The motor was ordered for the Princess at a quarter to three. She wished
to arrive early at Mrs. Winter's, in order to have her chat with Miss
Grant before tea time. Her idea was to ask only for the guest, not for
the hostess, and be ready to leave before the hour when extraneous and
irrelevant guests might be expected to invade the chaplain's
drawing-room. There was, it appeared, a telephone in the apartment-house
where the Winters lived, and Vanno, getting into communication with Mary
after numerous difficulties, begged her to be in, and if possible alone,
for a visit from his sister-in-law. It was arranged that the curé, who
had never been in a motor-car, should be dropped at the foot of a
convenient short cut to Roquebrune, and Angelo and Vanno would go on
with Marie to Monte Carlo. Having left her at the Winters' door, Angelo
meant to walk with Vanno to his hotel, expecting later to pick up his
wife again. When the curé had bidden them goodbye, however, Marie
proposed a modification of the plan.
"Poor Angelo has been pining for Monte Carlo, I'm sure," she said,
laughing, her bright eyes and unusually pink cheeks alluring and
mysterious, under the thickly patterned black veil she had put on with
a large black velvet hat. "He's concealed his feelings well, I must say,
out of compliment to me, because I was so good about the villa. At first
I didn't want to have a house at Cap Martin. From all I'd heard, I
thought the Riviera must be so sophisticated--and somehow I've always
detested the idea of Monte Carlo. But you know, Vanno, how Angelo fell
in love with the Villa Mirasole when he visited the Grand Duke years
ago. He must have written you how he set his heart, even then, on having
it for his honeymoon if he married. I gave up my objections provided he
would promise that I needn't go to Monte Carlo, and that he wouldn't be
always running over there himself. Now, I'm glad, for I love the villa.
And you see, I'm on the way to Monte Carlo of my own accord! The next
thing is to tell Angelo he may play about there as long as he likes. I
shall keep the motor waiting while I'm at Miss Grant's, and go back in
it alone whenever I feel inclined. You needn't come to fetch me. I'd
rather not."
Both men looked disappointed: Vanno because he wanted to hear Marie's
impressions of his adored one without delay, confident that they would
be favourable; Angelo, because since their marriage he and his wife had
not been parted for a single hour. This was the first sign Marie had
shown of wishing to assert independence.
"Are you sure you're not saying this for my sake?" Angelo inquired
anxiously. "I don't want to hang about Monte Carlo. I----"
"It will do you good to have a little change," she said. Then she
flashed him a meaning, intimate glance which he thought that he
interpreted, and therefore raised no more objections. Her eyes seemed to
say: "I have a reason. I'll explain to you when we're alone. It has
something to do with your brother."
"Come and dine with us if you care to, Vanno," she went on. "Or if you
have an engagement with Miss Grant, spin over in a taxi for coffee and a
few minutes' chat afterward. That is, if you'd like to hear how
beautiful and altogether perfect I think she is--and make some plan
about bringing her to Cap Martin--sooner or later."
Vanno explained that he was to dine at the Winters, but would accept for
the "chat," with great pleasure. Dinner was early at the chaplain's. He
would leave at eight-thirty, and then go back again for a quarter of an
hour, to bid Miss Grant farewell.
He leaned suddenly from the window just in time to direct his brother's
chauffeur, and the car pulled up before the ugly square building which
Rose Winter called a "quadrupedifice." Angelo sprang out, helping Marie
to alight with as much care and tenderness as if she might break with a
rough touch. Next came the parting at the door; and Vanno smiled to see
how Marie lingered with her hand in her husband's. They had as many last
words to say to each other as if Angelo were to be absent for three
days, although he was assuring her--with needless insistence--that even
if he looked into the Casino he would certainly be back long before
dinner.
The two men watched the Princess begin to mount the stairs, before they
turned away. Then, leaving the car at the door as Marie had wished, they
walked off together in the direction of the Hôtel de Paris.
"Idina Bland called yesterday on Marie," Angelo said abruptly, with a
slight suggestion of constraint in his voice. "It was--rather a surprise
to me. I supposed she was in America."
"Diavolo! She is still here, then?"
"Still? Did you know she was on the Riviera?"
"I knew she came--weeks ago. She went up to Roquebrune to see the curé.
She'd heard he was an old friend of ours--and she inquired for
you--wouldn't say who she was. That was before I arrived."
"How do you know it was Idina, if she didn't give her name?"
"The curé's description. There was no mistaking it. He said at a little
distance her eyes looked white, like a statue's."
"Ah--that was good! They are like that. Curious eyes. Curious woman. Why
didn't you tell me before about her visit to the curé?"
"I meant to. But you put off coming so long. And I--well, I confess I
forgot."
"You're excusable in the circumstances, my dear boy. After all, it's of
no importance."
"No. And then, as I never saw her anywhere about, there was reason to
suppose she'd left. If I thought of her at all, I thought she'd gone."
"It seems she's been staying for weeks at the Annonciata--I fancy she
called it--a hotel on a little mountain close to Mentone. She says the
air's very fine--and she's been ordered south by an American doctor. Had
pneumonia in the autumn."
"What about the distant cousin over there who was going to leave her
money?"
"He's dead, and she's got the money. She is wearing a kind of second
mourning--gray and black. It made her look rather hard, I thought."
"She always did look hard, except----"
"Except? What's the rest, Vanno?"
"I was going to say, 'Except for you.'"
"I--er--she seems to have got over that nonsense now. I must confess it
gave me rather a start when I came in from a smoke in the garden
yesterday, and found her sitting with Marie in the yellow salon. For a
minute I was afraid--well, I hardly know of what."
"Dio! You didn't think she'd try to do Marie a mischief?"
"No. Hardly that. But it passed through my mind that she might try to
make trouble between us. Not that she could."
"Did you--don't answer unless you care to--ever tell Marie about Idina?"
"Not till yesterday, after her call. It never occurred to me. Idina had
gone out of my life before Marie came into it, and she was never
anything to me."
"I know. It was the other way round. But--you were good to her, and
cousinly, and I suppose she misunderstood a little."
"I never realized that, until she was going to America, and she
hinted--er--that she wouldn't care about getting the money if it weren't
for--well, you know. Or you can guess."
"She thought father would approve of a marriage between you if she
became an heiress."
"Partly that, and partly she seemed to believe that I'd have spoken to
her of love if she hadn't been a kind of dependent on my father. I tried
to make her understand without putting it into brutal words, that I did
love her of course, but only as a cousin. It's the devil having to tell
a woman you don't want her! I'm not sure she did entirely understand,
for she wrote me a letter afterward--it followed me to Dresden, and came
the day after Marie had promised to be my wife. I didn't answer. I
thought when Idina heard of my marriage she'd see why I hadn't replied,
and why it was kinder not to write. I knew she would hear through
father, for she corresponds with him. He is very punctilious about
answering letters; and suspecting nothing he would tell the news. When I
found her with Marie yesterday--but I see now I was a fool. These
melodramatic things don't happen. And after all, Idina's a cold woman."
"I wonder?"
"Well, anyhow, she was very civil to me and pleasant to Marie, whom I
questioned afterward about what Idina had said before I came in. It
seems there was nothing--but I explained to my wife that there'd been a
boy and girl friendship between Idina and me, a sort of cousinly half
flirtation, nothing more. And really there _was_ nothing more."
"Certainly not," Vanno agreed, emphatically. "But it's just as well to
tell Marie, so that in case Idina should do something--one of those
things women call 'catty'--she'd be prepared."
"Yes, it is better to have no concealments," said Angelo. "Luckily I
have no other complications in my past. Nothing to dread. And Marie is
an angel. She would forgive me anything, I believe, if there were
anything I had to ask her to forgive."
"As you would her," Vanno added, impulsively.
"With her, there could be nothing to forgive," Angelo replied,
stiffening. "She is an angel. And now, enough of my affairs. Let us talk
about yours."