/,>:< /. /,: //. '///////////////////,' :,,y /,;',- ''' //M ' /iw '''i!^j^ it ^ , HER LAURENCE i< NEW NOVELS JFrcmk Cce ScneMct. I. HER FRIEND LAURENCE. H. MADAME. HI. 'TWIXT HAMMER AND ANVIL. The London Spectator says : " A new and powerful novel- ist has arisen. * * * It is seldom that we arise from the perusal of a story with the sen^e of ex- citement which Mr. Benedict has produced. * * * We rejoice to recognize a new novelist of real genius, who knows and depicts powerfully some of the most striking and over- mastering passions of the human heart." All published handsomely bound in cloth. Price $1.50each, and sent/ree by mail, on receipt of price, by G. W. CARLETON & CO., PUBLISHERS, New York. HER FRIEND LAURENCE. BY FRANK LEE BENEDICT, AUTHOR OV "MY DAUGHTER ELINOR," "MISS VAN KORTLAND," "TWIXT HAMMER AND ANVIL," "MADAME," ETC., ETC., ETC. NEW YORK: G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers, MADISON SQUARE. MDCCCLXXIX. COPYRIGHT, 1879, BT FRANK LEE BENEDICT. SAMTTK. STODDBB, STEREOTYPER, 90 ANN STHEET N. Y. TROW PRINTING AND BOOK Bnn>me Co. N. Y. TO THE VISCONDESSA DE STO. AMAEO THE MOST APPRECIATIVE OF READERS, THE MOST DISCRIMINATING OP CRITICS, AND THE WARMEST OF FRIENDS. AFFECTIONATELY, FRANK LEE BENEDICT. FLORENCE, ITALY, May, 1879. 2072160 CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. For His Daughter .- 9 H. The Forbidden Path 18 HI. The Omen 24 IV. A Bouquet of Jessamines 38 V. Her First Visit 48 VI. La Belle Samaritaine 59 VII. Dead as Pharaoh 69 VIII. His Discovery 79 IX. Her Coming 90 X. Mi-Cargme 99 XL Set Right 108 XII. Three-and-Thirty 116 XIII. She Accused Herself 126 XIV. The Arabic Lessons 136 XV. Announced "Miss Danvers " 143 XVI. From America 148 XVII. Giulia's Greek 156 XVIII. An Unwelcome Confidence 165 XIX. Diogcnes's Advice 180 XX. A Girl's Troubles 191 XXI. Before the Pope's Portrait 202 XXII. A Bold Stroke 212 XXHI. In the Studio 222 XXIV. Like Jonah's Gourd.. 229 via CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE XXV. Mary's Resolve 239 XXVI. " The End of Our Romance " 246 XXVH. Against Fate 259 XXVHL " She Said Good-By " 272 XXIX. A Morning Ride 278 XXX. Two Notes 287 XXXI. An Unpleasant Mission 297 XXYTT Gone ! 305 XXXm. Christened Circe 316 XXXIV. In the Sorceress's Toils 324 XXXV. Each Blunders 333 XXXVI. Her Last Effort 340 XXXVII. Still Her Work 349 XXXVHI. For Whom He was to Die 361 XXXIX. Once Too Often .368 XL. The Story Told. 377 XLI. When Dawn Broke 388 XLII. After All.. . 400 HER FRIEND LAURENCE. CHAPTER I. FOR HIS DAUGHTER. HE Amaldi Palace stands in a small square, not far from the beautiful old church of Santa Maria Novella, fills up nearly one side of the piazza, and is stately enough to be noticeable, rich as Flor- ence is in picturesque and storied edifices. There are three or four courts, and the vast pile has numerous occupants ; but one quadrangle, with its separate entrance, belongs to Violet Cameron. She has not, however, asserted her claims to proprietorship by giving her portion of the mansion a new name ; and therein, I think, has shown wisdom. Nowadays, in Florence and Rome, the traveler not unfrequently finds historical dwellings, which have been re-christened under the Anglo-Saxon cognomens of their present owners ; but I cannot persuade myself that Palazzo Sankey and Villino Jenkinson sound as well as their original Italian titles. In the beginning of October, 187-, Miss Cameron returned to Florence, after more than a year's absence, in- tending to spend the rest of the autumn, and perhaps the whole winter, unless it should prove one of those hopelessly rainy seasons, which the variable Tuscan climate will occa- sionally disgrace itself by adopting and clinging to for several consecutive months. At an early hour on the morning after her arrival she was seated in her dressing-room a pretty nook, with its walls paneled in blue silk, the windows hung with blue 1* [9] 10 FOR HIS DAUGHTER. and white draperies, and the easy-chairs and couches covered with the faintest possible tint of azure velvet. A door stood open, and showed a boudoir, rich and quaint as a cinque-cento casket ; beyond, other open doors gave glimpses of a long suite of apartments, which were the envy of half her acquaintance, though to attempt a description of the various chambers, with their treasures of art and virtu, would only make this page sound like ah auction catalogue. Miss Cameron had drunk her coffee, and was indulging in the luxury of complete idleness, looking her best, too, in an undress which would have been very trying to many women a gown of some dead white woolen stuff, loosely confined about the waist by a broad ribbon, and her hair (dark auburn, with golden reflections upon it) brushed back from her forehead, and falling in heavy masses over her shoulders. Even in that severely simple toilet and the rigid truthfulness of the morning light, six-and-twenty was the most a close observer would have assigned as her age ; but Violet Cameron had counted three years beyond thirty, and reached the era at which her sex, as a rule, is forced to relinquish all claims to appearing youthful. I think it was the indescribable softness and purity of her complexion which kept her face so young ; and even feminine critics never tried to hint that the delicate bloom in her cheeks, like the color in the heart of a wild rose, was not natural. Women did say her eyes were green, and, I believe, rightly ; but they were nevertheless wonderfully beautiful eyes, which gained added depth from the blackness of the arched brows, and the lashes. so long and thick as to cast that peculiar shadow which less fortunate woinen are obliged to supply by factitious aids. She was too small to be called handsome ; the features were too irregular for perfect beauty ; and her grace and supreme elegance (that highest and most indefinable charm) rendered the term pretty inapplicable. She seemed to have caught certain characteristics of each of the three types, and Nature had managed the combination with such skill that the result was a loveliness as unique as it was indis- putable. Three-and-thirty years of age, and unmarried. So I must call her my elderly heroine, though, in the presence of her radiant fairness, the epithet would have become a positively ludicrous misnomer. FOR EI8 DAUGHTER. 11 Miss Cameron's meditations were interrupted by tho opening of a door ; steps crossed the boudoir ; and a thin, faded voice, which one would have sworn belonged to an . ancient spinster, called, quaveringly : " Good-morning, dear ! May I come in ? Excuse this early visit. Clarice said you were up, and I wanted but it is a shame to disturb you " " Pray come in !" Miss Cameron said, as the unseen speaker's sentence trailed off into a sigh. " I may be un- entertaining, but I am not dangerous, I give you my word." The portiere was pushed farther back by a hand which suited the voice long, bony, and uncertain in its move- ments; but it was not until Miss Cameron repeated her in- vitation that their owner appeared. She gave the effect of unusual height, from the fact that each separate part neck, waist, and limbs seemed unduly elongated; and she was so thin that apparently only skin and bones had been left after that drawing-out process. Fifty-five at least; tiny wrinkles, like cracks in yellow porcelain ; straggling cork-screw curls ; a perpetual smile ; a habit of carrying her head on one side of breaking her sentences with inexpressibly irritating little gasps these were Miss Bronson's chief characteristics, whereto I may add a morbid taste in the matter of faded pink bows, which she had a mania for pinning on every available spot, from the crown of her head to the toes of her slippers. " Good morning, Eliza," said Miss Cameron. " I hope you have slept off the fatigues of the journey." " Oh, perfectly ! And how fresh you look !" with a sigh so much deeper than ordinary, that Miss Cameron added : " What hav.e you got on your soul or your conscience ? Something troubles you, I know. Your voice is more Eolian-harp-like than usual." "My love, I am in a state of such painful uncertainty!" " My love, people say that is the normal state of all us spinsters. But sit down and reveal your woes. I don't ask you to weep on my sympathetic bosom, but I will do any- thing short of drying tears to show my tender interest," said Miss Cameron, laughingly. Miss Bronson seated herself, slipped from her arm into her lap a canvas reticule worked with worsted flowers of 13 FOR HIS DAUGHTER. such discordant hues that they gave her friend a sensation like incipient sea-sickness, and shook her head pensively. " Are you carrying your trouble in that preposterous bag?" Miss Cameron asked. "It is ugly enough to hold all the ills of Pandora's box, though Hope would die in dis- gust if shut up there." " I declare, ray dear, you are as witty as a play ; but I don't know is it now at least among foreigners " " What, in the name of goodness ?" " Exactly the thing to talk so differently from every- body else," sighed Miss Bronson. " Please don't be offended at my mentioning it, but several times people have said to me, they should know you were an American just by your conversation." " I hope so ! I don't propose to cultivate stupidity for the sake of being supposed a native of some other country. Perhaps, too, I talk through my nose." "Oh no! You have nothing of the nasal intonation." " Do say twang, Eliza ! We are not school-mistresses any longer, and there is no necessity for using long words," said Miss Cameron, laughing outright. "I wish you would not speak so often of having been a schoolmisti'ess," expostulated Miss Bronson ; " it does not matter for me, but with your wealth and beauty " " My dear, the wealth gives me the privilege of saying what I please ! I am proud of having been a school- ma'am ! Why, I should be heartily ashamed of myself if I had always led as useless a life as I do now ! I am very doubtful whether fate did me any kindness in putting an end to my drudgery. Good heavens ! ten years gone since then and I meant to have done so much ! And here I am thirty-three, and have accomplished literally nothing !" "You know what French people say .' that a woman in reality lias only the age she looks,' " said Eliza, glancing in the mirror as if to determine how many years this privi- lege would take off her own record. 1 " French people have talked nonsense in regard to women since the foundation of the Gallic empire " (" Er- roneously declared by many authors to have begun with Charlemagne," parenthesized Miss Bronson), " and will continue to do so until the day of Judgment, whenever they began," pursued Miss Cameron. "But never mind 13 my age, or the follies of the Gauls : what secret have you got shut up there?" At this reminder of her errand, the spinster made a sudden nervous movement which sent several sealed en- velopes flying out of the reticule. " Ugh ! 1 was right to compare the thing to Pandora's box !" shivered Miss Cameron. She stooped to pick up two of the epistles which had fluttered close to her chair, adding, in the playfully teasing way whereby she often perplexed poor Eliza : "They are for me ! Why were you hiding my correspondence in your sack ? If you mean to turn postman I shall buy you a uniform." "Oh oh! don't look wait till I explain !" cried the antique virgin despairingly, as her friend was about to open the envelopes. " Please don't look !" Miss Cameron laid the missives down and watched the spinster execute a kind of weird waltz, which was rather like a caricature of Dinorah's Shadow-dance. " This is exceedingly mysterious," she said ; " even awe- inspiring !" "My dear," continued Miss Bronson, as soon as she reached the speaking stage of her eccentric exercise, "I have a message which is, so to speak, a key to the whole matter." " Then pray give me the key, else I shall force the lock," returned Miss Cameron, with a glance towards the letters, which caused Eliza to dance anew. " One moment I wanted to break it " "I hate broken news as I do broken china," interrupted Miss Cameron. " Pray give it to me entire, whatever it may be. If it cornes in fragments it will be sure to excoriate my temper, just as broken china would my fingers." "You make me laugh so ! He ! he ! ha ! ha !" And, as a proof that her merriment was heart-felt, Miss Bronson began to cry. Any person unaccustomed to the spinster's vagaries would either have been alarmed or ready to shake her from sheer impatience, but experience had taught Miss Cameron that emotion of any soi't in the presence of Eliza's small agita- tions was usually emotion wasted, for, as a rule, the slighter the cause, the more force she put into her demonstrations. So now her friend only said, composedly: " You will tell me when you can." "Yes I wanted to break "" sobbed Eliza : then travc 14 FOR HIS DAUGHTER. a great gulp and burst out, " Your cousin George Danvers is dead." Miss Cameron changed color, put lier hand over her eyes, and remained silent for a few seconds, during which Eliza sat choking behind her pocket-handkerchief, and by the time she emerged from its depths Miss Cameron had resumed her former attitude. " He died to me so many years since that I cannot pre- tend to be deeply affected," she said, in a voice which was awed rather than saddened. " If he can see me or cares to see he is certain that I have no hard feeling towards him. Once I thought I could never say this, but I can now, freely." " Oh, my dear, that is like you ! But only think he had lost his fortune every penny. His daughter is left absolutely destitute." " Do you know, I had forgotten he had a daughter," returned Miss Cameron, with a little wonder in her tone. ^ asked eagerly. " Is it to come off or not?" ^f " Yes ; I believe it is decided for Saturday." " What match ?" Nina inquired. 62 LA BELLE SAMARITAINE. "Between Marco Goldoni's horse and one of Harry Stanhope's," Carlo explained. " And I have dozens and dozens of gloves on it," cried the duchess, in the same pretty, eager way. " Marchese, do tell me that Marco's gray will win !" But, interested as she appeared, Nina knew she had rushed into the subject merely to hinder Miss Cameron from speaking. The little woman chafed inwardly that the thrust she felt confident Violet had meant to deal should be so easily prevented, and for Carlo to have aided the duchess, even unintentionally, doubled Nina's annoyance. During some moments the trotting-match was enthu- siastically talked of ; Nina took her share in the conversa- tion, but Violet sat aloof, the visitor's own words giving her the right to consider that she had no more to do with playing hostess than if she had met the lady under the marchesa's roof. Now, if Griulia had left matters on this fooling, she might perhaps have rendered it impossible for Miss Came- ron to hit her with a buttonless foil ; but that lady's cour- teous, yet palpable negation of any concern in her visit, irritated the Sicilian beyond endurance, and nrged her imprudently on to be the assailant in a second clashing of swords, convinced that if the Amei'ican had been cognizant of her little escapade, she would have betrayed the fact on their first encounter. Unfortunately for Giulia she did not understand Violet, and rushed on her fate that of being exposed before Carlo. Some remark of Miss Cameron's, in answer to a question from Nina, afforded the duchess a delightful opportunity to sneer at America and the freedom granted unmarried women in that country. " It seems odd to us Latins," said she in her sweetest voice, and one must have heard an Italian utter a mechan- cete to form an idea of the exquisite perfection of tone and manner, "but we are so antiquated, so prejudiced, so igno- rant, we European women, compared with the dazzling transatlantic beauties !" She addressed Nina, but by an indescribable something, for she made no gesture, rendered the compliment tp American women a tribute of special admiration and plicate mockery to Violet Cameron her- self. " How one envies the brilliant creatures ! One might admit their supremacy in point of loveliness and LA BELLE SAMAR1TAINE. 63 wit, and still be patient, but it is the liberty allowed them which irks us, held in bondage by tiresome old customs." " Yes, yes," cried Nina, just to push Giulia forward to IKT doom, ready, Russian-like, to enjoy her enemy's defeat the more from having feared that it would fail. " You are right, duchess ; but still, would such freedom suit our ideas ?" "Ah, that is the question! I am afraid we glory in our slavery to custom ; it is ingrained in our natures. Still, one envies the Americans all the same ! One would like to hate them, but, being women, we appreciate their fascinations too thoroughly to do that." " Upon my word, Fleur Violette, that pretty speech deserves your best courtesy," cried Carlo, really believing that the duchess desired to be especially agreeable. "Oh, a man!" was Nina's thought. " But, duchess," asked Violet, " what do you so par- ticularly envy us Americans ?" " I have said the freedom granted our sex in your native land." " Surely, once married, an Italian woman is free enough," said Violet ; and the duchess saw her own error, but could "not remedy it. " When freedom comes too late !" sighed she, hoping to silence Violet by the difficulty of finding any answer with a sting in it which would not appear a rudeness. " How ?" exclaimed Miss Cameron. " Freedom cannot come too late !" Giulia shook her stately head, saying : " Ah, Nina darling, mademoiselle argues as an unmarried lady naturally would ! She does not know those dreadful tyrants as we do," waving two fingers towards Carlo, and giving him a smile, as she spoke. " Oh," said Carlo, " Miss Cameron is a cruel, icy-hearted creature, utterly indifferent even to attractions like mine." " There may be a reason for that," laughed the duchess. "You must not forget the interesting invalid below stairs ! By the way, how is Mr. Aylmer this morning ?" " Better," said Nina and Carlo, speaking at once " Better," repeated Violet, laughing gayly as she spoke. " But take care, duchess, that you content yourself with 64. LA BELLE SAMARITAINE. inquiring here ! That cross old professor is lying in wait ! Oh, if you had seen him the other day dash up here, and shake your pretty bunch of jessamines in our faces, accus- ing us of trying to poison his patient, when Nina could not leave her sofa, and I could not dream of intruding into the lion's den, being an American woman in a foreign land and unmarried !" Blush ? Yes, the duchess did, through all her rouge ! Carlo gave her one furious glance, and began to rearrange his cards ; Nina nursed her foot, in order to hide her face, conscious that its triumph would not bear exposure ; Violet sat calm as a summer morning. " Marchese," she added, " did I not tell you the duchess was a good Samaritan ? But, alas, in our century Samari- tans meet with a poor reward ! The professor still vows that her kind visit to Mr. Aylmer retarded his recovery by at least a fortnight." The duchess not quick-witted, though shrewd tried to laugh ; Carlo made a still more miserable pretense at merriment ; Nina remained occupied with her foot ; Violet's smiling serenity knew no change. " Warning !" cried Carlo, somewhat too bitterly. "Don't play the Samaritan one is not appreciated." " Don't be found out, you mean, else the professors fall upon you," Miss Cameron gayly amended, with a glance at the duchess which sent the Sicilian's blood up to boiling- heat. Before any additional words could be spoken by either of the group, Antonio announced fresh visitors witty Lady Ilarcourt, bringing in her train Gherardi, Harry Stanhope, and several other men. " I knew if we sent up our names we should not be ad- mitted," cried her ladyship. "So I persuaded these cowards to help me storm the citadel." There followed a torrent of merry talk. In the midst of it, after trying unsuccessfully to take a part, appear at ease, and at the same time soften Carlo by sundry beseech- ing glances, to which he, obdurate as a Trojan, paid no at- tention, Madame da Rimini rose. " Going to leave poor Nina already ?" questioned Violet, sweetly. The duchess turned on her. The enamel of politeness LA BELLE SAMARITAINE. 65 cracked in the heat of her wrath, and gave a glimpse of the coarse virago under. " I have a thousand things to do," she replied ; and her voice was so sharp that everybody looked up, but she strug- gled in vain to subdue nature. "I shall come again when I may be of some use to rny friend." " Samaritaine tot/jours," said Violet, and that wretched Carlo laughed, looking full in the duchess's face the while. The luckless Giulia stood dumb for an instant. " Stanhope," said Carlo, " give madame your arm to her carriage ; but take Paulo with you to protect her from your fascinations, and to make Lady Harcourt and my wife say bitter things of her, out of sheer jealousy, on account of her cavaliers." Now the Englishman was elderly and unimpressionable, and Paulo was the duchess's own brother-in-law, whom she hated with a hatred surpassing even that of women. Nina metaphorically flapped the wings of her soul in delight, but poor Carlo was only a man, and hastened to impair the perfect retribution he had brought about. ' I am master of the house for the nonce," he added, " and cannot leave Miss Cameron exposed to the wiles and enormities of these other male monsters." " Oh, you goose !" Nina mentally groaned. The duchess, so pale with anger that the spots of rouge showed like a blotch on either cheek, seized the advantage given by Carlo's superfluous words. " Miss Cameron will lend you to me to the foot of the stairs," said she. " I am afraid of the dangerous Colonel, and Paulo came on purpose to make love to Nina. You can't in decency refuse him three minutes free from your Argus eyes." " Mille diables ! she has the best of it after all !" thought the little Russian. But the Muscovite reckoned defeat without taking into consideration the American reserve, bent on punishing the offender to the uttermost. " Go, Carlo, my friend," said Violet ; " see the duchess safe to her carriage. The professor lies in wait for her, and if she so much as looks towards the door of the den where he is torturing his victim, he will fall upon her." " What, what !" cried Lady Harcourt. " Giulia, have 86 LA BELLE SAMAEITAINE. you been trying to prevent that New World barbarian from dying in peace ?" " On the contrary," said Violet, quick as a flash, " she went in the other day and laid sweet jessamines on his pil- low, and the professor nearly murdered Nina and poor me, just because we were women too, and the" offender la belle Samaritaine had escaped, and he found only us innocents to visit his wrath upon." In many circles the bit of comedy might have been wasted, but these types of Florentine society appreciated the scene as thoroughly as ever a knot of Parisian critics enjoyed the most delicately-drawn exhibition of character in one of Victorien Sardou's plays. The duchess knew it, and the replique rested with her. To remain silent would be to damn herself. Florence might pass over Impropriety, but not stupidity. And, difficult as the situation was in itself, her fierce anger in- creased its difficulties. But she must answer. She could be coarse if wit failed ; at least the men would believe what she said witty, just on account of its coarseness. " I am not afraid of your professor," said she ; " I have already appeased him. I agreed to give Carlo up to you, dear Miss Cameron, and to let Nina have the American." But the quizzical glances directed towards her drove her on to add : "To ratify the bargain, the professor is to sup with me on Sunday night. Will you all come ? Lady Harcourt, promise in the general name." " I promise," returned my lady, "promise for all. We shall not forget." " Au revoir, dear," said the duchess, and kissed Violet's cheek. She floated out on the marchese's arm, and the instant the door closed Lady Harcourt exclaimed : " I don't understand the mot of the charade, but, great heavens ! Violet Cameron, you must have hit her hard when she was pushed to the extreme of giving a supper !" " Don't understand the motf" cried Gherardi. "Well, I fancy poor Aylmer would " " Hush !" broke in her ladyship. " We may be scan- dalous in Florence, but a sick man's room and his female visitors are sacred silence, evil tongue !" Going down stairs, the duchess for a little talked any nonsense that would come into her head, just to give it LA BELLE SAMARITAINE. 67 time to stop whirling, then wondered quickly what explana- tion would be best, or rather least hurtful to her cause, and ended by ignoring the matter. " Oh, marchese," she said, " I have to go to that dread- ful railway man about the dividends ; can't you be good- natured, and bully him for me ?" " I could have done so last week," retorted he ; " but Gresham and I quarreled yesterday. I only know one person who could soften him, that's Aylmer but he is too ill." The speech was not bad for a man's effort, but it gave the duchess a chance. " Cruel !" she cried, released his arm, and dropped into an attitude of dignified melancholy. " You could hear me insulted you can try to wound me after !" "The odor of jessamine always turns my stomach," said Carlo. " Then luckily I did not find you that day." exclaimed the duchess, with a burst of truthfulness wonderfully well done. " I did go into the creature's room. The doors were open I thought I heard your voice. I wanted to tell you I was sorry for having teased you that last evening. But you were not there. I ran out the bouquet must have fallen from my corsage. Oh, that wretched, mali- cious woman !" Carlo waited calmly till she had finished, then extended his arm anew, saying only : " Shall I tell your people to drive to Gresham's office ?" The duchess shut her lips hard to keep from panting, like a person who had mounted a steep hill too fast. Carlo put her hand in his arm and led her on. " Where to ?" he asked, as they reached the court. " Home," she answered, faintly ; then, making a violent effort to recover herself and speak playfully, she added, "If you like to come, I'll give you some punch, instead of Eng- lish four-o'clock tea." " I am heart-broken ; but I promised to sit awhile with poor Aylmer," returned he, and helped her into the car- riage. From a window which overlooked the courtyard, that malicious Gherardi watched the pair and cried, utterly regardless of the marchesa's presence : 68 LA BELLE SAHARITAINE. " He goes he does not go ! Which side do you take, Lady Harcourt ; and how many pairs of gloves upon it?" " He goes !" exclaimed Stanhope. " Fifty pounds to ten !" "You have lost," said Lady Harcourt, who had reached the window ; " and you are fitly punished for speaking !" Everybody was gone at last ; the marchesa and Violet were alone. You angel !" cried Nina ; " but oh, you have made a terrible enemy Silician take care !" " Chef" returned Violet, with an accent perfectly Italian and a disregard of consequences purely Anglo- Saxon. " I had been a little jealous, I will admit now," pursued Nina ; " it was the first time it will be the last where Giulia is concerned ! JVly dear, Carlo will never forgive the blow to his vanity ; she had written him a letter only that morning." " He cared nothing for her ; you cannot think he did !" " No, no ; not in earnest but he is a man ! However, it is ended, thanks to you. If ever I can repay you, I vow no, I won't, for women always break their oaths." " Don't repeat that stale old slaader," said Violet ; " not women, only the make-believes." " But I love you ! Let me hug you, this instant ! I never was troubled about him before ; though, if I repeat that so often, you will not believe me. Well, you have cured him ! Oh, the cat ! she will never dupe him now but you you oh, my dear !" " Bah !" said Violet ; " did Giulia da Rimini suppose she was a match for us ? Let her try to punish me we shall see ! In the meantime, my love, we will have some tea, just to get the taste of her name out of our mouths." DEAD AS PHARAOH. 69 CHAPTER VII. DEAD AS PHARAOH. ISS CAMERON did not like to think of her visit to the sick-room, for each time she did so the circumstances connected therewith seemed to increase in significance. Many of her sex would have contented themselves with expending cen- sure on the duchess, but this was contrary to Violet's creed, which recognized the injustice of condemning a woman and letting the man go scot-free. Still she rejoiced at having punished Giulia. She de- tested exhibitions of spite, and would have scorned to em- ploy them in her own behalf ; but in this instance her con- duct was justified by its motive : she had acted in defense of her friend had triumphed too. Only the day before the duchess's supper, an opportunity offered of proving this. Lady Harcourt called at the house to leave some won- derful remedy, for which she had sent to England, and which was to cure Nina's ankle in a magical fashion. Violet and the marchese had been out on horseback, and came in just as her ladyship had risen to take leave. " I can't even stop to say ' How do you do,' she said, " for I have to go to a breakfast, a concert, and into the bargain sell a picture for a young painter dear to my soul, who is dying of consumption." " Occupation enough for one morning, certainly," re- turned Violet. " I shall see you both to-morrow night," continued Lady Harcourt. " Remember, Giulia gives us a supper ! Never, not even when presented to his gracious majesty on my seventeenth birthday, was I in such excitement, and I do not expect to be again if I should live a thousand years. Dear, blessed Giulia never gave a supper before and will never give another, so I mean the affair to be memorable." " If she dies when the bills come in, her death will rest on your conscience," said Carlo. " There will be no bills, caro mio," replied her ladyship. 70 DEAD AS PHARAOH. " Every restaurateur, from Doney down to the lowest tyro, knows your charming enslaver too well to send so much as a rnadeleine to her house, unless paid in advance." "Not even a Madeleine penitente?" asked Violet. " She might consider the offering personal," rejoined Carlo. " She will be one herself, you wicked American witch is already ; not on account of her sins, but her rashness in. proposing the supper," added Lady Harcourt, laughing. " She could prove her penitence and avoid the feast by entering a convent," said Violet. " Don't condemn her to that," cried Nina. "At least, give her the privilege of a monastery." "She will get out of the dilemma without adopting any such extreme measures," said Carlo. "Not this time !" returned Lady Harcourt, triumph- antly. " I have written her three notes and sent several men to ask the hour she can't escape. I told her I should bring some friends whom I had already invited to my house." " That is fiendish cruelty," said Violet. " On your part," retorted my lady. " You forced her into giving the supper, Violet Cameron. You put her in a corner, and she had to eat you or be eaten in order to get out. She chose the latter alternative. But wait, my dear. Giulia will pay you before the winter is over, or rather, make you pay, supper and all !'' " Really !" laughed Violet. " How am I in fault ?" " Oh, I don't know ; I ask no questions, I await the course of events. I am reasonably fond of you, I adore her fa va sans dire! If she poisons you I'll come to the funeral, I promise that." And off my lady ran, pausing in the doorway long enough to add, " I shall stop down stairs to inquire after poor Aylmer, but the professor need not be vexed, for I have no jessamines to leave, and no reputation. I say that to save you the trouble." " Supper indeed !" quoth Carlo. " I know one person who will not be deluded." " But you will go you must," said Nina; "and you too, Violet." "There is no necessity in my case. The duchess made it so evident she was not visiting me the day she gave the invitation, that I am absolved from any part therein. But DEAD AS PHARAOH. 71 Carlo is not, and for once in the annals of anybody's his- tory, pleasure will be united with duty." " Then have some refreshment ready for me when I get back. I shall be starved if I trust to what I get there," cried Carlo. " Entendu /" said Violet. " But be sure you appear in time to partake of it, though Circe and all her nymphs stand in the way." " I am sick of Circe, and I hate her nymphs," rejoined Carlo. Nina glanced at Violet from the corners of her beauti- ful almond-shaped eyes. Carlo was looking at his wife, but he lost the glance, though Violet, whose head was half turned away, caught it distinctly. If the married pair lived to the age of the patriarchs, Carlo would never be permitted to dream that Nina had for an instant been jeal- ous of the duchess. Indeed, while this by-play went on, his thoughts ran in this fashion : " I swear that little wife of mine is the daintiest, sweet- est, most charming creature in the world. It is ridiculous that I could have been attracted by that great coarse Rimini I never was !" And, though neither of the ladies were observing him, so far as he knew, both were as cognizant of his reflections as if he had put them into spoken language. Carlo's fancy for the duchess, already on the wane when her misadventure occurred, had been killed outright as dead as Pharaoh. He went to the famous supper which would supply Lady Harcourt with gibes and jests during the whole sea- son. There was a mayonnaise and weak punch with the sugar left out, and the duchess informed her guests that one glass of punch would do nobody .ny harm, and nobody was tempted to try a second. But beggarly as the feast appeared to the invited, the expense rankled in Giulia's mind. She would without hesi- tation lavish thousands of francs upon her dress, or lose them at cards would in both cases, if impossible to avoid the necessity, pay her debts with a reasonable degree of resignation, but in spite of this she was miserly beyond belief. So she had two causes for virulent hatred against Violet, and positively she hated her worse for having unin- tentionally forced her to give the supper than for deliber- 72 DEAD AS PHARAOH. ately exposing her to Carlo. She did not care about him, but he had lately come into possession of a large sum of ready money. The duchess wanted money, was terri- bly cramped this season, and she had meant him to pay certain debts, the creditors for which were importunate creatures who gave her no peace. A caprice for Laurence Aylmer she had, and a singularly strong one, insensible as he seemed to her fascinations. She had been confident the day she entered his rooms that she could do so with impunity. When she went to the house she had not dreamed there would be a possibility of seeing him, but as she was de- scending the stairs, she perceived that the doors of the ground-floor apartment were open not a soul in sight. The duchess peeped into the first salon empty. She passed on. In the second room the sister knelt before the statue of some saint, her head buried in her hands, so deeply absorbed in prayer that she was lost to all sublunary sur- roundings. Giulia noiselessly crossed the carpeted floor and gained the sick room. Aylmer slept, his head supported high upon the pillows ; the open collar of his night-shirt exposing the graceful neck and the outlines of the muscular shoulders. The woman crept up to the bed, leaned over, and pressed her lips upon his throat. The caress roused the wounded man ; he opened his great eyes, into which a sudden fever- ish brightness rushed, and half raised himself, uttering some incoherent exclamation. She believed that he recog- nized her, but she heard a step in the room at the side of the chamber, and fled, afraid of discovery dropping the bouquet of jessamines on his pillow as she hurried away. She ran out just in time to escape the professor, ran through the salon where the sister still knelt, and reached the outer door, but before she could cross the threshold, met Antonio. " I have made a most unfortunate blunder," she said quickly; "I thought the Marchesa Magnoletti was estab- lished in this apartment ! Luckily neither the sick man nor his nurse saw me. Say nothing about my mistake, if you please ; it is most annoying to me ;" and as she spoke, she actually put ten francs in his hand ! She would almost rather have submitted to the loss of one of her perfect teeth, but there was no escape. DEAD AS PUARAOH. 73 During the ensuing fortnight Miss Cameron's visits to the sick-room continued very frequent. The professor would come for her, and she could not refuse his request ; indeed, there was no reason why she should, save the personal shrinking caused by her belief that the patient mistook her for Giulia Rimini, since he babbled about the jessamines and her sudden disappear- ance. Why had she gone why ? And did she remem- ber What? The often-begun sentence could never get itself finished. His mind was always unable to seize one special incident that he desired to recall, though it haunted his fancy with wearisome persistency. " I can't tell it I can't tell it !" he would say, in a de- spairing tone, then sometimes become vexed that she did not help him, and cry : " You could give me the word, and you will not ; you are cruel cruel !" But the instant he said this he regretted it, and would snatch her hands and press his fevered lips on them, ex- claiming : " I did not mean that ; you know I did not ! Say you are sure I did not mean it !" Violet could neglect no effort to quiet him. The pro- fessor told her frankly that the humoring of his fancies might have a great effect upon his recovery. Indeed, if she hesitated about letting the sick man hold her hand, or kept him waiting for an answer to his eager questions, she would immediately become aware of the professor's head thrust in at the door, his lynx-eyes glaring at her from under their bushy brows. Nor did he content himself with glaring ; he did not scruple even to shake his fist at her, while he stood on one leg and waved the other in the air like an impatient Mercury preparing for flight. Sometimes in the midst of her pity and annoyance her inexplicable bitterness towards the patient her anger at herself for such emotion a fit of laughter would seize Violet, forcing her to bury her head in the counterpane to smother the ill-timed merriment which hurt her cruelly all the while. To catch the absurd side of the situation, yet comprehend so clearly its grave aspect, seemed like regard- ing a dismal tragedy and seeing some evil-disposed imp thrust a grotesque caricature thereof close at its side. On a certain evening the professor's patience, never his 4 74 DEAD AS PHARAOH. strong point a thing noticeable both in great savants and great saints had been completely exhausted by his patient's having delirium when he ought to be sane, and behaving in every particular just the opposite of what was his obvious duty. So when the doctor heard the outer doors open to admit Miss Cameron on her return from the opera, he dashed into the entrance-hall. In his haste he nearly fell over the lady, and was freshly irritated by the burst of laughter wherewith she acknowledged his presence ; stand- ing there so beautiful in her white draperies, that the pro- fessor could not decide which emotion predominated in his soul a wicked desire to shake her, or a ridiculous impulse to go on his knees, as if one of the angelic beings, concern- ing whose existence he affected such doubts in his discus- sions with Eliza Bronson, had suddenly appeared before him. " What have I done that you should try to bring my ill-spent existence to an abrupt close by running over me ?" Miss Cameron asked. "Done!" thundered the professor. "Everybody does the very thing that is out of place and absurd !" " Witness your trying to crush me when I enter my house," laughed Violet. "I am not talking about myself," he grumbled. " It is no matter about me !" " And no matter if I am broken in pieces, I suppose !" returned she, still laughing. "Oh, very well! If you can do nothing better than sneer, and behave like like well, like a woman ach, mein Gott, there is no other comparison serves then I'll leave you !" thundered the professor. " First you had better tell me what is the matter," said Violet. " Matter !" he echoed. " Everything except, indeed, what ought to happen ! I swear by the river Styx and the northern god Thor, that never, never if I live to be old as Methuselah, and visionary as Eliza Bronson's St. Paul will I ever again take the charge of an American ! No, not if we were the only two people left on this terrestrial globe !" " I know what ails you," said Violet. " You have had no supper." DEAD AS PHARAOH. 75 "I wonder when I could have found an instant to snatch a morsel !" cried he. " Go up stairs, and you shall have many morsels tooth- some and indigestible as any that even a German cook could devise. Antonio, take good care of the professor, and see he has some beer," she added, looking over her shoulder towards that personage, who stood secretly smiling at the irate savant. " I will sit with your patient while you are gone, Esculapius. I suppose that is what you want." The professor began to laugh. " I'd like to say no, just from a spirit of contradiction," he said ; " but I should only punish myself. If you don't go, he will rave all night, like the fool he is, and I shall have to watch him ; for I notice that blessed sister always enjoys her soundest sleep when there is the most need of her keeping awake ! Per Bacco, if your religious fables had any foundation, what a drowsy set the elect would be up in their pearl-gated paradise !" " My dear professor, eat your supper, drink your beer, and convince yourself that at least your corporeal part is not a delusion," counseled Miss Cameron. " Tausend ten/els!" exclaimed the savant, glowering at her. " You really are a beauty ! It is a pity you are only so much hydrogen, and oxygen, and " " Never mind the rest of the unpleasant compounds, you dreadful old materialistic absurdity," interrupted Violet, and disappeared within the arched portals which led to the sick man's quarters. The professor snorted, settled his cravat, frowned at Antonio, and ejaculated : " She is the most wonderful creature in the world about the only one worthy the name of woman." "She is, sir," said Antonio, in the meekest under-key of his many-toned voice. He knew that if he spoke the pro- fessor would snub him ; if he did not speak, the professor would rate him for his impertinence. " She is indeed, sir." " Mind your business !" howled the savant. " Who per- mitted you to have opinions ? Set you up, indeed ! As if you had reached the stage of development when the human animal acquires what they call a soul the fools !" Antonio bowed low. " What are you jerking about for like a monkey?" de- 76 DEAD AS PHARAOH. manded the professor. " Do you know we are all a superior sort of apes not so very superior either nothing else, the grandest of us?" " If you please, sir whatever you like, sir," said Antonio. " I don't like it at all," shouted the professor ; " but my likings don't change facts. Oh, see here, come up stairs and find me a crust ! My stomach is as empty as a balloon that is what makes me theoretical." " It is not exactly the word I should have chosen to ex- press your damnable ill-temper," muttered the Swiss, but wisely spoke so low that his commentary did not reach the ears of the irascible savant, who, before they gained the top of the stairs, had forgotten hunger and annoyance in the interest with which he questioned Antonio about a sick baby belonging to some one of Miss Cameron's numerous pensioners. Violet entered the apartment of the rez-said Violet, caress- ing her. " I am so sorry there was no one at the station to meet you ; if you had sent me word " " Oh ! weren't you expecting me ?" interrupted Mary again. " Didn't you receive the telegram ?" " No, indeed ; but never mind you are here !" " Oh, she sent one from Paris I wouldn't stop and after all you did not receive it ; and to fall in on you like this ! Oh ! I don't like it !" cried the visitor, and it was plain that it required a great effort to keep back a sob. " And who came with you ? Of course you did not make the journey alone ?" " I told you she sent a telegram," rejoined Mary, in that injured little voice, and her chin, which she had with much difficulty just quieted, began to quiver anew. " But maybe she forgot she did forget so ; and I ought to have attended to it myself : but I had such a dreadful headache. Oh dear, it is too bad to have taken you by surprise !" " Not of the least consequence don't think of it. You have come, and that is enough," said Violet, very sorry for her, though unable to repress a feeling that so much con- fusion was misplaced, even while she appreciated the girl's efforts to overcome it. " You are worn out by your jour- ney, poor dear, and that makes you nervous." "Yes, that is it," assented Mary, but Violet saw her blue eyes wander towards Aylmer, who stood waiting till the first salutations between the cousins were over before he came forward to renew his acquaintance with the younger. " Here is some one you know," said Violet. " Come and speak to her, Mr. Aylmer ; the sight of a familiar face will do her good." Was there something peculiar in the manner of both ? Aylmer, at least, had recovered his usual demeanor by the time he reached the ladies. He held out his hand to the new-comer, saying : FROM AMERICA. 151 " How do you do, Miss Danvers ? I am very happy to meet you again." "Thanks; you are very good," returned Mary, primly. She let him take her hand, but quickly drew it away, and said, looking at Violet : " I I have not seen him since be- fore poor papa died." Now she sobbed outright, but controlled herself in a moment. Violet, anxious to change the current of her thoughts, began to speak of her journey. Aylmer joined in about its fatigues, and, as soon as an opportunity offered, added : " I will take myself off, Miss Cameron, and give you and your cousin an opportunity to make acquaintance. I shall come to-morrow, if I may, to hear if she finds herself quite rested." " Yes, pray do. Au revoir," said Violet, pleasantly ; but she did not offer him her hand, and Aylmer noticed the omission. "Good-morning, Miss Danvers," he continued. " Good-morning," Mary answered, and gave him another of her odd glances, at once mutinous and reproachful like a child who feels that it has suffered injustice, and does not quite know what form of defense it ought to assume ; is a little afraid, too, that its self-assertion will be laughed at. Aylmer went his way, divided between a natural mascu- line annoyance at the interruption of his interview with Miss Cameron and the reflections which the sight of George Danvers's daughter roused in his mind. Violet saw her cousin glance after the retiring guest, and noticed that odd expression on her face ; but in the poor child's present state, it was impossible to decide whether emotion or physical weariness unnerved her. Then, too, this arrival in the house of an unknown relative afforded reason for a certain excitement. "And who was your compagnon de voyage ?" she asked. " Oh, please don't speak French !" cried Mary, almost irritably. " It makes me homesick ! I've studied it, and I can read well enough ; but it doesn't sound a bit the p:\ine when people talk it. Oh, I don't mean to be impo- lite, you know !" " It is just a silly habit of mixing languages that per- sons living on the Continent fall into," said Violet, rather amused to hear how very apologetic her voice grew. 152 FROM AMERICA. " I should not," replied Mary ; but she spoke so like a naughty, willful child that the words did not sound rude. " And who took care of you on the journey ?" asked Violet. " Why, Mrs. Forrester. Oh, you didn't get the telegram ! It is that makes it so awkward, and me such a goose ! I thought you would know all about it, and be expecting me." " But I am just as glad to see you, my dear a pleasant surprise is always welcome," said Violet, feeling ashamed because the girl's behavior rendered a little effort at pa- tience necessary. " Mrs. Forrester ? oh yes you wrote me you were to sail with her. But I did not think you could have reached Liverpool yet." " She changed her mind just after I wrote, and we left a week before we intended," said Mary. " I got your dis- patch to say you would send to England to meet me it came the day we sailed ; but Mrs. Forrester was coming down to Florence, so I did not want to trouble you. I might have written from London," she added, contritely ; " but we were so busy the few days we were there sight- seeing all the time and she said a telegram would do." " Of course, my dear don't think about it. But where is Mrs. Forrester ? why didn't she come to the house, so that I might thank her for taking care of you ?" "That was another thing that hurried us," cried Mary. " The day we left London she got a message from her sister in Rome, who was very ill ; and I wouldn't let her lose any time : so I changed trains at Pistoja and she went on. I knew I could do well enough for that little journey, even if I didn't speak Italian, but " She had got on so easily in these last speeches that Violet thought the embarrassment all over, and now the child suddenly turned scarlet, her eyes grew so bright they looked angry, and then the tears gathered in them again, and a fresh sob broke her voice ; but Mary struggled gal- lantly for self-control, and once more conquered. "Lean back and rest a little longer ; then we will go to your room, and you shall get your wraps off," Violet said kindly. " I am very comfortable, thanks," answered the small personage, sitting upright as a dart, though too pretty and slight for the attitude to seem ungraceful. FROM AMERICA. 153 " But you look so tired," said Violet, for the sake of saying something. " It doesn't rest me to loll in a chair," replied Mary, still busy subduing her freshly-returned excitement; "I like a hard one best." As she spoke she removed herself into a straight-backed mediaeval affair, in which no creature of the present ease-loving generation had ever before been known to sit. This bit of assertion seemed to do Mary good, but she was still longing to cry, Violet perceived, and the fact kept her from mentally styling her new inmate disagreeable ; odd enough, to be sure, but a rather attractive oddity. "Did you have a good passage across the Atlantic, I mean ? Were you sea-sick ?" Violet asked. " Mrs. Forrester was ; I never suffer," announced Mary, with the air of a veteran sailor. Perhaps Violet's face ex- pressed a certain wonder as to where she gained her experi- ence, for the girl added quickly, as if her veracity had been called in doubt, " I went to Florida and back by sea when I was a little girl, with papa." Another sob here. Violet caught herself wondering how strange it seemed there should be any person to weep over George Danvers's loss ! He had certainly made plenty of people shed tears by his misdeeds ; then she felt ashamed of such hard-hearted reflections in this poor girl's presence. "You shall have some tea," she said; "that always rests one." She rang the bell, and Antonio appeared in his customary speedy fashion. She gave her order, adding, "Everything is ready is Miss Danvers's rooms ? Have her boxes been carried up ?" " Pardon, mademoiselle, none have come ; I was about to ask mademoiselle if I should send " " Oh, my baggage I forgot it !" interrupted Mary, springing out of her chair. The recollection of an odious adventure which she meant to keep to herself checked fur- ther speech. She had hurried through the station, and sprung precipitately into the nearest hack, only thinking of escape ; and from that moment to this had not remem- bered those trunks which had weighed so heavily on her mind during the whole journey. And she could offer no explanation. Cousin Violet would believe her heedless and silly, and conceive a prejudice against her ; but a recital of 154 FROM AMERICA, the facts would afford still stronger grounds for censure. Girls had no business to meet with adventures. Mary had no creed more firmly fixed than this. Cousin Violet would be shocked decide that she had been ill brought up per- haps condemn her father therefor. A dread of blame fall- ing upon the memory of her dead parent was always her first fear in these days. She bad lived for months in a constant state of watchful defense, which would have gone far to render a girl less healthy in body and mind either hopelessly morbid or downright vixenish. And the trunks might be lost stolen ; not only her wardrobe, but every precious relic she possessed, gone in a single fell swoop. Did ever such miseries befall another '? Why, all the woes possible came upon her at once, big and little ! As a crowning stroke to her discomfiture, she had said " baggage," and that was an Americanism she had read so in an English book ! And Cousin Violet, who had lived so long abroad, would think her uneducated as well as silly ! In her troubled bewilderment she could pay no attention to some question of her cousin's, but caught her- self muttering, " Buggage !" a wild, impossible combina- tion of the two words, which made her feel that her brain was positively softening. But Violet had turned to the man again, without noticing her insane ejaculation ; and, oh, she was speaking calmly about rooms and arrangements ; and the trunks might be stolen had been already, no doubt ! Mary started forward with some confused idea of rushing off in search of her property heard Violet exclaim : " Don't stir, dear child !" and dropped back into her chair, and again her lips muttered that impossible word : " Baggage !" " What did you say, dear ?" Miss Cameron asked. Mary only shook her head ; she was past speech ; so completely exhausted by fatigue and varying emotions that she did not care what became of the trunks, or herself, or anything in the world. "Just give Antonio the ticket for your boxes," Violet said ; and Mary managed to find her pocket-book and ex- tract the paper, but, oh, she was sure she appeared hope- lessly idiotic. And she could not explain ; and between vexation, weariness, and a shuddering disgust to recall her adventure, she turned positively sick and faint. FROM AMERICA. 155 After Mary had drunk her tea, she felt somewhat re- stored ; yet all the while, as Violet sat talking in a kindly cheerful fashion, an odd sensation that everything was un- real oppressed the newly-arrived visitor. She could hardly yet believe this the cousin whom she had pictured as faded and elderly, perhaps pretentious and affected, on the strength of having been a beauty this lady, so youthful, so lovely, so like Mary's exalted ideas of what a princess or a poetess ought to be ! She found it difficult to accept this brilliant creature as a relative in place of the ideal which she had formed and elaborated with the positiveness of her age had shrunk from a little, too and, while glad to discover her error, she indulged a certain sense of injury thereat. Mary was a model to girls in general for her readiness to admit that she had made a mistake or been in the wrong, but she had a trick of retaining that injured feeling under her penitence as a sop to her dignity. " Now I will show you your rooms," Violet said. " Come this way, dear." For a space Mary quite forgot her troubles and annoy- ances in admiration of the charming nook which Violet had furnished with such care. " My bedroom is next yours," she explained, as they sat down in the boudoir, "and Miss Bronson's apartments are next this room, so you will not feel solitary." Mary showed so much pleasure, and expressed her grati- fication so prettily, that Violet ventured to hope she had got quite at her ease, and that now they could begin to make acquaintance. " My house is a rather gay one," she said presently, d propos to some details about her daily life, " but you shall not be worried at present." " Oh, I noticed you wore no mourning," rejoined Mary, and stopped, confused and vexed at having spoken the words ; yet the sense of injury came back. " I did for a few weeks," Violet renlied quietly ; " as long as is customary, unless for one's immediate family. You must recollect that I had not seen your father for many years." " Yes of course I beg your pardon ! Oh, I don't know what ails me ; I say everything wrong ; I never be- haved so in my life and you are so good to me !" cried Mary, her features working tremulously. 156 GIULIA'S GREEK. " You are tired, that is all," Violet said. " Now, my dear, I am going away, so that you can lie down and rest before dinner ; you will feel better then. Try to sleep, and wake up remembering that you are at home !" She kissed the girl's forehead and went out of the room. Left to herself, Mary indulged in a hearty fit of crying, which did her good. She slept afterwards, and by the time she met her cousin and Miss Bronson, had re- covered sufficient self-control to behave sensibly, though still embarrassed enough to be stiff and precise ; a bearing which caused Violet serious doubts as to the probability of her proving a satisfactory companion, but which prepos- sessed Eliza at once in her favor, stiffness and dignity being synonymous terms in the spinster's mind. CHAPTER XVII. GIULI A'S GREEK. AVE you seen Giulia's Greek ?" asked Lady Har- court, as she established herself in the coziest corner of Nina Magnoletti's salon. It was the little Russian's reception-day, and a knot of people, Violet Cameron among them, was gathered in the room. Her ladyship had just entered, and barely gave herself time to exchange salutations with her friends before she put her question. " Has Giulia found a Greek?" demanded Nina. " ' When Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war,' " quoted Sabakine, with mock sententiousness. " I knew you would get off that stale old quotation," cried Lady Harcourt. " Yes, Nina, she has ; he only ar- rived yesterday ! Oh, my dear, there is the most wonder- ful history attached " "Already?" broke in Sabakine. "Be quiet, and let me tell my news not a soul of you had heard ! How delightful to be first in the field for once ! And how do you suppose she came by him ?" " Advertised !" GIULIAS GREEK. 157 " Made a compact with the devil !" " Won him at cards !" This last suggestion was Saba- kine's. " No, no ; nothing so hackneyed and commonplace as either of those devices," said Lady Harcourt. " And bhc would have nothing to offer his Satanic majesty, since she gave him her soul long since," Sa- bakine added. "Do tell me!" pleaded Nina. "Nobody will ever guess." " Miss Cameron is the only one who does not try her powers," said Lady Harcourt, " Yankee though she be ! Yes, I understand," she continued, as Violet only smiled rather disdainfully in response. " Not worth the trouble ! My dear, you never will appreciate Giulia, in spite of all my efforts to make you." " Oh yes, I think I do," returned Violet. "At her value," added Sabakine, "which is above rubies ! But don't drive us mad with curiosity, Lady Har- court ! Who made the duchess a present of a Greek '?" " Her husband !" A chorus of incredulity followed ; Miss Cameron alone remained silent and indifferent. " Her husband !" repeated Lady Harcourt, nodding her head impressively, and looking slowly around the circle till her eyes rested upon Violet. " Miss Cameron is the only polite person among you," she added ; " I shall tell ray story for her special benefit." " So kind of you," said Violet, laughing at her mis- chievous friend's efforts to tease her. " One may be less doubting than Thomas, still there are limits to one's credulity," said Nina. " Lady Harcourt evidently thinks not," observed Saba- kine. " Hush, you pair of schismatical Muscovites !" cried her ladyship. " Yes, a gift of marital affection, and a very nice-looking one too : who could ever say a harsh word against the duke after this ?" "Are we to accept the duchess's unaided testimony as to the quarter from whence the cadeaic arrives?" asked Sabakine. " Not a bit of it ; he comes under the husband's seal. I saw the proofs," said Lady Harcourt. 158 GIULIXS GREEK. " Ah, do tell me !" urged Nina. " It is cruel to play with all the better feelings of our natures in this fashion." "My dear, I have to work up gradually to my fine effects ;* one is not allowed such a marvel to relate every day ! Well, then, I drove to Giulia's to carry " Her ladyship was interrupted by the entrance of Carlo and Aylmer. "How do you do, Mr. Aylmer?" cried Nina. "Oh, don't speak, either of you ! Lady Harcourt had just begun to tell us something so interesting." " I can begin again." "Pray lose no more time ! Giulia has got a Greek her husband sent him Lady Harcourt went to the house and found him. Now, now, please go on, my dear friend." "Oh, that story ; have you only just heard that?" cried the provoking Carlo. " I have long suspected you of being the most depraved of men, and now I am convinced !" retorted her ladyship. "You only want to spoil my dramatic effects you know nothing about it !" " And what business have you here on my reception morning, I should be glad to learn ?" demanded Nina. " Don't I know, my lady ?" cried Carlo, holding up a letter. " Nina inia, behold my excuse for this unseemly intrusion !" " What is it let me see !" pleaded Nina, hurrying for- ward and playfully trying to snatch the letter ; but he held it out of her reach, while allowing her to look at the seal. " The duke's crest positively !" " Certainly this is the age of miracles !" said Sabakine. " Da Rimini makes his wife a present of a young Greek. Did you say he was young, Lady Harcourt ?" " And handsome, too !" " And selects Carlo, of all people in the world, as his confidant," pursued Sabakino, who was exasperating Aylmer by keeping the seat beside Miss Cameron. " Oh, at this rate we shall never get at the facts," cried Nina, sinking back in her chair. " Lady Harcourt, if you have a heart in your bosom, go on with your story." " And I'll come in with the Greek chorus," said Carlo. " I drove to Giulia's to carry her some of my wonderful embrocation her little girl had hurt her hand," explained her ladyship. GIULIAS GREEK. 159 " Ah well, the poor little thing stands a chance of being cured, since she can be treated for nothing," Sabakine whispered audibly. Nina menaced him with a paper-knife. " And there sat Giulia and the Greek ! I thought at first I must have been let in by accident ; but no ! Giulia received me with unbounded enthusiasm, and begged per- mission to present Giorgio Dimetri a great friend of her husband's. He had just brought her a letter ; the duke par- ticularly requested her to do all in her power to make the signore's stay in Florence agreeable. How could she begin better than by bringing him to the notice of a person, etcetera, etcetera, as myself spare my modesty ! Then we talked ; the fellow is well-mannered enough and cer- tainly handsome. I should say a consummate rascal and well, I don't know how to explain what I mean. I got an idea that Giulia was afraid of him. I did, positively !" " Giulia afraid !" exclaimed Nina. " It does sound absurd. However, he was exaggeratedly courteous and complimentary, and then he went away, and I thought how fortunate I was not a censorious person, else I should be wondering where she picked him up ! But Giulia knows this is a wicked world, and she treated me* as if I were as wicked as Sabakine himself brought her proofs. Actually showed me the duke's letter so very prettily worded joining praise of his wife and his friend so neatly, that I cried out in admiration." " And what did she say ?" asked Sabakine. " ' Dear Alfredo is such a superior man !' " quoted Lady Harcourt, with so perfect an imitation of the duchess's manner and languid voice, that everybody laughed. " And now for your part in the comedy, Carlo," said Nina. " What a changeable world this is !" cried Sabakine. " To what is that d propos?" asked Nina. "A. propos to Carlo's turning out the duke's confidant instead of the duchess's," returned Sabakine, coolly. Everybody laughed again, Nina as heartily as the others ; each week convinced her more thoroughly that Carlo's cure was too complete for any danger of a relapse. With all her arts, Giulia da Rimini could never again move him anv more than if he had been made of stone 160 GIULIA'S GREEK. instead of the sadly inflammable materials which entered into his composition. " Read your letter, Carlino mio," said she ; and Carlo read aloud the gracefully-worded lines in which the duke recommended Signor Dimetri to the marchese's friendly offices. " It really does all seem like a charade to which one hasn't the clue," said Lady Harcourt. " Carlo, had you written to Da Rimini that Giulia was rather lonely these days ?" " How could I, while Aylrner was here ?" replied mis- chievous Carlo. " Ha ! sits the wind in that quarter !" exclaimed her ladyship ; then she added meditatively : " That supper is not paid for yet." She glanced from Nina to Violet. Besides themselves and Carlo, no one comprehended the allusion, but the trio recollected what she had said to Violet ; and now, for the first time, it struck Miss Cameron that the countess some- times went a little too far in her pleasantries ; then, meet- ing her friendly, merry gaze, thought herself absurd to be piqued. " Have I a supper to pay for, Lady Harcourt ?" asked Aylmer, just because he must say something after Carlo's speech, which had turned all eyes, except Violet's, upon him. " H'm !" said her ladyship. " At all events, it was pro- phesied that but never mind ! And did you receive the Greek with open arms, Carlo ?" " I should have done so, but unfortunately I was out when he called," Carlo replied. "I want to ask a favor of you, Carlino, but I suppose you have no time to spare," said Sabakine, so soberly that, quick-witted as the marchese was, he thought the Russian in earnest. " Of course," he answered ; " always at your service. Why should you think I hadn't time ?" " I thought you would have to put the Greek up a little in his new metier the retiring shopman always coaches the fellow that takes his place," said Sabakine, as grave as a judge. " Attend to your manners, Alexis," said Carlo. " No- body cares about your morals, but " QIULIAS GREEK. 161 " One moment," interrupted Lady Harcourt. " Get me some jeweler's cotton, somebody, if Carlo is going to dissect Sabakine's mental anatomy. My ears are not hardened enough to endure that." As soon as there was a lull in the laughing chatter, Miss Cameron rose to take her leave. " Going already, Violet !" expostulated Nina. " I must. You know my cousin arrived yesterday. I promised to take her out to drive." " A cousin a feminine one ! You are less fortunate than Giulia," said Lady Harcourt. " But my deserts are so much less, you must remember !" " I hope Miss Danvers is well," Aylmer said, as Violet's rising brought him within reach of her. " Rather tired yet a little shy and disconsolate, too, I am afraid." " She certainly cannot be so long in your house." "I hope not," Violet replied. " I was going to inquire after you all," continued Ayl- mer, " but I saw your carriage pass in the street. May I come to-morrow?" " Of course. By the way, the professor has promised to dine with us enfamille. Pray come too, if you are not better occupied." "As if that were possible ! I shall be delighted !" re- turned he, with more energy than the occasion absolutely required ; but fortunately the others were listening to some remark of Lady Ilarcourt's, and did not hear. A rose that Violet wore i'n her corsage dropped on the floor. Aylmer picked it up, and she held out her hand, saying : " Thanks !" He bent over her gloved fingers as if in leave-taking, holding back the flower and looking at her with such an eager entreaty to be allowed to keep it that permission or refusal seemed important, trifling as the matter was. So Violet simply appeared unconscious that she had lost the rose, and turned to exchange some last laughing words with Nina and the rest. Carlo came forward and offered his arm to conduct her down stairs, and Aylmer thought his friend a monster for not leaving the pleasant duty to him. He longed to take his departure also, but his culte was so sacred that he 162 GIULIA8 GREEK. never could bear doing the least thing which would render his attentions to Miss Cameron pointed in the eyes of their acquaintances. His precious secret must risk no contam- ination from premature exposure to those sharp-witted, careless-tongued people, who made a jest of every subject under heaven, from an idyl to a tragedy. This time he had a little reward for his self-denial in listening to her praises. As the door closed behind Violet and Carlo, Lady Harcourt exclaimed, with unusual earnest- ness : " That charming creature always affects me like a breath of pure air." "I really believe she lives in some higher sphere, and just stoops to us occasionally," said Sabakine ; then, as if ashamed of ever speaking seriously, he added with a laugh : " To leave her is like going out of church, without any of the bored sensation." " Oh, nobody could pose less for a saint," rejoined Lady Harcourt. " She is never prudish, never shocked ; yet somehow, bright and witty as she is, she gives me the feel- ing of a Una set in the midst of our I mean your wick- edness." "Because she is the best, purest creature that ever lived !" cried Nina, enthusiastically. " Isn't that her one fault ?" asked Sabakine. " She is a thought cold her atmosphere is a little too rarefied." " She has a heart equal to her head, and that is saying a great deal," responded Nina. " Only no man has ever succeeded in waking it," said Sabakine. " I hope, for her sake, none ever will," observed Lady Harcourt. " It would be curious to watch her under such circumstances, but she is so earnest, so enthusiastic beneath her coating of ice, that the experiment would probably prove dangerous, considering what you men are." "You need not compliment her at our expense, eh, Ayl- mer?" pronounced Sabakine, with a mischievous glance. " I agree with Lady Harcourt," Laurence replied, so quietly that Nina indulged in a hasty wonder if it could be possible her idea in regard to the state of his feelings was without foundation. As the marchese was helping Violet into her carriage, she said : GIULIA'S GREEK. 163 " There come Giulia da Rimini's yellow liveries down the street ; you will have the happiness of handing her up stairs. No doubt she has brought her Greek to exhibit to Nina." Carlo was not sensitive, but he had no mind to endure the quizzical looks of his friends when he returned with Giulia and the new-comer, as he should have to do in case Violet's supposition proved correct ; and he did not wish a tete-a-tete with her on the stairs if she came alone. " Which way are you going ?" he asked. " Home," she replied. " Couldn't you drop me in the Piazza Maria Novella ? I have an errand there," he said. " Oh yes ; get in if you choose to risk Mrs. Grundy's censure, supposing we are seen. Dear me, what a mortal terror you must have of Circe, since you are willing to sacrifice both our reputations in order to avoid her !" " I thought you would admire my strength of mind," returned Carlo, laughing, as he stepped into the carriage and gave the order to the footman. " Or your prudence," amended Violet. " Do you really suppose I am obliged to cultivate that cowardly virtue where the Rimini is concerned ?" said Carlo, for though exceeding!) 7 sensible in most respects, he could never keep his overweening vanity from crying out at the slightest possible prick. " I should be sorry to have so poor an opinion of you," she replied, and changed the conversation : jests on the subject were disagreeable to her. Carlo was very attentive and tender to his wife in these days, often stopping away from the club and resisting the attractions of baccarat to remain with her. He always be- haved like this after one of his wanderings of fancy ; it was the certainty that the vagary would soon pass which kept Nina from becoming jealous enough for real un- happiness, and she possessed the wonderful wisdom and tact to receive the offender's return with a sweetness which few women would have been able to emulate. She never reproached him ; appeared neither sad nor sulky ; she simply ignored what had happened, and ren- dered herself as fascinating as if he had been a new victim to be immolated on her shrine. By pursuing this line of conduct she kept a firm hold 164 GIULIAS GREEK. over the butterfly nature of her husband. He always came back usually came speedily, too ; for, besides the masterly talents she displayed in her treatment of him, she seldom failed very soon to find means of putting his temporary goddess at a disadvantage. The woman for whom he conceived one of his violent, short-lived fancies, Nina was sure to pet and make much of ; seek her society, offer her entertainments, lay little pitfalls, and sit serenely by and watch the lady fall into them, and so dis- gust Carlo ; and she did it all so innocently that he never discovered the dispelling of his dream was Nina's work. He only decreed the other woman an idiot ; he beheld her commonplace, vapid, mere clay, unadorned by any poetical light, and marveled that he could for an instant have im- agined her anything else ; and turned towards Nina, such a pleasing contrast, and adored her with all his might. But into the contest with Madame da Rimini, Nina had carried more active sentiments, growing too jealous to be- have with her customary tact. She had reached so high a pitch of exasperation at her impotency to counteract Circe's spells, that she might have risked ruin of her peace by open hostilities, had not Violet come so adroitly to her aid and ended Carlo's thraldom by the blow to his vanity. "I never, never can repay you, Violetta mia !" Nina would say. "You see how effectually he is cured thanks to you. Oh, a man was there ever anything so weak !" Adding this latter exclamation with the sort of pitying scorn one so often notices in women's words, and in their treatment of the opposite sex. Violet understood her state of mind, and only wondered that such commiserat- ing contempt had no effect upon her tenderness for her husband. It seemed to Violet that she should never be able to behave as Nina did, though she acknowledged the wisdom of such conduct. She could never conde- scend to similar warfare to those little plots those crafty efforts to recall the wandering masculine fancy ; nor, when the infatuation passed, could she receive the delinquent with such complete ignoring of his misdeeds such entire unconsciousness that he had strayed into forbidden paths. Were the case her own, she should hate him ; she was sure of that. Still, she could admit that such conduct AN UNWELCOME CONFIDENCE. 165 showed real wisdom, though admitting it with a certain disdain which would speedily have chilled her friendly feel- ings for almost any other woman than Nina. CHAPTER XVIII. AN UNWELCOME CONFIDENCE. HERE was a little stir of curiosity in the room, carefully suppressed, of course, as the duchess entered with the Greek, and attended by her withered, weedy dame de compagtiie, whom she always remembered to produce when desirous of appearing intensely respectable. " She must have picked him up somewhere, and forged the letters from the duke," Sabakine said in a low voice to Lady Harcourt, while Giulia was presenting her cavalier to the hostess. " She is always deep in deviltry when she drags out that unfortunate dme damnee." " Who always reminds me of a squirrel set to guard a boa-constrictor," returned Lady Harcourt in the same un- dertone. " But listen isn't she delicious ?" " Such a shame Carlo is gone !" sighed Sabakine, and the genuine disappointment in his tone, and Lady Har- court's sympathetic glance in answer, were a proof that the absent one had been wise to beat a retreat. " Cara marchesa," the duchess was saying, " let me pre- sent to you a dear friend of my husband's ! I knew the surest way of enchanting Signer Dimetri with Florence would be to bring him at once to your house, dearest Nina." " Where you and your friends are so welcome, duchess ; though the signore will soon learn how you overrate its attractions unless he is always careful to come in your company," returned the marchesa, bestowing a courteous smile on the stranger, though her intimates perfectly under- stood the reservation that last clause held, whatever might be the case with the Greek, who bowed and answered with sufficient readiness and ease. 166 AN UNWELCOME CONFIDENCE. " Is this your first visit to Florence, Signor Dimetri ?" Nina asked. " My first," he replied ; " and I am already wondering how I could have deferred it so long." " I hope you left the duke quite well," continued Nina ; and again Sabakine and Lady Harcourt exchanged covert smiles, delighted by the adroitness with which the little Russian signified to the duchess that she was no longer afraid of defying her. "Still suffering from that tiresome sciatica, which forces him to keep within reach of his Paris doctor," re- sponded Dimetri. "How could Shakespeare declare there was nothing in names," said Sabakine, in a fresh aside to Lady Harconrt. " Only think what a blessing for a worn-out debauchee like Rimini to find such a moral-sounding title to cover his ailments ; a saint might have sciatica, you know !" "My husband gave Signor Dimetri a letter to Carlo," said the duchess quickly, and she pronounced the words " my husband " with a tender stateliness which caused Sabakine's face to express such ecstatic delight, that Lady Harcourt had much ado not to laugh. "So you and he will have to share in my pleasurable duty of playing cicerone." "Carlo will appreciate the duke's compliment, dear Giulia," said Nina, sweetly ; "but any efforts of his will seem so very poor beside yours ! The marchese received your card, Signor Dimetri. Too bad, he is out, Giulia ; Violet Cameron carried him off only a few minutes since." The duchess smiled and turned to speak to the assem- bled group, but she meant to make Nina introduce the Greek whether she would or not, and said : "I presented the signore to Lady Harcourt at my house" (the Greek bowed, and her ladyship returned the salute), " so he will be quite one of us without loss of time when you have named him to your masculine adorers." "And will speedily discover that I have no power over them when you are near," said Nina, perfectly concealing her vexation at being forced by her antagonist to do what she had a moment before resolved she would not on any terms. "Upon my word, Giulia's gigantic audacity deserves the overwhelming success it meets," was Sabakine's com- AN UNWELCOME CONFIDENCE. 167 ment in Lady Ilarcourt's ear, as he moved forward in obedience to the hostess's appeal : " Prince Sabakine, the duchess desires me to present to you her husband's friend, Signer Dimetri." " Quick-witted little fairy ! She has managed, after all, to put the onus on Giulia," thought Lady Harcourt, re- garding her with admiring eyes. Sabakine was charmingly courteous, but very grand seigneur, as he could be on occasion, and the Greek made his bows and speeches to him and the others, as the marchesa named them, with a composure which Lady liar- court decided held an undefinable something which proved that his ease proceeded from effrontery, not thorough breeding. A fresh installment of Nina's exquisite Caravan tea was brought in for the new-comers, and her ladyship said : " I cannot resist, though if I drink any more I shall be near a crise de nerfs ! May I trouble you, Signer Dimetri ?" she added to the Greek, who stood near the table on which the smoking samovar had been set. She moved to give him a place on the sofa beside her, and conversed most amiably for some moments, while laughing talk went on, and the result of her ladyship's study was a meditation which ran in this wise : " You are an adventurer, but your manners are good enough, and you certainly are very handsome. You are not a coward either a score of devils stare out of your eyes and you are perfectly incapable of fear, moral or physical. Giulia is certain to rush into one of her passions for you, you broad-shouldered, passionate-eyed, cruel- mouthed creature ! and you look capable of beating her if she offended you and I am sure I hope you will ! Now why did the duke send you to her? Have you got a hold over him? did he owe you money? No, you are not that sort of man. Did he project his soul into futurity, and gloat over the prospect of your one day murdering Giulia, and so freeing him from the pair of you ? or what was his motive? Well, time will show at all events the doubt gives something to look forward to. Perhaps now Giulia will relinquish her designs on Aylmer. Oh no, she Avon't ! she hopes to tease Violet Cameron. Can she ? H'm ! I am puzzled there. Ah, she has captured Aylmer, and taken him behind the flower-stand in the window. Now she 168 AN UNWELCOME CONFIDENCE. peeps to see if the Greek notices she is afraid of him ! And he sees her, though he does appear so occupied with what he is saying to me he sees her ! He is one of those creatures that can look in every direction at once a faculty left from that stage of development in which he was some sort of feline animal in a tropical jungle." The duchess, who had strayed away to examine the flowers, managed to catch the trimmings of her gown in a jardiniere, and summoned Aylmer, who stood nearest, by pointing out her mishap. While he was extricating the lace, she said, in a voice inaudible to the others : " Mr. Aylmer, will you do me a favor ?" " I shall be most happy, duchess you are sure of that !" " Ah, I don't want compliments. I mean a real favor, though it is not a difficult one for you to grant." " You have only to tell me what it is," he answered. " I saw you were not prepossessed with him," making a slight gesture of her finger towards the Greek. " I assure you " " Oh, I saw ! I am very quick to notice even little things," she continued rapidly. "I want you to promise me to be friendly with him do your best to make the rest so." "Any person whom you introduce, duchess, is certain of meeting with every attention," he replied, rather evasively. " Promise me do promise !" she exclaimed, speaking scarcely above her breath, but with an earnestness which was reflected in her eyes. "I can certainly promise to show every courtesy in my power," he said. " It is very important to me," she continued. " I will tell you why I cannot here. Will you come to my house? I am going home. Please come. Ah ! if you knew. I am sure you would not refuse ! You at least have some generosity, some feeling ! you are not like all those people there, who would not lift a finger to save friend or sister from a burning house !" She spoke with a repressed passion and bitterness so evidently unfeigned that, distasteful as she was to him, he could not help a certain sensation of pity. "Will you come?" she repeated. "Will you do me the favor ?" AN UNWELCOME CONFIDENCE, 169 "Please do not call so slight a thing a favor of course I will come," he answered. " Oh, thanks thanks !" She moved away and sat down beside Nina. Lady Ilarcourt released the Greek, and the conversation became general. Out of sheer sympathy for any creature who ap- peared solitary and miserable, Aylmer several times drew Giulia's faded dame de compagnie into the talk ; but, though her habitually anxious, startled face showed she appreciated his kindness, she seemed nervous at the very sound of her own voice. A lady born and bred a sensi- tive woman with weak nerves and, originally, principles and a sense of right and wrong forced by the exigencies of fate to accept an anomalous position in Giulia da Rimini's house ! It was no marvel that after living through five years of such an existence she looked, as Lady Harcourt expressed it, " like a mouse caught in a trap a mouse possessing gleams of a soul instead of a tail." " Mademoiselle de Roquefort, I think we must go if we mean to drive to the hospital," said the duchess. " Signor Dimetri, it would be cruel to drag you away." But that personage was too astute to prolong his visit. " I have an appointment with the Brazilian consul," he said, " and must make my respectful adieus to the marchesa.' : A couple of the other men took their leave at the same moment. As the duchess passed Aylmer, she shot a reminding glance at him ; but, rapid as it was, that terrible Lady Harcourt caught it. "She made an appointment as they stood by the jardi- niere," thought her ladyship. " Oh, Laurence Aylmer, is it possible that after raising your hopes to Violet Cameron, you can abase them ' to batten on carrion' ? But you are only a man ! Perhaps, after all, I do you injustice ; time will show that too." As soon as the retiring guests were safe out of hearing, a chorus of voices arose. "Was ever impudence like hers?" cried Nina. " Her new man to be one of us immediately !" said Sab- akin e. " He seems well enough," said Nina ; " but what an evil mouth !" "Very hanlsome," pronounced Lady Harcourt, "and I 8 170 AN UNWELCOME CONFIDENCE. hope sufficiently wicked to have invented some new sin ; one is so tired of the old vices." " And to be forced in on us like this," said somebody else; " not knowing anything ab^ut him, or where he came from !" "He came straight from the duke," said Lady liar- court. "I am sure it would be a comfort if one knew noth- ing about three-quarters of the people we meet in this blessed town." Fresh visitors were announced, and she rose to go. "Be grateful, marchesa, that Da Rimini's present is at least presentable, since you have a share in him. Aurevoir. I shall see you all at Potaski's to-night? Mr. Aylraer, be good enough to aid my tottering steps with your arm you look as if you were just going to take leave." " You pretend that because you want to carry him off," said Nina, gayly. " Only to the foot of the stairs I have no sheep-dog to guard me, as dear Giulia had," laughed her ladyship When they reached the anteroom, she said to Aylmer : " I did not mean take leave of your senses, you know." "Have you seen any signs?" he asked. "I see nothing ever absolutely nothing!" she an- swered. " That is what makes me the safest person in the world." " I shall remember your words when I have a secret to confide," said he. As she got into her carriage, she continued : " Can I set you down anywhere ? I don't pass the Palazzo Amaldi, but I do the Rimini." " Thanks ; my lodgings are not in the direction of either," he replied, laughing in spite of himself. "I see nothing," repeated she; "not even a flower- stand when it is near enough for me to fall over it. Good- by, Don Melancholy at least you always look like one, though I can't perceive that you are. You ought to wear a cavalier's dress, you know. Don't forget my evening and " " I am not likely to, Lady Harcourt." " And just remember that sometimes elaborately private flower-stand performances are seen and watched are meant to be, by the female wit which arranges them." She nodded, smiled, and drove away, thinking : " Of \yhat use would warnings be ? If fato and Giulia AN UNWELCOME CONFIDENCE. 171 mean to make him trouble, they will. Besides, I never meddle that has been the ruling principle of my life : it is necessary to have one of some sort." And Aylmer felt confident that she knew where he was bound as well as if she had heard the duchess's words. " If she were not the woman she is," he thought, " what a dangerous creature she would be, with those lynx-eyes and unfailing intuitions." He walked on, wishing heartily destiny had not thrown him in the duchess's way that morning, and thereby spared him the present interview. He was a man so singularly free from vanity it had never occurred to him to suspect that Carlo's jests in regard to the lady's fancy possessed any foundation, and even had masculine weakness prompted him to think so, the duchess's efforts to attract his attention would have been as much thrown away as now, from the fact that Violet Cameron's image filled his heart and soul, to the utter exclusion of every other member of her sex. But he would gladly have avoided the interview ; he had no desire to become the duchess's confidant, to have any part whatever in her secrets. The woman was distaste- ful to him, had been from the moment he set eyes on her, and he vaguely mistrusted her not on account of the aspersions cast upon her by her associates, for in Florence no two friends ever appeared to meet without having scandal- ous stories to relate of their mutual acquaintance, but be- cause he felt her to be false and cruel as utterly without principle as she was destitute of pity. Her very beauty was in a style antipathetic to him, and he had vexed Carlo sorely by declaring, when he first met her, that he preferred the plainness of the most faded blonde to the voluptuous charms of a big, black woman with fiery eyes, like the duchess, which, even when they wore their softest aspect, reminded him of a midday in the torrid zone. However, there was no escape ; he must go to the Palazzo Rimini, and he tried to find a little sympathy for her by reflecting that her agitation and trouble had been real ; but the wish would come back that she had chosen her confidant elsewhere. The duchess was at home, the porter told him would he please to walk up stairs? The servant at the entrance of the great gloomy antechamber, where on a dais still stood the two faded gilt chairs in which dukes and duchesses 172 AN UNWELCOME CONFIDENCE. of bygone generations used to sit in state to receive their dependents, had evidently been given his orders. Aylmer was ushered without delay through several dingy, cheerless salons into a room somewhat more habitable, in which the duchess usually spent her mornings. She was there now, standing by a window looking down into the narrow street where the sun never penetrated save for a brief space towards noon, and the lofty palace oppo- site seemed frowning at its neighbor with inimical glances. She turned as Aylmer was announced swept forward to meet him, her long black velvet draperies trailing over the square of Turkey carpet spread like an oasis in the midst of the desert of cold pavement her face appearing at its best in the sad, troubled expression which lay like a cloud upon if. " Thank you very much for coming," she said, in the sweetest tones of her indolent Southern voice, whose slight tremulousness was the more noticeable from the contrast to its customary slow, firm ring. She extended her hand, then seated herself on a couch which would hold two com- fortably ; but Aylmer took possession of an easy-chair by the table placed in front of the sofa. " It was very kind of you," she added. "Pray do not use such an inapplicable word," he pleaded. " It is the right one," she replied, shaking her graceful head. "Do you know, even after begging you to come, I was almost ready to bid them refuse you admittance ! But I could not have excused my seeming rudeness, and besides no, it is stronger than I I must speak to some one I can- not endure my burden in silence !" He scrutinized her narrowly ; she was not acting, he decided ; but why, of all people, she should have selected him to reveal the strait in which she found herself, remained a complete puzzle. yi do not, of course, understand what you mean ; at least, if any trouble has come upon you, signora, you can be sure of my profound sympathy," he answered, and won- dered if he looked as awkward as he felt, mentally con- gratulating himself that the speech sounded less stilted in Italian than it would have done in English. "I was sure of that," she said, "else I should not have spoken to you as I did." She paused a moment ; seemed trying to control herself, then suddenly exclaimed with in- AN UNWELCOME CONFIDENCE. 173 finite passion and pathos : " Oh, Laurence Aylmer, I am the most wretched creature alive !" Now if a man be ready to fall on his knees or open his arms in order to console a woman who makes a declaration of that nature, the hearing it no doubt possesses a keen in- terest ; but Aylmer was not prepared to do anything of the sort, nor did he for an instant suppose the duchess desired either of such methods of consolation. Unfeignedly aston- ished by the outburst, he could think of nothing to say except : " Oh, signora, signora !" Luckily for him, face and voice were as expressive as can be bestowed upon a human being, and Lady Harcourt would have vowed that he resembled a cavalier or trouba- dour more than ever, as he leaned forward and fastened his melancholy gaze on the duchess. " The most wretched creature alive !" she repeated, flinging up her hands in protest against earth and heaven. Then, with an effort at calmness, she added : "I did not mean to behave like this ! You will think I am acting you Northerner ! Remember how difficult it is for us im- pulsive Italians to be calm and composed as your icy ladies are, no matter what comes." "Northerner though I am, be certain I can sympathize with suffering," said Aylmer, and wished himself on the other side of the Alps. The duchess's trouble was real ; her fright real too (and she was not a woman easily frightened), but neither dis- tress nor alarm impeded her invention or dulled her craft. When she entered Nina's salon and saw Aylmer, the idea flashed across her that even the dilemma in which she found herself might be turned to use where he was concerned. She could trust him with her secret ; she knew that, what- ever happened, he would never give a hint of his knowledge to any human being, and her confidence must unavoidably effect a closer intimacy than her arts had hitherto suc- ceeded in bringing about. What she mentally termed his exaggerated chivalry would prevent his refusing friendly counsels to the woman who had trusted him, as often as she might recur to the subject, and intercourse established on that footing so easily glides into more 'tender relations! And now, though she would have preferred a free, expan- sive gush of sympathy in return for that dramatic enunci- 174 AN UNWELCOME CONFIDENCE. ation of misery, it was a great step gained to have touched his generous impulse to the quick. " I know you can," she said ; " only that knowledge could have encouraged rae to speak when we met to-day. Do not think me bold and unfetninine because I trans- gress the laws which hedge us poor women in ! Ah, if you could imagine the comfort it was when I saw you ! I had felt so utterly alone. The trouble had fallen so sud- denly ! I could not think could not tell how to act, and I said to myself, at least there was one human being to whom I could speak without fear !" Oh, if she would come to an explanation of her woes and be done ! He was sorry for her ; he would help her if he could, hard as he thought it that she should have singled him out for the task ; but he grew terribly impatient to get to the end. " If there is anything I can do to serve you," he said, "only tell me it shall be done at once." " Nobody can help rne !" she cried. Then why the deuce did she fall upon him ? he reflected with a sudden irritation which chilled his pity. "Nobody can help me, and I am powerless !" added the duchess. " We are all apt to think so when trouble comes," he answered. " Surely your straits cannot be so hopeless. I am speaking in the dark ; remember I do not know what has happened." " Let me try and get my poor wits back and behave rationally," she faltered, pressing her hand to her head. "That Greek I want you to be friendly with him, to make the others." "I will show him every courtesy in my power, I promise you," he replied, still busy in subduing his irritation. "Yes, I must tell you \vhy. I cannot throw myself on your generosity without good reasons. Mr. Aylmer, my husband sent him ! Wait I can make you understand more easily if I give you the letter." She opened a little casket that stood on the table, tossed about its contents in an agitated way, and finally placed the duke's epistle in his hands. Aylmer read the page ; it held neither mystery nor menace that he could discover. On the contrary, it appeared a production AN UNWELCOME CONFIDENCE. 175 which the most devoted husband might have written to his wife for the purpose of introducing .1 valued friend. " There certainly is nothing here, duchess, which can account for your alarm," he said, his impatience increasing. "Ah, that is his craft," she answered, with a bitter smile. " I must tell you the whole, since I have begun ! That man is sent as a spy, to watch me, to misrepresent, to twist everything I say or do into evidence which can be used to my hurt ! I am impulsive to an extreme I shall always be ! I cannot weigh my words, calculate my con- duct, and it is easy to blacken a woman who is frank, per- haps imprudent, because, conscious of her own rectitude, she believes her truth will be her shield." The duchess was about as impulsive as a cobra di capello, and her frankness of a kind that would have won Machiavelli's admiration, but one needed to know her as thoroughly as poor Mademoiselle do Roquefort did to dis- cover this ; therefore small blame to Aylmer that, in spite of his acuteness, his limited acquaintance led him to put faith in her opening assertions, whatever his opinion might be of her uprightness and rigid principles. " A spy !" she repeated. "Only look in his insolent, perfidious face ; one can see at a glance that the creative was well chosen for his work !" " Surely you must be mistaken, duchess !" "No, no. Listen, Mr. Aylmer ! Though my husband'? conduct forces me to live apart from him, nobody can say I ever went about detailing my wrongs my worst enemy could not nor could he deny that they have been many." A fact, Aylmer knew. The duke was a man posi- tively steeped in vice ; almost as shameless in his open ex- posure thereof as the mediseval ancestors from whom he derived the base instincts which he had fostered with per- verse assiduity. " The time came when I could endure no longer," she hurried on, "but since his departure I have never opened my lips except to speak kindly of him ! I have affected to consider our separation the necessity of circumstances. That the world comprehended the truth, I was aware ; his outrages had been too public for that not to be the case. But I would have no pity. I held my peace you know that society, cruel as it is, admits this." " I do," he replied ; " and supposing your separation an 176 AN UNWELCOME CONFIDENCE. amicable one, I am at a loss to imagine what motive the duke could have for such conduct as this." " His motive it is easy to explain ! He believed that I would live with him again he used every inducement to make me. I could not ; if it had been possible I would ; but, oh, there are limits to a woman's endurance!" She stopped with a shudder, then after a moment continued more quietly : "During the last few months lie has ceased to urge me ceased to hope it. Now he wants his revenge ; oh, it is too dreadful ! My life has been my safeguard, so he devises this plot. If he could manage to entrap me as he thinks, not only would he be relieved from paying the greater portion of the income I have now, but he could take my child my child ; yes, give her to that horrible woman who is his companion in Paris who helps him on when his man's invention fails."' Aylmer uttered an ejaculation of wondering horror. "It sounds incredible," she continued; "but it is the simple truth. I knew they were at work, but was at a loss to imagine what form their machinations would take until the very day of this man's arrival there came information which made it easy for me to understand his errand." " Yet you received him " " Good heavens, what could I do ?" " I should have turned him out of doors," replied Aylmer, bluntly. " And so added personal vindictiveness to the induce- ments which have set him to dog me like a bloodhound ! No, no ; a man might be so fearless a woman cannot. I must temporize, act a part, odious and difficult as it is to my nature ; I must let him visit rne be friendly. Ah, you blame me I see it in your face." " It seems to my view that no good " " Remember my child my innocent little daughter !" she interrupted. " She would be taken from me given t