will never say any of those things again--after the
way I ended the piece for you?"

"No. I have not promised to be good yet. As for your ending of the
performance, I confess I was surprised."

"You did not show it."

"It would hardly have been in keeping with my part, would it? But I can
show you that I am grateful at least."

"For what?" asked the Contessa, raising her eyebrows again. "Do you
think I meant anything by it?"

"Certainly not," replied Ghisleri, with the utmost calmness. "I suppose
your instinct told you that it would be more novel and effective if the
Saint yielded than if she played the old-fashioned scene of crushing the
devil under her foot."

"Would you have let yourself be crushed?"

"By you--yes." Ghisleri spoke slowly and looked steadily into her eyes.

The Contessa's face softened a little, and she paused before she
answered him.

"I wish I knew--I wish I were sure whether I really have any influence
over you," she said softly, and then sighed and looked away.

It was very late when the party broke up, though all had professed the
most positive intention of going home when the clock struck twelve. The
Princess of Gerano offered Arden a seat in her carriage, and Pietro
Ghisleri went away alone. As he passed through the deserted dining-room,
and through the hall where he had sat so long with the Contessa, he
could not help glancing at the corner where they had talked, and he
thought involuntarily of the prologue to the tableau. His face was set
rather sternly, but he smiled, too, as he went by.

"It is not my last Carnival yet," he said to himself, as he drew on a
great driving-coat which covered his costume completely. Then he went
out.

It is very hard to say whether he was a sentimental man or not. Men who
write second-rate verses when they are alone, generally are; but, on the
other hand, those who knew him would not have allowed that he possessed
a grain of what is commonly called sentimentality. The word probably
means a sort of vague desire to experience rather fictitious emotions,
with the intention of believing oneself to be passionate by nature, and
in that sense the weakness could not justly be attributed to Ghisleri.
But on this particular night he did a thing which many people would
undoubtedly have called sentimental. He turned aside from the highway
when he left the great palace in which Gouache lived, and he allowed
himself to wander aimlessly on through the older part of the city, until
he stopped opposite to the door of a church which stood in a broad
street near the end of the last by-way he had traversed. The night was
dark and gloomy and the stillness was only broken now and then by a
distant snatch of song, a burst of laughter, or the careless twang of a
guitar, just as Ghisleri had described it. Indeed it was by no means the
first time that he had walked home in the small hours of Ash Wednesday
morning, after a night of gaiety and emotion.

It chanced that the church upon which he had accidentally come was the
one known as the Church of Prayer and Death. It stands in the Via
Giulia, behind the Palazzo Farnese. He realised the fact at once, and it
seemed like a bad omen. He stood still a long time, looking at the
gloomy door with steady eyes.

"Just such a place as this," he said, in a low tone. "Just such a church
as that, just such a man as I am. Is this the comedy and was this
evening the reality? Or is it the other way?"

He called up before his eyes the scene in which he had acted, and his
imagination obeyed him readily enough. He could fancy how the monk and
the nun would look, and the train of revellers, and their movements and
gestures. But the nun's face was not that of the Contessa. Another shone
out vividly in its place.

"Just God!" ejaculated the lonely man. "Am I so bad as that? Not to care
after so much?"

He turned upon his heel as though to escape the vision, and walked
quickly away, hating himself. But he was mistaken. He cared--as he
expressed it--far more than he dreamed of, more deeply, perhaps, in his
own self-contradictory, irregular fashion than the woman of whom he was
thinking.

People talked for some time of the Shrove Tuesday feast at Gouache's
studio. Then they fell to talking about other things. Lent passed in the
usual way, and there was not much change in the lives of the persons
most concerned in this history. Ghisleri saw much less of Arden than
formerly, of course, as the latter was wholly absorbed by his passion
for his future wife. As for the world, it was as much occupied with
dinner parties, musical evenings, and private theatricals as it had
formerly been with dancing. The time sped quickly. The past season had
left behind it an enormous Corpus Scandalorum Romanorum which made
conversation both easy and delightful. How many of the unpleasant
stories concerning Lord Herbert Arden, Laura Carlyon, Pietro Ghisleri,
and Maddalena dell' Armi could have been distinctly traced to Adele
Savelli, it is not easy to say. As a matter of fact, very few persons
excepting Ghisleri himself took any trouble to trace them at all. To the
average worldly taste it is as unpleasant to follow up the origin of a
delightfully savoury lie, as it is to think, while eating, of the true
history of a beefsteak, from the meadow to the table by way of the
slaughter-house and the cook's fingers.

Holy week came, and the muffled bells and the silence in houses at other
times full and noisy, and the general air of depression which results,
most probably, from a certain amount of genuine repentance and devotion
which is felt in a place where by no means all are bad at heart, and
many are sincerely good. The gay set felt uncomfortable, and a certain
number experienced for the first time the most distinct aversion to
confessing their misdeeds, as they ought to do at least once a year. As
far as they were concerned, Ghisleri's verses expressed more truth than
they had expected to find in them. Ghisleri himself was rarely troubled
by any return of the qualm which had seized him before the door of the
Church of Prayer and Death, and never again in the same degree. If he
did not go on his way rejoicing, he at all events proceeded without
remorse, and was wicked enough and selfish enough to congratulate
himself upon the fact.

Arden and Laura were perfectly happy. They, at least, had little cause
to reproach themselves with any evil done in the world since they had
met, and Arden had assuredly better reason for congratulating himself.
It would indeed have been hard to find a happier man than he, and his
happiness was perfectly legitimate and well founded. Whether it would
prove durable was another matter, not so easy of decision. But the facts
of the present were strong enough to crush all apprehension for the
future. It was not strange that it should be so.

He could not be said to have led a lonely life. His family were deeply
attached to him, and from earliest boyhood everything had been done to
alleviate the moral suffering inevitable in his case, and to make his
material existence as bearable as possible, in spite of his terrible
infirmities. But for the unvarying sympathy of many loving hearts, and
the unrelaxing care of those who were sincerely devoted to him, Arden
could hardly have hoped to attain to manhood at all, much less to the
healthy moral growth which made him very unlike most men in his
condition, or the comparative health of body whereby he was able to
enjoy without danger much of what came in his way. He was in reality a
much more social and sociable man than his friend Ghisleri, though he
did not possess the same elements of success in society. He was, indeed,
sensitive, as has been said, in spite of his denial of the fact, but he
was not bitter about his great misfortune. Hitherto only one very
painful thought had been connected with his deformity, beyond the
constant sense of physical inferiority to other men. He had felt, and
not without reason, that he must renounce the love of woman and the hope
of wedded happiness, as being utterly beyond the bounds of all human
possibility. And now, as though Heaven meant to compensate him to the
full for the suffering inflicted and patiently borne, he had won, almost
without an effort, the devoted love of the first woman for whom he had
seriously cared. It was almost too good.

Love had taken him, and had clothed him in a new humanity, as it seemed
to him, straightening the feeble limbs, strengthening the poor
ill-matched shoulders, broadening and deepening the sunken chest that
never held breath enough before wherewith to speak out full words of
passionate happiness. Love had dawned upon the dusk of his dark morning
as the dawn of day upon a leaden sea, scattering unearthly blossoms in
the path of the royal sun, breathing the sweet breeze of living joy upon
the flat waters of unprofitable discontent.

To those who watch the changing world with its manifold scenes and its
innumerable actors, whose merest farce is ever and only the prologue to
the tragedy which awaits all, there is nothing more wonderful, nothing
more beautiful, nothing more touching--perhaps few things more
sacred--than the awakening of a noble heart at love's first magic touch.
The greater miracle of spring is done before our eyes each year, the sun
shines and the grass grows, it rains and all things are refreshed, and
the dead seed's heart breaks with the joy of coming life, bursts and
shoots up to meet the warmth of the sunshine and be kissed by the west
wind. But we do not see, or seeing, care for none of these things in the
same measure in which we care for ourselves--and perhaps for others. We
turn from the budding flower wearily enough at last, and we own that
though it speak to us and touch us, its language is all but strange and
its meaning wholly a mystery. Nature tells us little except by
association with hearts that have beaten for ours, and then sometimes
she tells us all. But the heart itself is the thing, the reality, the
seat of all our thoughts and the stay of all our being. Selfishly we see
what it does in ourselves, and in others we may see it and watch it
without thought of self. It is asleep to-day, lethargic, heavy, dull,
scarce moving in the breast that holds it. To-morrow it is awake,
leaping, breaking, splendidly alive, the very source of action, the
leader in life's fight, the conqueror of the whole opposing world,
bursting to-day the chains of which only yesterday it could not lift a
link, overthrowing now, with a touch, the barriers which once seemed so
impenetrable and so strong, scorning the deathlike inaction of the past,
tossing the mountains of impossibility before it as a child tosses
pebbles by the sea. The miracle is done, and love has done it, as only
love really can.

But it must be the right sort of love and the heart it touches must be
neither common nor unclean in the broad, true sense--such a heart, say,
as Herbert Arden's, and such love as he felt for Laura, then and
afterwards.

"My life began on the evening when I first met you, dear," he said, as
they sat by the open window on Easter Day, looking down at the flowers
on the terrace behind the Palazzo Braccio.

"You cannot make me believe that you loved me at first sight!" Laura
laughed happily.

"Why not?" he asked gravely. "No woman ever spoke to me as you did then,
and I felt it. Is it strange? But it hurt me, too, at first, and I used
to suffer during that first month."

"Let that be the first and the last pain you ever have by me," answered
the young girl. "I know you suffered, though I cannot even now tell why.
Can you?"

"Easily enough," said Arden, resting his chin upon his folded hands as
they lay upon the white marble sill of the window, scarcely less white
than they. The attitude was habitual to him when he was in that place.
He could not rest his elbow on the slab as Laura could, for he was too
short as he sat in his chair.

"Easily?" she asked. "Then tell me."

"Very easily. You can understand it too. When I knew that I loved you, I
knew--I believed, at least, that another suffering had been found for
me, as though I had not enough already. Of course, I was hopeless. How
could I tell, how could any one guess that you--you of all women--with
your beauty, your youth, your splendid woman's heart--could ever care
for me? Oh, my darling--dear, dearest--is there no other word? If I
could only tell you half!"

"If you could tell me all, you would only have told half, love," said
Laura. "There is mine to tell, too--and it is not a little." She bent
down to him and softly kissed the beautiful pale forehead.

The bright flush came to Arden's cheek and died away again in the happy
silence that followed. But he raised his head, and his two hands took
one of hers and gently covered it.

"You must always be the same to me," he said, almost under his breath.
"You have given me this new life--do not take it from me again--the old
would be impossible now, not to be lived."

"It need never be lived, it never shall be, if I live myself," answered
Laura. "If only I could make you sure of that, I should be really happy.
But you do not really doubt it, Herbert, do you?"

"No, dear, to doubt you would be to doubt everything--though it is hard
to believe that it can all be so good, and last."

"It does not seem hard to me. Perhaps a woman believes everything more
easily than a man does. She needs to believe more, I suppose, and so she
finds it easy."

"No woman ever needed to believe as much as I," answered Arden,
thoughtfully. He still held her hand, and passed one of his own lightly
over it, just pressing it now and then, as though to make sure that it
was real. "Except yourself, dear one," he added a moment later, with a
sharp, short breath, as though something hurt him.

Laura was quick to understand him, and to feel all that he felt. She
heard the little sigh and looked into his face and saw the expression of
something like pain there. She laid her free hand upon his shoulder and
gazed into his soft brown eyes.

"Herbert dear," she said, "I know what you are thinking about. I was put
into the world to make you forget those things, and, God willing, I
will. You shall forget them as completely as I do, or if you remember
them they shall be dear to you, in a way, as they are to me."

A wonderful look of loving gratitude was in his face, and he pressed her
fingers closely in his.

"Tell me one thing, Laura--only this once and I will not speak of it
again. When you touch me--when you lay your hand on my shoulder--when
you kiss my forehead--tell me quite truly, dear, do you not feel
anything like--like a sort of horror, a kind of repulsion, as if you
were touching something--well--unpleasant to touch?"

Poor Arden really did not know how much he was loved. Laura's deep eyes
opened wide for an instant, as he spoke, then almost closed again, and
her lips quivered. Then suddenly without warning the bright tears welled
up and overflowed. She hid her face in her hands and sobbed bitterly.

"Oh, Herbert," she cried, "that you should think it of me, when I love
you as though my heart would break!"

With a movement that would have cost him a painful effort at any other
time, Arden rose and clasped her to him and tried to soothe her,
caressing her thick black hair, and kissing her forehead tenderly, with
a sort of passionate reverence that was his own, and speaking such words
as came to his lips in the deep emotion of the moment.

"Forgive me, darling, how could I hurt you? Laura--sweetheart
Laura--beloved--do not cry--I know it now--I shall never think of it
again. No, dear, no--there, say you have forgiven me!"

"Forgiven you, dear--what is there to forgive?" She looked up with
streaming eyes.

"Everything, love--those tears of yours, first of all--"

She dried her eyes and made him sit down again before she spoke, looking
out of the window at the flowers.

"It is not your fault," she said at last. "I have not shown you how I
love yet--that is all. But I will, soon."

"You have shown it already, dear--far more than you know."

The world might have been surprised could it have seen the two
together--the tipsy cripple, as it called Arden, and the girl who loved
Francesco Savelli, as it unhesitatingly denominated Laura. It would have
been a little surprised at first, and then, on mature reflection, it
would have said that it was all a comedy, and that both acted it very
well. Was it not natural that Arden should want a pretty wife and that
Laura should take any husband that presented himself, since she could
get no better? And in that case why should not each act a comedy to gain
the other's hand? The world did that sort of thing every day, and what
the world did Arden and Laura could very well afford to do; and after
all, it was not of the slightest importance, since they were both going
away, so why should one talk about them? The answer to that last
question is so very hard to find that it may be left to those who put
it. Donna Adele seemed satisfied, and that was the principal
consideration for the present.

"My poor sister!" she exclaimed to Ghisleri one day.

"Step-sister," observed Pietro, correcting her.

"Oh, we were always quite like real sisters," answered Adele. "Of
course, my dear Ghisleri, I know what a splendid man Lord Herbert is, in
everything but his unfortunate deformity. Any one can see that in his
face, and besides, you would not have chosen him for your friend if he
were not immensely superior to other men."

Ghisleri puffed at his cigarette, looked at her, laughed, and puffed
again.

"But that one thing," continued Adele, "I cannot understand how she can
overlook it, can you? I assure you if my father had told me to marry
Lord Herbert, I should have done something quite desperate. I think I
should almost have refused. I would almost rather have had to marry
you."

"Really?" Pietro showed some amusement. "Do you think you could have
loved me in the end?" he inquired as though he were asking for
information of the most commonplace kind.

"Loved you?" Adele laughed rather unnaturally. "It would have been
something definite, at all events," she added. "Either love or hate."

"And you do not believe that your step-sister can ever love or hate
Arden? There is more in him than you imagine."

"I dare say, but not of the kind I should like. Besides, they say that
though he never drinks quite too much, he is sometimes very excited and
behaves and talks very strangely."

"They say that, do they? Who are 'they'?" Ghisleri's eyes suddenly grew
hard, and his jaw seemed to become extremely square.

"They? Oh, many people, of course. The world says so. Do not be so
dreadfully angry. What difference can it make to you? I never said that
he drank too much."

"If you should hear people talking about him in that way," said
Ghisleri, quietly, "you might say that the story is not true, since
there is really no truth in it at all. Arden is almost like an invalid.
He drinks a glass of hock at breakfast and a glass or two of claret at
dinner. I rarely see him touch champagne, and he never takes liqueurs.
As for his being excited and behaving strangely, that is a pure
fabrication. He is the quietest man I know."

"It is really of no use to be so impressive," answered Adele. "It makes
me uncomfortable."

"That is almost as disagreeable a thing as to meet a looking-glass when
one comes home at seven in the morning," observed Pietro. "Let us not
talk about it."

Donna Adele had gone as near as she dared to saying something
unpleasant about Lord Herbert Arden, and Ghisleri had checked her with a
wholesome shock. In his experience he had generally found that his words
carried weight with them, for some reason which he did not even attempt
to explain. If the truth were known, it would appear that Adele was at
that time much inclined to like Ghisleri, and was willing to sacrifice
even the pleasure of saying a sharp thing rather than offend him. The
short conversation here reported took place in her boudoir late in the
afternoon, and when Ghisleri went away his place was soon taken by the
Marchesa di San Giacinto--a lady of sufficiently good heart, but of too
ready tongue, with coal-black, sparkling eyes, and a dark complexion
relieved by a bright and healthy colour--rather a contrast to the rest
of the Montevarchi tribe.

"Pietro Ghisleri has been here," observed Adele, in the course of
conversation.

"To meet Maddalena, I suppose," laughed the Marchesa, not meaning any
harm.

"No. They did it once, and I told Pietro that I would not have that sort
of thing in my house," said Adele, with dignity.

As a matter of fact, she had not dared to say a word to Ghisleri on the
subject, but he and the Contessa had decided that Adele's drawing-room
was not a safe place for meeting, and it was quite true that they had
carefully avoided finding themselves there together ever since. But
Adele was well aware that Flavia San Giacinto and Ghisleri were by no
means intimate, and were not likely to exchange confidences; and though
the Marchesa was ready enough at repeating harmless tales in the world,
she was reticent with her husband, whom she really loved, and whose good
opinion she valued.

"Was he amusing?" asked Flavia. "He sometimes is."

"He was not to-day, but the conversation was. You know how intimate he
is with Laura's little lord?"

"Of course! What did he say?"

"And you remember the story about the champagne at the Gerano ball, when
he carried Arden out of the room and put him to bed?"

"Perfectly," answered the Marchesa, with a smile.

"Yes. Well, I pressed him very hard to-day, to find out what the little
man's habits really are. You see he is to be of the family, and we must
really find out. My dear, it is quite dreadful! He says positively that
Arden never touches liqueurs, but when I drove him to it, he had to
admit that he drinks all sorts of wines--Rhine wine, claret, burgundy,
champagne--everything! It is no wonder that it goes to his head, poor
little fellow. But I am sorry for Laura."

"After all," said Flavia, "one cannot blame him much, if he tries to be
a little gay. He must suffer terribly."

"Oh, no, one cannot blame him," assented Adele.

Flavia San Giacinto was somewhat amused, knowing, as she did, that Adele
had herself originated the tale about Lord Herbert. And late that
evening the temptation to repeat what she had heard became too strong
for her. She told it all in the strictest confidence to her dearest
friend, Donna Maria Boccapaduli. But Donna Maria was a little
absent-minded at the moment, her eldest boy having got a cold which
threatened to turn into whooping cough, and her husband having written
to her from the country, asking her to come down the next day and give
her advice about some necessary repairs in the castle.

On the following afternoon--it was still during Lent--she met the
Contessa dell' Armi on the steps of a church after hearing a sermon. The
Contessa was very pale and looked as though she had been crying.

"Only think, my dear," began Donna Maria. "It is quite true that Lord
Herbert drinks. Adele knows all about it."

"Does she?" asked the Contessa, indifferently enough. "How did she find
it out?"

"Ghisleri told her ever so many stories about it yesterday afternoon--in
the strictest confidence, you know."

"Indeed! I did not think that Signor Ghisleri was the sort of man who
gossiped about his friends. Good-bye, dear. I shall see more of you when
Lent is over."

Thereupon the Contessa got into the carriage with rather an odd
expression on her face. As she drove away alone, she bit her lip, and
looked as though she were trying to keep back certain tears that rose in
her eyes.




CHAPTER V.


On the Saturday succeeding Easter, Lord Herbert Arden and Laura Carlyon
were married. The ceremony was conducted, as they both desired, very
quietly and unostentatiously, as was becoming for a young couple who
must live economically. Few persons were asked to be present at the
wedding service, and among them was Pietro Ghisleri. He had seen English
weddings before, but he looked on with some curiosity and with rather
mixed feelings of satisfaction and regret. He thought of his own life as
he stood there, and for one moment he sincerely wished that he were only
awaiting his turn to be dealt with as Arden was, to be taken by the
hand, joined to the woman he loved, and turned out upon the world a
well-behaved, proper, married man. The next moment he smiled faintly and
rather bitterly. Marriage had not been instituted for men like him,
thought Ghisleri. If it had been, it would hardly have been so
successful an institution as it has proved itself. As for the young
couple, he wished them well. Arden was almost the only man for whom he
felt any attachment, and he had the most sincere admiration for Laura.

Without feeling anything in the least resembling affection for the
lovely English girl, he was conscious that he thought of her very often.
Her eyes, which he called holy, and saintly, and sweet, and dark in his
rough rhymed impressions of the day, haunted him by night, like the
eyes of a sad angel following him in his unblest wanderings through
life. Of love for her, he felt not the slightest thrill. His pulse never
quickened when she came, nor was he at all depressed by her departure.
If he had cared for her in the very least, it must have caused him some
little pain to see her married to another before his eyes. Instead, the
only passing regret he felt, was that he could not himself stand in some
such position as Arden, but by another woman's side. To that other he
gave all, as he honestly believed, which he had to give. It was long,
too, since the very possibility of loving a young girl had crossed his
mind, and since his early youth there had not been anything approaching
to the reality of such a love in his life. And yet he knew that he was
in some degree under Laura's influence, and in a way in which he was
assuredly not under that of the Contessa dell' Armi. The consciousness
of this fact annoyed him. There was a good deal of a certain sort of
loyalty in his nature, bad as he believed himself to be, and bad as many
honest and good people who read this history will undoubtedly say that
he was. If such badness could be justified or even excused, it would not
be hard to find some reasonable excuses for him, and after all he was
probably not worse than a hundred others to be found in the society of
every great city. He thought he was worse, sometimes, as he had told
Arden, because he himself also thought that he was more fully aware than
most men of what he was doing and of the consequences of his deeds. It
is most likely, considering his character, that at that time Laura
Carlyon represented to him a species of ideal such as he could admire
with all his heart at a distance, and so nearly coinciding with his own
as to be very often in his thoughts in the place of the one he had so
long ago contracted for himself. All this sounds very complicated, while
the facts in the case were broadly plain. He appreciated Laura in the
highest degree, and did not love her at all. He was sincerely glad that
his best if not his only intimate friend should marry her, and when he
bid them good-bye he did not feel the smallest twinge of regret except
as at a temporary parting from two persons whom he liked.

"You must come and stop with us this summer," said Arden, looking up at
him with flushed and happy face. "You know how glad my brother always is
to see you. Besides, you are an old friend of my wife's, if any further
reasons are necessary. She wants you to come too."

"Of course I do," said Laura, promptly, as she held out her hand.

Strange to say, she had felt far less of that unpleasant, half-timid,
half-pained dislike for Ghisleri, since she had grown used to the idea
of being Herbert Arden's wife.

And now that her name was really changed, and she was forever bound to
her husband, she felt it not at all. It was strange, considering the
circumstances, that she should have the certainty that Arden could and
would protect her, come what might. The poor little shrunken frame
certainly did not suggest the manly strength to shield a woman in
danger, which every woman loves to feel. The thin, white hand would have
been but a bundle of threads in Ghisleri's strong grip. And yet Laura
Arden, as she now was to be called, knew that she would trust her
husband to take her part and win against a stronger and a worse man than
Ghisleri, should she ever be in need; and, what is more, Ghisleri saw
that she did, and his admiration rose still higher. There must be
something magnificent in a woman who could so wholly forget such outward
frailness and deformity in the man she loved, as to forget also that
sometimes in life a man's hand may need that same common brute strength,
just to match it against another's, for a woman's dear sake. Such love
as that, thought Pietro, must be supremely noble, unselfish, and
lasting. Being founded upon no outward illusion, there was no reason why
anything should undermine it, nor why the foundation itself should ever
crumble away.

That was his view, and, on the whole, it was not an unjust one. For the
facts were true. If, when they drove away to the station, Herbert Arden
had suddenly, by magic, been clothed in the colossal frame and iron
strength of San Giacinto himself, Laura would have felt no safer nor
more perfectly shielded and guarded from earthly harm than she really
did while she was pulling up the window lest her husband should catch
cold even in the mild April air, and lovingly arranging the heavy silk
scarf about his neck.

They went southward by common consent, as indeed they did everything.
They would go to England later in the year, in June perhaps, when it was
warmer. In the meanwhile Arden's brother had offered them his yacht, and
they could cruise for a month in the Mediterranean, almost choosing
their own climate day by day, and wholly independent of all the manifold
annoyances, inconveniences, and positive sufferings which beset the path
of young married couples who have not yachts at their disposal. What
both most desired was to be alone together, to have enough of each other
at last, free from the tiresome daily little crowd of social spectators,
and this they could nowhere accomplish so pleasantly and completely as
in the luxuriously fitted vessel lent them by Arden's brother. The
latter had not seen fit to come to the wedding, but Arden had in no way
taken it amiss, though the world had found plenty to say on the subject,
and not by any means to Arden's credit. The said brother was a decidedly
eccentric person of enormous wealth, who hated anything at all
resembling publicity or public ceremony, and was, moreover, a very bad
correspondent.

"I am very glad to hear of your engagement, my dear old brother," he
wrote. "They say Miss Carlyon is good and beautiful. I have no doubt she
is, though I do not at this moment recollect knowing any woman who was
both. I have sent the yacht to Naples for you, if you care for a cruise.
Keep her as long as you like, and telegraph if you want her sent
anywhere else--Nice, for instance, or Venice. Ask your wife to wear the
pearls by way of making acquaintance at second hand. They are what I
could find. I send a man with them, as they might get lost. Now
good-bye, dear boy, enjoy yourself and come to us as soon as you can.
Yours ever, HARRY.

"P.S. As it is often such a bore to draw money in those funny Italian
towns, I enclose a few circular notes which may be useful. Bess and the
children are all well and send love and lots of congratulations. I
suppose you have written to Uncle Herbert."

The few circular notes thus casually alluded to amounted to two thousand
pounds, and it would be unsafe to speculate on the value of the pearls
which the messenger brought on his person and delivered safely into
Arden's hands. "Harry" was not over-lavish, except where his brother was
concerned, and always inwardly regretted that Herbert needed so little
and insisted upon living within his modest income. To "give things to
Herbert" was one of the few real pleasures he extracted from his great
fortune. On the present occasion Arden was glad to accept the money, for
he had the very most vague notions of the expense of married life, and
had anticipated real economy during his honeymoon, which, of course,
could not be quite as pleasant to Laura as having plenty of money to
spend. That last little difficulty being removed, he felt that he could
give himself up light-hearted to the idyl of perfect love which Laura
had brought into his existence.

And forthwith the idyl began, delicate, gentle, lovely as love's life
can be where soul and heart are in harmony, heart to soul, while purity
teaches innocence what it is to be man and wife.

The harmony was real. Laura and her husband had much in common,
intellectually and morally. Not, indeed, that she made any pretence to
superior intelligence or extended culture. Even had she possessed very
remarkable capabilities, the surroundings in which she had been brought
up had not been of a nature to develop them beyond the average. But she
was not especially gifted, except perhaps in having a good memory and a
somewhat unusually sound judgment in most matters. Yet she was not
without taste, and such as she had was not only both healthy and
refined, but coincided to an extraordinary degree with Arden's own. Both
liked the same authors, the same general kind of art, the same things in
nature, and very generally the same people. Both were perhaps at that
time somewhat morbidly inclined to a sort of semi-transcendentalism,
Arden by nature and circumstances, and Laura by attraction. It must not
be supposed that they went to any lengths in that direction. They did
not speculate on spiritual marriage, nor did they agree with that famous
philosopher who at the last was sure that the earth was turning into a
bun and the sea into lemonade in order that man might eat, drink, and be
happy without effort. They did not pursue improbable theories nor offer
subtle perfumes before the altar of impossibility. But they felt a
certain almost unnatural indifference to the concrete world, and lived
in a world of ideas, thoughts, and affections which were quite their
own. It was impossible to predict whether such an existence would last,
or whether it would ultimately change into one more evidently stable, if
also less removed from earth. For the present, at least, both were
indescribably happy.

The question how far it is possible for one of two loving beings to
forget and grow unconscious of very great physical defect in the other
is in itself interesting as showing how far, in a well-organised nature,
the immaterial can get the better of grosser things. To explain what
Laura felt would be to explain the deepest impulses of humanity, and
those may attempt it who feel themselves equal to the task and are
attracted by it. The fact, as such, is undeniable. On the whole, too, it
may be said that there is no great reason why a very refined
intelligence should not overlook material considerations as completely
as in the majority of cases the more coarsely planned consciousness
forgets the existence of intellectual and moral deformity.

Such extreme refinement may not be durable. There is a refinement of
nature, inborn, delicate, and sensitive, and there is a refinement which
depends for its existence upon youth and innocence. Laura possessed all
the latter, and something of the former as well. She would have been
shocked and deeply wounded had she been told that she had married
Herbert Arden out of pity, and yet pity had undeniably given the first
impulse to her love.

The circumstances, too, were favourable for its growth. Neither had felt
much regret in leaving Rome. Apart from her affection for her mother,
Laura had never found much that was congenial in the city in which she
had been brought up as though it had been her birthplace. As for Arden
himself, he was too much accustomed to travelling from place to place to
prefer one city to another in any great degree. So the two were alone
together and desired nothing beyond what they had, which, perhaps, is
the ideal condition for lovers. To most people, however, the honeymoon
is a terrible trial--probably because most young couples are not very
desperately in love with each other. They wander aimlessly about in all
directions, a sort of joint sacrifice, perpetually tortured and daily
offered up on the altar of the diabolical courier, crushed beneath the
ubiquitous Juggernaut hotel-keeper, bound continually in new and arid
places to be torn by the vulture guide, and ultimately sent home more or
less penniless, quite temperless, and perhaps permanently disgusted with
one another and with married life. And yet the absurd farce is kept up,
in ninety and nine cases out of a hundred, because custom sanctions
it--as though the sanction of custom were necessary when two people wish
to be harmlessly happy in their own way.

But with the Ardens it was quite different. They were quite beyond the
regions of the guide, the courier, and the hotel-keeper, and they loved
each other so much that neither ever irritated the other, a condition of
existence probably closely resembling that of the saints in paradise.

Nothing could exceed Laura's watchfulness and care where Arden's health
was concerned, and, fortunately for her, he was not one of those men who
resent being constantly taken care of. Indeed, poor man, he needed all
she gave him in that way, for the winter season with its unusual gaiety
and the necessary exposure to a certain amount of night air in all
weathers, had severely tried his constitution. But now the sea and the
southern sun strengthened him, and sometimes there was even something
like healthy colour in his face. Happiness, too, is said to be a good
medicine, better perhaps than any in the world, and Arden had his share
of it, and a most abundant share. Never, he said to himself, had a man
been so blessed as he, nor at a time when he so little expected
blessings, having made up his mind that all he could hope for had
already been given him in this world. He almost forgot that he was a
cripple, as he sat in his deep cane chair by Laura's side, looking from
her to the dancing light on the water, and from the blue water to her
dark eyes again. He seemed to go every day through a round of beauty,
from one delicious vision to another, returning between each to that one
of all others which he loved best, and knew to be all his own. And those
same eyes of Laura's grew less sad than they had been in the beginning.
The sunlight got into them, as into dark jewels, and made stars of light
about their central depths. The soft wind blew on her clear white cheek
and lent her natural, healthy pallor a warmth it had not before. Her
very step grew more elastic, and the firm, well-shaped hands seemed more
than ever strong. Almost beautiful before, there were moments when she
was quite beautiful indeed, as innocent girlhood changed to pure
womanhood in the sweet southern air.

Laura read aloud a great deal in the intervals of conversation, and the
days passed almost too quickly. The vessel was a large steam-yacht, of
the modern type, comfortable in the extreme, and capable of
accommodating a large party--for two persons it was almost palatial.
Whatever the weather, cool or hot, rainy or dry, rough or fair, there
was always a place where they could install themselves in the morning or
the afternoon, and talk and read to their hearts' content. They had no
fixed plan either in their wanderings, but went where their fancy took
them, to Palermo, to Messina, to Syracuse. They sat together in the vast
ruined theatre above magic Taormina, and gazed on the sunlit sea and
Etna's snowy crest. They went to Malta, they drove, side by side,
through the lovely gardens of Corfu. They ran in fair weather up to the
lagoons of Venice, and wandered in a gondola through the wide canals and
narrow water lanes of the most beautiful city in the world. Then down
the long Adriatic again, past Zara and Xanthe, round Matapan to the
Piræus--then, when they had had their fill of Athens, away by one long
run to Sicily again, to Algiers next, and then to Barcelona and the
Spanish coast, homeward bound at last, towards England. For the weather
was growing warm now, and Laura noticed that she saw less often in
Arden's face the colour she had watched with such pleasure during the
first weeks. There was no cause for anxiety, she thought, but it was
possible that he needed always an even temperature, neither cold nor
hot, and it was time to reach England, before the July sun had scorched
the southern land.

And throughout all this quiet time the song of happiness was ever in
their ears. The world they cared so little for, and which had taken the
trouble to say such disagreeable things about them, was left infinitely
far behind in their new life. From time to time letters reached Laura
from Rome, and Arden had one from Ghisleri, containing little detailed
news, but full of angry threats at a kind of general undefined enemy,
which might be humanity taken all together, or might be some one
particular person whom the writer had in his mind. Pietro generally
wrote in that way. Rarely, indeed, did he mention people by name, and
then only when he had something to say to their credit. It was a part
of what Arden called his absurd reticence, and which, absurd or not, was
certainly exaggerated. Possibly Ghisleri had, at some time in his youth,
experienced the extremely unpleasant consequences of being indiscreet,
and had promised himself not to succumb to that form of weakness again.
At all events, he found that though Arden sometimes laughed at him, he
never got into trouble through being discreet, and other people were not
disposed to be merry at his expense. It was a long time since he had
quarrelled with any one, and, having turned peaceable, the world
promptly accused him of cynicism and indifference, an accusation which
did not annoy him at all. Indeed, it was rather convenient than
otherwise, that people should think of him as they did, since the result
was that less was expected of him than of most people.

Laura's mother wrote loving letters, full of simple household news, and
of solicitude for her daughter and Arden, asking many questions as to
their plans for the future, and continually expressing the hope that
they would spend the coming winter in Rome.

"What do you think of it?" Laura asked one day, as they sat together on
deck in the sunshine.

"That is one of those things which you must decide, dear," answered
Arden. "Of course I suppose I ought to spend the winter in the south as
usual. I do not believe I could stand England in December and January.
There are lots of delightful southern places where we could stay a few
months, besides Rome--but then, in Rome you will have your mother. That
makes a great difference."

"You are first now, love," said Laura. "You come before my mother--much
as I love her."

"Darling--how good you are!" He took her hand and kissed it softly.

"Not half as good as I ought to be. But there are two things to be
considered, dear. There is the climate, as you say, and then there is a
social question we have never talked about--it seems so far away now. In
the first place, does Rome really suit you? Are you always well there,
as you were last winter?"

"Oh, yes. I have always been perfectly well in Rome, and I like the
place immensely, besides."

"And you have your friend, Signor Ghisleri, too. That is another point.
On the other hand, I do not think either of us would ever wish to stay a
whole winter with my mother and step-father. We must live somewhere by
ourselves, and we shall have to live very quietly."

"The more quietly the better. Is that the social question, darling?"

"No," answered Laura, "but it is connected with it. There is something I
never spoke of. Did it ever strike you, when you first knew me, that
somehow I was not so much liked as other girls in society? Do not think
I ask the question out of any sort of vanity. I want to know what your
impression was. Tell me quite frankly, will you?"

"Of course I will. It did strike me--I never knew whether you were aware
of it. I even tried to find out the reason of it, and to some extent I
believe I did."

"Did you?" asked Laura, with sudden interest. "I wish I knew--I have so
often thought about it all."

Arden laughed, leaning back in his chair and looking at her face.

"It is the most absurd story I ever heard," he said. "I ought not even
to say I heard it, for I guessed it from little things that happened.
People think that your step-sister's husband, Savelli, is in love with
you, and I suppose they imagine that you have something to do with
it--encouraged him, and that sort of thing. I am quite sure that Donna
Adele--am I to call her Adele now?--is jealous, for I have witnessed the
manifestation with my own eyes. It is all too utterly ridiculous, but as
you are quite English you were at a disadvantage, and were not as
popular as you ought to have been."

He laughed again, and this time Laura joined in his laughter.

"Is that it?" she cried. "Poor Francesco! To think of any one suspecting
that he could be in love with me, when he is so perfectly happy with his
wife! And he is always so nice, and talks to me more than any one.
Whenever I am stranded at a party, he comes and takes care of me."

"That is probably the origin of the gossip," observed Arden, still
smiling. "But I do not think we shall have any nonsense of that sort
now. Do you think your mother understood it all?"

"No--and I believe she was far less conscious that there was anything
wrong, than I was. Poor Francesco! I cannot help laughing."

Laura was sincerely amused by the tale, as she well might be, and as
Pietro Ghisleri would have been, had he heard it. The story Arden had
put together out of the evidence he had was, as a matter of fact, the
very converse of the one actually circulated.

"I do not see," said he, "why this bit of fantastic gossip need be taken
into consideration, when we are talking of our winter in Rome. What
difference can it possibly make?"

"For you, dear--and a little for me, too. Neither of us would care to go
back to a society where there was anything to make us disliked. As you
say, there are plenty of other places, and as for my mother, she could
come and see us, and stop a little while, and I am sure she would if we
asked her."

"Do you mean to say, Laura, that you seriously believe our position
would not be everything it ought to be?" asked Arden, in some surprise.

"Oh, no; it would be all right, of course. Only we might not be exactly
the centre of the gay set."

"Which neither of us care to be in the least."

"Not in the least. We are our own set, you and I--are we not?"

Laura thought of what Arden had told her for a long time afterwards, and
tried to explain to herself by his theory all the infinitesimal details
which had formerly shown her that she was not a universal favourite. But
the story did not cover all the ground. Of one thing, however, she
became almost certain--Adele was her enemy, for some reason or other,
and was a person to beware of, should Laura and her husband return to
Rome. It had taken her long to form this conviction, but being once
formed it promised to be durable, as her convictions generally were.

It was with sincere regret that the couple left the yacht at last. They
had grown to look upon it almost as a permanent home, and to wish that
it might be so altogether. Nevertheless Laura could not but see that
Arden's health improved again as they reached a cooler climate and
travelled northward towards his brother's home. The season was not yet
over in London, but "Harry" did not like London much, and did not like
the season there at all. What the Marchioness thought about it no one
knows to this day, but she appeared to resign herself with a good grace
to the life her husband chose to lead. The latter welcomed his brother
and Laura in his own fashion, with an odd mixture of cordiality and
stiffness, the latter only superficial, the former thoroughly genuine
and heartfelt, as Arden explained to his wife without delay.

Existence in an English country house was quite new to her, and but for
the abominable weather for which that year remained famous, she would at
first have enjoyed it very much. The rain, however, seemed
inexhaustible. Day after day it poured, night after night the heavy
mists rose from park, and woodland, and meadow, and moor. It seemed as
though the sun would never shine again. Arden never grew weary of those
long days spent with Laura, nor indeed was she ever tired of being with
the man she loved. But being young and strong, she would gladly have
breathed the bright air again, while he, on his part, lost appetite,
caught cold continually, and grew daily paler and more languid. Little
by little Laura became anxious about him and her care redoubled. He had
never looked as he looked now, even when most worn and wearied out with
the life of society he had led in Rome before his marriage. His face was
growing thin, almost to emaciation, and his hands were transparent.
Laura made up her mind that something must be done at once. It was clear
that he longed for the south again, and it was probable that nothing
else could restore him to comparative strength.

"Let us go away, Herbert," she said one day. "You are not looking well,
and I believe we shall never see the sun again unless we go to the
south."

"No," answered Arden, "I am not well. I shall be all right again as soon
as we get to Rome."

He seemed to take it for granted that Rome should be their destination,
and on the whole Laura was glad of it. She would be glad to see her
mother, too, after so many months of separation. So it was decided, and
before long they were once more on their way.

It was not an easy journey for either of them. Arden was now decidedly
out of health, and needed much care at all times, while Laura herself
was so nervous and anxious about him that she often felt her hand
tremble violently when she smoothed his cushion in the railway carriage,
or poured him out something to drink. She would not hear of being
helped, when her husband's man, who had been with him since his boyhood,
privately entreated her to take a nurse, and to give herself rest from
time to time, especially during the journey.

"We must not let his lordship know how ill he is, Donald," she answered
gently. "You must be very careful about that, too, when you are alone
with him. He will be quite well again in Rome," she added hopefully.

Donald shook his head wisely, and refrained from further expostulation.
He had discovered that his new mistress did not easily change her mind
upon any subject, and never changed it at all when she thought she was
right in regard to Lord Herbert's health.

And in due time they reached the end of their journey, and took up
their quarters in the old house known as the Tempietto, which stands
just where the Via Gregoriana and the Via Sistina end together in the
open square of the Trinità de' Monti--a quarter and a house dear to
English people since the first invasion of foreigners, but by no means
liked or considered especially healthy by the Romans.




CHAPTER VI.


Meanwhile, the lives of some of the other persons concerned in this
history were less idyllic, and very probably more satisfactory to
themselves. Having survived the season, and having borne the severe
Lenten mortification implied in not capering nightly to the tune of two
or three fiddles and a piano, the world arose after Easter like a giant
refreshed with wine, and enjoyed a final fling before breaking up for
the summer. Having danced with the windows shut, it now danced with the
windows open, and found the change delightful, as indeed it is. Instead
of sitting in corners together, the couples who had anything to say to
one another now stood or sat in the deep embrasures, glancing up at the
starlit sky to see whether the dawn were yet breaking. As for the rest,
there was little change at all. The little Vicomte de Bompierre had
transferred his attentions from the Marchesa di San Giacinto to Donna
Maria Boccapaduli, and the Marchesa, who was in love with her husband,
did not seem to care at all, but remained on the best of terms with
Donna Maria, to the latter's infinite satisfaction. The Contessa dell'
Armi attracted more attention because some one had started the report
that dell' Armi himself was in a state of jealousy bordering upon
delirium, that he had repeatedly struck her, and that he spent the few
hours he could spare from this unwholesome exercise and from his
parliamentary duties in tearing out his hair by the handful. The
picture of dell' Armi evoked by these stories was striking, dramatic,
and somewhat novel, so that every one was delighted. As a matter of
fact, the Count did not care a straw for his wife, rarely saw her at
all, and then only to discuss the weather. He had married her in order
that her fortune might help him in his political career, he had got what
he wanted, and he was supremely indifferent to the rest. The sad part of
the matter was--if any one had known the truth--that poor Maddalena
dell' Armi had been married out of a convent, and had then and there
fallen madly in love with him, her own husband. He had resented her
excessive affection, as it interfered with his occupations and
amusements, and after an interval of five years, during which the
unhappy young wife shed endless tears and suffered intensely, he had the
satisfaction of seeing that she no longer loved him in the least, and
rather avoided him than otherwise. In taking a fancy to Pietro Ghisleri
he thought she had shown considerable discrimination, since every one
knew that Ghisleri was a very discreet man. The amazing cynicism of his
view altogether escaped him. He was occupied in politics. If he had
observed it, he would have undoubtedly laughed as heartily as he did
when a lady on the outskirts of society told him that he was supposed to
be a jealous husband.

But the rest of the world watched Maddalena and Pietro with great
interest. They had quarrelled--or they had made it up--they had not
danced together during one whole evening--they had danced a waltz and
then a quadrille, the one after the other--Maddalena had been crying--by
a coincidence, Ghisleri looked unusually strong and well--Pietro, again,
was looking somewhat haggard and weary, and the Contessa met the world
that evening with a stony stare. There was endless matter for
speculation, and accordingly the world speculated without end, and, as
usual, to no purpose. Ghisleri was absolutely reticent, and Maddalena
was a very proud woman, who, in spite of her past sufferings, did her
best not to let any one suspect that she and her husband were on bad
terms. She was also unhappy in the present about a very different
matter, concerning which she was not inclined to speak with any one.
Donna Adele's last decided attempt to defame Lord Herbert Arden had, to
a certain extent, been successful, but it had also produced another
result of which Adele did not know, but which would have given her even
greater satisfaction. It had almost caused a quarrel between Ghisleri
and the Contessa.

It will be remembered that the latter heard the story from Donna Maria
Boccapaduli on the steps of a church in Holy Week. She was at the time
more unhappy than usual. Something had touched the finer chords of her
nature, and she felt a sort of horror of herself and of the life she was
leading--very genuine in its way, and intensely painful. Donna Maria's
story was revolting to her, for just then everything and everybody
seemed to be false--even Ghisleri. She did not even stop, as she would
have done at any other time, to weigh the value of the story, and to ask
herself whether it were likely that he could thus deliberately betray
his friend, and especially to Adele Savelli whom she believed he
disliked. Even with her he was reticent, and she had never quite assured
herself of his opinion concerning Adele, but she had watched him
narrowly and had drawn her own conclusions. And now, if he had betrayed
the man whom he called his friend, he must be capable of betraying the
woman he loved.

"Is it true that you have been talking to Donna Adele Savelli about your
friend Arden?" she asked, when they met later on the same afternoon.

"Quite true," answered Ghisleri, indifferently. "We were talking about
him yesterday afternoon."

"Do you mind telling me what you said?" asked the Contessa, her eyes
hardening and her whole face growing scornful.

"I have not the least objection," said Ghisleri, coldly. He at once
gave her all the details of the conversation as far as he could remember
them; his memory was accurate in such matters and he scarcely omitted a
word.

"Am I to believe you or her?" asked the Contessa when she had listened
to the end.

"As I am speaking the truth, it might be as well to believe me."

"And how am I to know that you are speaking the truth, now or at any
other time? You would not change colour, nor look at me less frankly, if
you were telling me the greatest falsehood imaginable. Why should I
believe you?"

"I am sure I do not know," answered Ghisleri. "I would only like to be
sure whether, as a general rule, you mean to believe me in future, or
not. If you do not, I need not say anything, I suppose. Conversation
would be singularly simplified."

"You would not be so angry with me now, if your story were true," said
the Contessa, with a forced laugh.

"A man may reasonably be annoyed at being called a liar even by a lady,"
retorted Ghisleri.

"And you do not take the least trouble to defend yourself--"

"Not the least. Why should you believe my defence any more than my plain
statement? You have rather a logical mind--you ought to see that."

"Are you trying to quarrel with me? You will succeed if you go on in
this way."

"No. I am doing my best to answer your questions. I should be very sorry
to quarrel with you. You know it. Or are you going to doubt that too?"

"From the tone in which you say it, and from the way you act, I am
inclined to."

"You are in a very unbelieving humour to-day."

"I have reason to be."

"Am I the cause?"

"Yes." The Contessa was not quite sure why she said it, but for the
moment she felt that it was true, as perhaps it was in an indirect way.

"Do you know that although you have asked me a great many questions
which I have answered as well as I could, you have not told me what it
is I am accused of saying?"

"You are accused of saying," answered the Contessa, looking straight
into his eyes, "that your friend Lord Herbert Arden is in the habit of
taking too much wine. Is that so nice a thing to have said?"

Ghisleri's face darkened, and the blood throbbed in his temples.

"As I have told you precisely what I really said," he replied, "I shall
say nothing more. Only this--if you have any sense of justice left,
which I begin to doubt, you will ask San Giacinto whether he thinks it
probable that I would say such a thing. That is all. I suppose you will
believe him."

"I do not think I believe any one. Besides, as you say, he can only
testify to your character, and say that the thing is improbable. Of
course he would do that. Men always defend each other against women."

"He can tell you something more if he chooses," answered Ghisleri.

"If he chooses!" The Contessa's scornful expression returned. "If he
tells me nothing you will remind me of that word, and say that he did
not choose. How you always arrange everything beforehand to leave
yourself a way of escape."

"I am sorry you should think so," said Ghisleri, gravely.

"I am sorry that I have to think so. It does not increase my
self-respect, nor my vanity in my judgment."

They parted on very bad terms that day, and two or three days more
passed before they saw each other again. The Contessa had almost made up
her mind that she would not speak to San Giacinto at all, and Ghisleri
began to think that she wished to break with him permanently. Far more
sensitive than any one supposed, he had been deeply wounded by her words
and tone, so deeply indeed that he scarcely wished to meet her for the
present. The world did not fail to see the coldness that had come
between them, and laughed heartily over it. The Contessa, said the
world, thought that the way to keep Ghisleri was to be cold to him and
encourage Pietrasanta, but she did not know dear Ghisleri, who did not
care in the very least, who had not a particle of sensitiveness in him,
and had never really loved any one but the beautiful Princess Corleone
who died of fever in Naples five years ago, and of whom he never spoke.

But as chance would have it, the Contessa found herself talking to San
Giacinto one evening, when she was feeling very lonely and unhappy, and
her half-formed resolution broke down as suddenly as it had presented
itself. The giant looked at her keenly for a moment, bent his heavy
black brows, and then told her the story of what had taken place at the
club. He, who saw most things, and talked little of them, noted the
gradual change in her face, and how the light came back to it while he
was speaking. She understood that the man whom she had accused of
betraying his friend had faced a roomful of men in his defence, and on
the very ground now under discussion, and she repented of what she had
done. Then she swore vengeance on Adele Savelli.

The world saw that a reconciliation had taken place, and concluded that
Maddalena dell' Armi had abandoned her foolish plan of trying to attract
Ghisleri by being cold to him. Ghisleri, indeed! As though he cared!

"But I have no particular wish to be revenged on Donna Adele," objected
Ghisleri, when the Contessa spoke to him on the subject. "That sort of
thing is a disease of the brain. There are people who cannot see things
as they are. She is one of them."

"How indifferent you are!" sighed Maddalena. "I wonder whether you were
always so."

"Not always," answered Pietro, thoughtfully.

In due time the short Easter season was over, the foreigners departed,
and many of the Romans followed their example, especially those whose
country places were within easy reach of the city, by carriage or by
rail. The Contessa went to pay her regular annual visit at her
father's, near Florence,--her mother had long been dead,--and Ghisleri
remained in Rome, unable to make up his mind what to do. Something
seemed to bind him to the town this year, and though he went away for a
day or two from time to time, he always came back very soon. Even his
damaged old castle did not attract him as it usually did, though he had
begun to restore it a little during the last few years, a little at a
time, as his modest fortune allowed. There was an odd sort of foresight
in his character. He laughed at the idea of being married, and yet he
had a presentiment that he would some day change his mind and take a
wife. In case that should ever happen, Torre de' Ghisleri would be at
once a beautiful and an economical retreat for the summer months. Though
he had a reputation for extravagance and for living always a little
beyond his income, he was in reality increasing his property. He was
constantly buying small bits of land in the neighbourhood of his castle,
with a vague idea that he might ultimately get the old estate together
again. He generally bought on mortgage, binding himself to pay at a
certain date, and as he was a very honourable man in all financial
transactions, he invariably paid, though sometimes at considerable
sacrifice. He said to himself that unless he were bound he would
inevitably throw away the little money he had to spare. It was a
curiously practical trait in such an unruly and almost lawless
character, but he did such things when he could, and then thought no
more about them until a fresh opportunity presented itself. He was a man
whose life and whole power of interest in life were almost constantly
absorbed by the two or three persons to whom he was sincerely attached,
a fact never realised by those who knew him--a passionate man at heart,
and one who despised himself for many reasons--a man who would have
wished to be a Launcelot in fidelity, a Galahad in cleanness of heart,
an Arthur for justice and frankness, but who was indeed terribly far
from resembling any of the three. A man liable to most human weaknesses,
but having just enough of something better to make him hate weakness in
himself and understand it in others without condemning it too harshly in
them. He had the wish to overcome it in his own character and life, but
when the victory looked too easy it did not tempt him, for his vanity
was of the kind which is only satisfied with winning hard fights, and
rarely roused except by the prospect of them, while quite indifferent to
small success of any kind--either for good or evil.

And this year, for some reason which he did not attempt to explain to
himself, he lingered on in Rome, living a lonely life, avoiding the club
where many of his acquaintances still congregated, taking his meals
irregularly at garden restaurants, and spending most of his evenings in
wandering about Rome by himself. The old places attracted him strongly.
Many associations clung to the shady streets, the huge old palaces, and
the dusky churches. Ten years of such a life as he had led had left many
traces behind them, many sensitive spots in his complicated nature which
inanimate things had power to touch keenly and thrill again with pain or
pleasure. There was much that was sad, indeed, in these recollections,
but there were also many memories dear and tender and almost free from
the sting of self-reproach. He was not one to crave excitement for its
own sake, nor to miss it when it was past. It often chanced, indeed,
that he could find the few things that pleased him, the few people he
liked, in the midst of the world's noisiest fair, but he would always
have preferred to be alone with them, to meet with them when he was
quite sure of being altogether himself and not the overwrought, nervous
being which he came to be during the rush of the season, in spite of his
undeniable physical strength. Those who need excitement most are either
those who have never lived in it, or those unhappily morbid beings who
cannot live without it, because by force of habit it has become the only
atmosphere which their lungs can breathe and in which they can act more
or less normally.

Ghisleri followed the Ardens in imagination as they pursued their
wedding trip. He rarely knew exactly where they were, but he was
familiar with all the places they were visiting, and he liked to fancy
them enjoying together all there was to be seen and done. Had he not
himself still been young, he would almost have fancied that he felt a
fatherly interest in their doings. Then he heard that they were in
England, and at last, when he had made up his mind to go away for a
month or two, he learned that Arden was in bad health. He was distressed
by the news, and wished he could see his old friend, if only for a day,
to judge for himself of his condition. But that was impossible at
present. He was not always free to dispose of his time as he pleased,
and as he had been during the past months. Moreover, the world was not
quite just when it said that Ghisleri did not "care," as it expressed
the state of mind it attributed to him. Between going to England, and
going to Vallombrosa, near Florence, he did not hesitate a moment.

So the autumn came round again, and when he returned to his lodging in
Rome, he found that the Ardens were already installed in the Tempietto.
The Savelli couple were still out of town at the family castle in the
Sabines, but the Prince and Princess of Gerano had come back.

Ghisleri found both Laura and Arden greatly changed. The latter's
appearance shocked him especially, and he felt almost from the first
that his friend was doomed. The man who was not supposed to care spent
at least one sleepless night, turning over in his mind the various
possibilities of life and death. On the following morning at twelve
o'clock, he climbed the steps to the Trinità de' Monti, and asked to see
Lady Herbert Arden alone, a request which was easily granted, as her
husband now rarely rose until one, and then only for a few hours.

Laura's eyes looked preternaturally large and deep--almost sunken,
Ghisleri thought--and she had grown thin, and even paler than she
usually was when in good health. He took the seat she pointed to, by the
open fire, and stared into the flames absently for some seconds. It was
a rather dreary morning early in November, and the air in the streets
was raw and damp. At last he looked up.

"You are anxious about your husband, Lady Herbert?" he said.

Laura sighed, and opened her white hands to the warmth, as she sat on
the other side of the fireplace. But she said nothing. She could not
deny what he had told her, for she was in mortal anxiety by day and
night.

"It is very natural," said Ghisleri, trying to speak more cheerfully.
"But I do not think there is any very serious reason for anticipating
danger. I have known Arden many years, and I have often known him to be
ill before now."

Laura glanced nervously at Pietro, and looked away again almost
instantly. There was a frightened look in her face as though she feared
something unexpected. Perhaps she was afraid of believing too readily in
Ghisleri's comforting view.

"All the same," he continued, "there is no denying that he is in very
bad health. Forgive me if I seem officious. I do not love him as you do,
of course, but we have been more or less good friends these many
years--since very long before you knew him."

"More or less good friends!" repeated Laura, in a disappointed tone.
"Herbert calls you his best friend."

"I dare say he has many better than I am," answered Ghisleri, quietly.
"But I have certainly never liked any man as much as I like him. That is
why I come to you to-day. Do you not think that he should be taken care
of, or, at least thoroughly examined by the best specialist to be
found?"

"I have thought of it," said Laura, after a short pause. "Of course the
doctor comes regularly, but I do not think he is a really great
authority. I am afraid that anything like a consultation might alarm
Herbert. I see how determined he is to be cheerful, but I cannot help
seeing also that he is despondent about himself."

"There need be nothing like a consultation. Will you trust me in this
matter?"

Laura looked at him. She felt, on a sudden, the old, almost
inexplicable, timid dislike of him with which she had long been
familiar, and she hesitated before she answered.

"Could I not manage it myself?" she asked abruptly. "It would seem more
natural."

Ghisleri's face grew slowly cold, and his eyes fixed themselves on the
fire.

"I thought I might be able to help you," he said. "Have you any
particular reason for distrusting me as you do, Lady Herbert?"

Laura's face contracted. She was not angry, but she was sorry that she
had shown him what she thought, and it was hard to answer the question
truthfully, for she was not really sure whether she had any excuse for
doubting his frankness or not. In the present instance she assuredly had
none.

"I should certainly never distrust you where Herbert is concerned," she
said, after a short pause. "It is only that it seems more natural, as I
said, that I should be the one to speak to him and to arrange about the
specialist's visit."

"Very well. Forgive me, as I begged you to at first, if I have seemed
officious. I will come and see your husband this afternoon."

The consequence of this conversation was that Laura, being even more
seriously alarmed than before, since she realised that Ghisleri himself
was anxious, spoke to Arden about the necessity for seeing a better
doctor, breaking it to him with all the loving gentleness she knew how
to use with him, and Arden consented without much apparent reluctance to
being examined by a man who had a great reputation. The latter took a
long time before he gave an opinion, and ultimately declared to Laura
that her husband was consumptive and would probably not live a year.
Laura suffered in that moment as she would not have believed it possible
to suffer, and it was long before she could compose herself enough to
go to Arden. It was of course impossible to tell him all the doctor had
said. She told him that his lungs were delicate, and that he must be
very careful.

"It seems to me I am always very careful," said Lord Herbert, patiently.

She looked at him and saw for the hundredth time how ill he seemed. She
tried to turn quickly and leave the room, but she could not. Suddenly
the passionate tears broke out, and she fell on her knees beside his
chair and clasped the poor little body in her arms.

"Oh, Herbert, my love,--my love!" she sobbed.

Then he felt that he was doomed. Had she loved him less, she could have
kept the secret better. But he was brave still.

"Hush, darling, hush!" he said, gently stroking her coal-black hair with
his transparent hand. "You must not believe these foolish doctors. I
have been just as ill before."

But the mischief was done, and she felt that she had done it, and her
remorse knew no bounds. In spite of his courage, Arden lost heart. The
next time Ghisleri saw him he was much worse. Laura went out and left
the two together.

"Has anything worried you?" asked Ghisleri. "You look tired."

Arden was silent for a long time, and his friend knew that he was
carefully weighing his answer.

"Yes," he said at last, "something has worried me very much. I can trust
you not to speak--never to speak, even to my wife, of what I am going to
say--especially if anything should happen," he added, as though with a
painful afterthought.

"I will never speak of it," replied Pietro, gravely.

"I know you will not. We had a consultation the other day. Of course
they were very careful not to tell me what they thought, but I could not
help guessing it. You know how truthful my wife is--she could not deny
it when I put the question directly. It is all up with me, my dear
fellow, and I know it. I am consumptive. It will last a year at the
most."

"I do not believe a word of it!" exclaimed Ghisleri, with unusual heat.
"You are not in the least like a consumptive man!"

"The doctor is a good specialist," said Arden, quietly. "But that is not
all. I have been so happy--I am so happy in many ways still--that I am
weak enough to cling to my life, such as it is. But there is something
else, Ghisleri. I knew I was ill, and I knew there was danger--but this
is different. I had hoped to see my child, even if I were to die. I do
not hope to see it now--you understand? Those things are always
inherited."

A deadly paleness came over Arden's face, and his clear brown eyes
seemed unsteady for a moment. His face twitched nervously, and his hands
were strained as they grasped the arms of his chair. Ghisleri looked
very grave.

"I repeat that I believe the doctor to be wholly mistaken. It would
hardly be the first time that doctors have made such mistakes.
Consumptive people do not behave as you do. They always feel that they
are getting well, until the very last, and they have a regular cough,
not to be mistaken, and they eat a great deal. You are quite different."

"But he examined, me so carefully," objected Arden, though he could not
help seeing a ray of hope.

"I cannot help that. He was mistaken."

That afternoon Ghisleri telegraphed to a great European celebrity whom
he knew in Paris, to come if possible at once, no matter at what
sacrifice of money. Forty-eight hours later the man of genius was
breakfasting with Pietro in his rooms.

"I will ask leave to bring you as a friend," said the latter. "I have
begged you to come on my own responsibility."

He wrote a note to Laura, explaining that an old acquaintance, a man of
world-wide fame, was spending a couple of days with him, and begged
permission to introduce him. He might amuse Arden, he said. He did not
mention the doctor's profession. It was just possible that neither Arden
nor Laura had ever heard of the man who was so great in a world not
theirs. Laura asked them both to tea by way of answer.

As it turned out, the Ardens had a very vague idea that the Frenchman
was a man of science. In the course of conversation he admitted that he
had studied medicine, and then went on to talk about the latest news
from Paris, social, artistic, and literary. Arden was charmed with him,
and Laura was really grateful to Ghisleri for helping to amuse her
husband.

Would they both come to luncheon the next day? They would, with
pleasure, and they went away together.

"Well?" asked Ghisleri, as they walked towards the Pincio in the early
dusk, just to breathe the air.

"I think he may live," answered the great man. "I believe it is a
trouble of the heart with an almost exhausted vitality."

Laura was left alone with her husband. Whether it was the doctor's
personal influence, or whether Arden was really momentarily better, she
could not tell, but he looked as he had not looked for two months.

"That man delights me," he said dreamily. "I do not know what there is
about him, and it is very foolish--but I fancy that if he were a doctor,
he might cure me--or keep me alive longer," he added, with a sort of
reluctant sadness.

Laura looked at him in surprise.

"He said he had studied medicine," she answered. "Shall I ask Signor
Ghisleri, if, as a friend, he would come and give his opinion?"

"It is too much to ask of a stranger."

"Nothing is too much to ask," she said quietly. In her own room she
wrote a note to Pietro.

With many apologies, she explained to him that her husband was so
delighted with Ghisleri's friend, that she believed it might make a
difference if, as a doctor--since he was one--the latter would be
willing to see him once and give his opinion.

Pietro smiled when he read the note. On the following day the great man
went again to the Tempietto, and with many protestations of incompetence
did as he was requested, assuring Lady Herbert that it was only in
deference to her wishes that he did so.

"You are not consumptive--in the least, and you may even become strong,"
he said, after a very long and thorough examination. "That, at least,"
he added, "is my humble opinion."

Arden's face brightened suddenly. But Laura and Ghisleri remained alone
together for a moment afterwards, while the doctor was already putting
on his coat.

"After all," said Laura, despondently, "it was to please Herbert. The
man says that his opinion is not worth very much."

"He is the greatest living authority on the subject," answered Ghisleri.
"You may safely take his opinion."

Laura's face expressed her surprise, and at the same time, an
unspeakable relief.

"Are you sure?" she asked, in trembling tones.

"Ask your doctor. He will tell you. Will you forgive me my little trick,
Lady Herbert? As he was here, I thought you might like to see him."
Ghisleri put out his hand to take his leave, and Laura pressed it
warmly.

"If I had ever had anything to forgive, I would forgive you--for your
great kindness to me," she said, and the tears were almost in her eyes.
"It is you who should forgive me for not trusting you when you first
spoke. How wrong I was!"

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Ghisleri. "It was very natural."

And so it seemed to him, perhaps. But such little tricks, as he called
what he had done, cost money, and that year Ghisleri did not buy the bit
of land which stood next on the list in his scheme for reacquiring the
old estate.




CHAPTER VII.


Arden's health improved, at first very rapidly, and then more slowly, as
he seemed to approach what, for him, was a normal condition of strength.
The month of December was fine, and he was able to drive out constantly,
to be up most of the day, and to talk with acquaintances without any
great fatigue. As a natural consequence, too, Laura regained in a very
short time all that she had lost, and her eyes no longer looked sunken
and haggard nor her face unnaturally pale.

Her gratitude to Ghisleri was boundless, and as the days went on and
Arden had no relapse, she began to wonder how she could ever have felt
anything approaching to dislike for the man to whom she almost owed her
husband's life. Pietro, on his part, came often to the house and saw the
change that had taken place in her manner towards him. He was pleased,
though he had not thought of producing any impression upon her by what
he had done solely for Arden's sake, for he had long admired her, and
felt that she was very like a certain ideal of woman of which he never
talked. But his pleasure was not very genuine, after all. He hardly
believed that Laura's mood would last, because he had hitherto had
little experience of lasting moods in women. For the present, at least,
she believed in him and was grateful.

About this time Donna Adele, her husband, and his father and mother all
came back from the country, and at or near the same period the great
majority of the old society stagers appeared again as forerunners of the
coming season. The gay set was not yet all assembled, and it was even
reported that some of them would not come at all, for there was
financial trouble in the air, and many people had lost money, or found
their incomes diminished by the general depression. Nevertheless, when
Christmas came, few of the familiar faces of the previous year were
missing, and those few have not been seen in this history.

"This is the beginning," said Gouache to Ghisleri. "You may remember
that charming description of chaos in the sacred writings: 'in the
beginning darkness was over all the earth'--very like Rome before the
season begins. The resemblance ends there, my dear friend. The sentence
which follows would hardly be applicable. Are we to have another Shrove
Tuesday feast this year for the sake of giving sin a last chance? Have
you another diabolical production ready?"

"I am afraid not," answered Ghisleri. "Besides, one should never repeat
a good thing."

"That is what my wife says," observed Anastase, thoughtfully. "That dear
woman! But for her, I should do nothing but repeat my successful
pictures--if possible by a chemical process. It would be so easy! That
is the way the modern galleries of old masters are formed. There is a
little man in the Via da' Falegnami who turns out the article at a fixed
price, including the cost of the green wood for smoking the Rembrandts,
and the genuine old panels for doing the Botticellis. I often go to see
him. He knows more about grinding colours, and about vehicles and
varnishes, and the price of lamp-black than any artist I ever knew. He
painted that portrait of Raphael by himself--by Raphael, I mean, for
Prince Durakoff last year, and found the documents to prove its
existence among his papers. It took him six months, but it was well
done, especially the parchments. There was even the receipt for the
money paid to Raphael for the picture by the Most Excellent House of
Frangipani, signed by the painter himself--I mean by Raphael. Cheap, at
ten thousand francs. Durakoff paid the dealer eighty thousand without
bargaining. He did not reflect that if it had been genuine it would have
been worth five hundred thousand, and, if not, that it was not worth
fifty centimes."

"Rather like a friend," observed Ghisleri.

"Friendship is a matter of fortune," said Gouache, "as love is a
question of climate."

"You are not usually so cynical. What has happened?"

"My wife has been amusing me, this morning, with an account of society's
opinions on various subjects. One-half of her friends assure her that
black is white, and the other half tell her it is a vivid yellow. That
is called conversation. They give it you with tea, milk, and sugar,
between five and seven in the afternoon."

Gouache seemed to be in a somewhat communicative frame of mind. As a
matter of fact he often was with Ghisleri, whom he trusted more than
most men.

"What was it all about?" inquired the latter.

"People, people, and then people again. What does everybody talk about?
Silly stories about Lady Herbert Arden and Savelli, and about Lord
Herbert himself, and his dissipated life. The Ardens do not seem to be
liked. He is a great friend of yours, is he not?"

"Yes, we have known each other almost ten years." Ghisleri began to
smoke, rather gloomily, for he perceived that there was trouble in store
for Laura.

"It is Donna Adele who does all the mischief," continued Gouache,
putting a dash of bright blue into the face of the portrait he was
painting, a proceeding which, as Ghisleri noticed with some surprise,
improved the likeness. "It is Donna Adele. You know the old story.
Savelli loved Miss Carlyon but could not marry her. Donna Adele never
forgave her, and she will end by doing her a great deal of harm. She
pretends that Savelli has told her that Lady Herbert is already talking
to him and to everybody of her own wretched married life--rather hinting
that if Savelli would care to depart this life of respectability she
would go with him, a proposition which, of course, Savelli scorns in the
most virtuous and approved fashion, rolling his fine paternal language
as in the fourth act of a tragedy at the Comedie Française. I suppose
you cannot stop this sort of thing, can you?"

"I will try," said Ghisleri, in a tone that made Gouache look round from
his painting. He had not often witnessed even such a slight
manifestation of real anger on Pietro's part, as was apparent in the
enunciation of the three words.

"You might, perhaps, better than any one else," observed Gouache. "From
other things she has said, it is quite apparent that she would like to
see you at her feet."

Ghisleri looked at Anastase rather sharply, but said nothing. It was not
the fact that Donna Adele wished him to pay her more attention that
struck him; he was wondering what the other remarks might have been, to
which Gouache alluded. They might have been directed against the
Contessa--or they might have been such as to show that Adele suspected
Ghisleri of an attachment for Laura Arden since he now went so often to
the house. As Gouache did not volunteer any further information,
however, Ghisleri thought it wiser to ask no questions, and he was
inclined to infer that the aforesaid observations had been directed
against Maddalena dell' Armi.

Ghisleri went away in a very bad humour. So long as the gossip came from
the men, he had a very simple and definite course open to him, and he
knew that his personal influence was considerable. But when the worst
things said were said by women, there seemed to be no remedy possible.
It would not be an easy matter to go to Adele and tax her with lying,
slandering, and evil speaking. She would very properly be angry, and
would of course deny that she had ever spoken on the matter, her friends
would support her in her denial, and he would be no further advanced
than before. He could not possibly go to Francesco Savelli and demand of
the latter an explanation of Donna Adele's conduct. That was out of the
question. To let Donna Adele know that both Laura and Arden were quite
unconscious of her attacks and, in their present life of almost enforced
retirement, were likely to remain in ignorance of them, might annoy
Donna Adele, but could do no good. It would be positively unkind to
speak to the Princess of Gerano and ask her to use her influence with
her step-daughter, but Ghisleri thought he had struck a possibility at
last--he could go to old Gerano himself and explain matters. After all,
Gerano was Adele's father and had some authority over her still.
Ghisleri came rather hastily to the conclusion that this would be the
wisest course to follow, and acted almost immediately upon his decision,
for it chanced that he found the Prince at the club, and had the
opportunity he needed within half an hour after forming his plan of
action.

He approached the subject coolly and diplomatically, while Gerano
blandly listened and puffed at a cigarette. Donna Adele, he said, had of
course no intention of injuring her step-sister, but she was too young
to know the weight a careless tale often carried with it in the world,
and had no idea of the harm she was doing. No one, not even the Prince
himself, was ignorant of the fact that Don Francesco Savelli's first
inclination had been rather for Miss Carlyon than for Donna Adele, but
that it had been a mere young man's fancy, without any importance, and
that having yielded to parental authority, Don Francesco was now a
perfectly happy man. Perhaps Donna Adele had not been able to forget
this apparent slight upon her beauty and charm, as far as her
step-sister was concerned, though well aware that her husband thought no
more about Lady Herbert. It was natural and womanly in her to resent it.
But that was not a good reason why she should say--as she seemed to be
saying constantly--that Lady Herbert was very much in love with Don
Francesco.

Here Ghisleri paused, and the Prince opened his eyes very wide at first,
and then almost shut them as he scrutinised his companion's face. He
knew the man well, however, and guessed that the matter must be serious
indeed, since he took the trouble to treat it in such earnest.

"I suppose," said Gerano, "that you are quite prepared to support your
words if any question arises. This is a strange tale."

"Yes," answered Ghisleri. "I am always ready." He spoke with such
gravity that the Prince was impressed.

Pietro went on to say that Donna Adele, doubtless out of pure
carelessness, had certainly, by a foolish jest, suggested the story that
Lord Herbert was very intemperate, a story which Ghisleri had last year
been obliged to deny in the most formal manner in the very room in which
they were now talking, to a number of men. The tale had of late been
revived in a form even more virulent than before, and such untruths,
even when they have originated in a harmless bit of fun, could damage a
man's reputation for life.

"Of course they can, and they do," asserted the Prince, who was becoming
rather anxious.

"As, for instance," continued Ghisleri, "it is now said that Lady
Herbert Arden, your step-daughter, now talks to Don Francesco and to
everybody--which probably means the few persons who circulate the
myth--about her wretched married life, and other suggestions which I
will not repeat are added, which are very insulting to her. For my part,
my business is to defend Arden, who is my friend, and who is
unfortunately too ill to defend himself should all this come to his
ears. I do not say that this last addition concerning Lady Herbert's
confidences comes from Donna Adele Savelli. But it is undoubtedly
current, and proceeds directly from the former gossip, as its natural
consequence."

"Evidently," said the Prince, who kept his temper admirably, in
consideration of the gravity of the case. "And now what do you expect me
to do?"

"You are Donna Adele's father," answered Ghisleri. "She is assuredly
ignorant of the harm she has caused. It would seem quite natural if you
suggested to her that it is in her power to undo what she has
unintentionally done."

"How, may I ask? By an apology?" Gerano did not like the idea, but
Ghisleri smiled.

"That would make matters worse," he said. "She could put everything
right merely by saying a few pleasant things about the Ardens to half a
dozen people of her acquaintance--at random. Donna Maria Boccapaduli,
the Marchesa di San Giacinto, the Contessa dell' Armi--even Donna
Faustina Gouache. She might ask the Ardens to dinner--"

"I observe that you do not name any men," observed the Prince.

"It is not the men who have been talking, so far as I know--nor if they
did, would their gossip do so much damage."

"That may be. As for the rest, I will say this. You have said some
exceedingly unpleasant things to me this afternoon, but I know you well
enough to be sure that you are not only in earnest, but wish to avert
trouble rather than cause it. Otherwise I should not have listened to
you as I have. I am very deeply attached to my only child, though I am
also very fond of my step-daughter. However, I will take this question
in hand and find out the truth, and do what I can to mend matters. If I
find you have been misinformed, I will ask the favour of another
interview."

"I shall always be at your service."

They parted rather stiffly, but without any nearer approach to hostility
than was implied in the last formal words they exchanged. Gerano walked
slowly homeward, revolving the situation in his mind, and wondering how
he should act in order to get at the truth in the case. Being very fond
of his wife, his first impulse was to tell her the whole story, and to
take counsel with her before doing anything definite. It would have been
better had he gone directly to Donna Adele, though he might not have
accomplished anything at all, and might have believed her, and might
also have quarrelled with Ghisleri afterwards. But he did not foresee
the consequences.

The Princess was very much overcome by the account he gave her of his
interview with Ghisleri, of whom she had a high opinion as a man of
truthful character, bad as he seemed to be in other respects. She knew
instinctively and at once that every one of his statements must have
been perfectly well founded, and that if he had erred it had assuredly
not been in the direction of exaggerating the facts. She was in much the
same position as her husband, except that her own daughter was the
victim, while his was the aggressor. It was strange that in so many
years neither should have understood Adele's character well enough to
suspect that she could be capable of any treachery, and yet both were
now convinced that the case against her was not by any means a fiction.
The Princess was now in the gravest distress, and she could not keep
back her tears as she tried to find arguments in Adele's favour, wishing
to the last to defend her husband's child, while never for a moment
losing sight of her own.

She was an eminently good woman, but very far from worldly-wise. Indeed,
as events proceeded that day, there seemed to be a diminution of wisdom
in the action of each in turn as compared with that of the last person
concerned. Ghisleri had not really allowed himself time to consider the
situation in all its bearings before speaking to Gerano, or he might not
have spoken at all. Gerano, next, had scarcely hesitated in confiding
the whole affair to his wife, and she, in despair, turned to the one
person of all others with whom she was really most in sympathy, to Laura
Arden herself, regardless of the consequences to every one concerned.
Lord Herbert was resting before dinner, and she found her daughter
alone.

Her heart was almost bursting, and she poured out the story in all its
details, accurately, as she had heard it, though hardly knowing what she
said. At first Laura was tempted to laugh. She had been so much happier
of late that laughing had grown easy, but she very soon saw the real
meaning of the situation, and she grew pale as she silently listened to
the end. Then her mother broke down again.

"And I have loved her so!" cried the poor lady. "Almost as I have loved
you, my child! To think of it all--oh, it is not to be believed!"

Laura was not at that moment inclined to shed tears. It was almost the
first time in her life when she was really angry, for her temper was not
easily roused. It was not destined to be the last. Dry-eyed and pale,
she sat beside the Princess, holding her hands, then drying her fast
flowing tears, then caressing her, and saying all she could to soothe
and calm her, while almost choking herself to keep down the rage she
felt. Her eyes had been opened at last, and she saw what the story
really was at which Arden had made such a poor guess. As the Princess
grew more calm, she began to look at her daughter in surprise.

"What is the matter, darling?" she asked anxiously. "Are you ill, dear,
you look so changed!"

"I am angry, mother," answered Laura, quietly enough. "I shall get over
it soon, I dare say."

Even her voice did not sound like her own. It was hollow and strange.
Her mother was frightened.

"I have done very wrong to tell you, Laura," she said, realising too
late that the revelation must have been startling in the extreme.

"I do not know," answered Lady Herbert, still speaking in the same
peculiar tone, and with an effort. "Adele and I meet constantly. Of
course we have been brought up like real sisters, and though we were
never intensely fond of one another we talk about everything as if we
were. I will be careful in future. This may not be all true, but there
is truth in it, if you have remembered exactly what Signor Ghisleri
said--or rather, if the Prince has."

The Princess started slightly. Laura had always called Gerano father, as
though she had really been his daughter, but the shock had been very
sudden, and she found it hard to call by that name the man whose
daughter was Adele Savelli.

"I hope it will turn out to be all a mistake!" exclaimed the Princess,
weakly, and on the point of bursting into tears again.

"Until we are sure of it, I shall try and behave as usual to Adele, if
we have to meet," said Laura. "After that, if it is all true--I do not
know--"

When the Princess went home, she was a little frightened at what she had
done, and repented bitterly of having yielded to her own unreasoning
longing to talk the matter over with Laura--natural enough indeed, when
it is remembered that the two loved one another so dearly. It had been a
mistake, she was sure, and she would have given anything to undo it. She
only hoped that she should not be obliged to explain to her husband.

Laura sat alone by the fireside. Herbert was lying down and would not
appear until dinner time, so that she had almost an hour in which to
think over the situation. She determined to master her anger and to look
the matter in the face calmly. After all, it was only gossip, town-talk,
insignificant chatter, which must all be forgotten in the light of the
true facts. So she tried to persuade herself, at least, but she found it
a very hard matter to believe her own statement of it all. The more she
thought it over, the more despicable it all seemed in her eyes, the more
savagely she hated Adele. She could have borne the story about herself
better, if it had come alone, but she could neither forgive nor find an
excuse for what had been said against her husband. To know that people
openly called him intemperate--a drunkard, that would be the word! Him,
of all living men! The assertion was so monstrous that all Laura's
resolution to control herself gave way suddenly, and she, in her turn,
burst into a flood of tears, hot, angry, almost agonising, impossible to
check.

She might have been proud to shed them, for they showed how much more
she loved her husband than she cared for herself, but she was conscious
only of the intense desire to face Adele, and do her some grievous
bodily hurt and be revenged for the foul slander cast on Herbert Arden.
She opened and shut her hands convulsively, as though she were clutching
some one and strangling the breath in a living throat. Every drop of
blood in her young body was fire, every tear that rolled down her pale
cheek was molten lead, every beat of her angry pulse brought an angry
thought to her brain. How long she remained in this state she did not
know.

She did not hear her husband's laboured, halting step on the soft
carpet, and before she was aware of his presence he was standing before
her, with a look of pain and almost of horror in his delicate face. That
was the most terrible moment in his life.

Highly sensitive as he was, loving her almost to distraction as he did,
he had always found it hard to understand her love for him. To suspect
that all of it was pity, or that a part of it had grown weak of late,
was almost impossible to him, and yet the possibility of doubt was
there. He had entered the room as usual, without any precaution, but she
had not heard him; he had seen her apparently struggling with herself
and with some unseen enemy, in a paroxysm of grief and rage. Instantly
the doubt rose supreme and struck him, like a sudden blow in the face.

"She has found out her mistake too late--she does not love me, and she
longs to be free." That was what Herbert Arden said to himself as he
stood before her, and the horror of it was almost greater than he could
bear. Yet there was a great and manly courage in his narrow breast. He
felt that he must die, but she should not suffer any more than was
necessary until then. He drew the best breath he could, as though it
were his last. She started, wild-eyed, as he spoke.

"Laura darling--it has been a terrible mistake--and it is all my fault.
Will you forgive me, dear one? I thought that you would love me--I see
how it is when you are alone. No woman could have borne this bondage of
yours as you have borne it since you have found out--"

"Herbert! Herbert!" cried Laura, in sudden agony. She thought he was
going mad before her eyes.

"No, dear," he said, with an immense effort, and making a gesture with
his hand as though to keep her in her place. "It is better to say it
now, and it need never be said again. Perhaps I should not have the
strength. I see it all. You are so kind and good that you will never
show it to me--but when you are alone--then you let yourself go--is it
any wonder? Are you to blame? You see that you have made the great
mistake--that it was all pity and not love--and you long to be free from
me as you should be, as you shall be, dear."

A wild cry broke from Laura's very heart when she realised what he
meant.

"Love! Darling--Herbert! I never loved you as I love you now!"

She did not know that she spoke articulate words as she sprang to her
feet and clasped him in her arms, half mad with grief at the thought of
what he must have suffered, and loving him as she said she did, far
beyond the love of earlier days. But he hardly understood yet that it
was really love, and he tried to look up into her face, almost fainting
with the terrible strain he had borne so bravely, and still struggling
to be calm.

"Laura darling," he said, in a low voice, "it was all too natural.
Unless you tell me what it was that made you act as I saw you just now,
how can I understand?"

She turned her deep eyes straight to his.

"Do you doubt me still, Herbert?" she asked. And she saw that he could
not help doubting.

"But if I tell you that what I was thinking of would pain you very much,
and that it would be of no use--"

"It cannot be like the pain I feel now," he answered simply.

She realised that what he said was true. Then she told him the whole
story, as she knew it. And so, in a few hours, the conversation Ghisleri
had held with Gouache began to bear fruit in a direction where neither
of them had suspected it possible that their words could penetrate.

Arden had allowed himself to sink into a chair at Laura's side, and he
listened with half-closed eyes and folded hands while she spoke. Under
ordinary circumstances he would probably have betrayed some emotion, and
might have interrupted her with a question or two, but the terrible
excitement of the last few minutes was followed by a reaction, and he
felt himself growing colder and calmer every moment, while his heart,
which had been beating furiously when he had first spoken to her, seemed
now about to stand still. As she proceeded, however, he was aware of the
most conflicting feelings of happiness and anger--the latter of the
quiet and dangerous sort. He saw at once that he had been utterly
mistaken in doubting Laura's love, and from that direction peace
descended upon his heart; but when he heard what the world was saying of
her, he felt that weak as he was, he had the sudden strength to dare and
do anything to avenge the insult. He was human enough, too, to resent
bitterly the story about himself, though that, after all, was but a
secondary affair in comparison with the gossip about L

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/40922