TWO YEARS OF TRAVEL.
Two years went by, in which the working girl so suddenly removed from
want to wealth had had dazzling glimpses of a world heretofore seen
only in dreams, or read of in romances over which she had pondered with
eager eyes.
In those two years she had traveled far and wide over her native land,
in the company of her adopted mother, and now they were in England.
During the fall they had traveled through Switzerland, France, and
Germany, and just now they were in London, where Mrs. Howard had taken
a handsome furnished house for a few weeks. Her present plans were to
remain there until the first of November, when she would go to Italy
for the winter, as recommended by the clever physician whom she had
called in to prescribe for a hacking cough that had begun to trouble
her of late.
“The climate of Italy would suit her best for this winter,” he said,
and she at once made arrangements, through an agent, to secure a villa
in Florence.
She had been fortunate in securing a beautiful place, whose owner,
an Italian prince, was going on an American tour. He would be absent
all the winter, and did not object to let his magnificent villa to a
responsible tenant. The agent wrote Mrs. Howard that she could take
possession the first of November.
So she waited in London, and, through the friends with whom she had
traveled, made some very agreeable acquaintances among people to
whom they had letters of introduction. It was not the London season,
but many of the best people were in town, and among them some men of
letters whom Mrs. Howard was pleased to meet. At some of the little
informal receptions she gave to a privileged few, the grace and beauty
of her daughter were enthusiastically admired.
She never thought it necessary to explain to any one that Fair was only
an adopted daughter.
“What is the use of explaining everything to strangers whom one meets
once or twice, or, at most, only a few times?” she said to Fair one
day, adding, a little bitterly, as if the thought were unpleasant:
“The distant cousin who is to be my heir will know, and that is enough.”
Fair never thought of asking the name of that distant relative. She
took no interest in him, or any other man, now that she was out of Carl
Bernicci’s reach, and that Bayard Lorraine had gone forever out of her
young life. For almost two years she had cherished a hope of meeting
him, but lately the hope had lain dormant. Disappointment had chilled
and blighted it.
“And what would it matter, even if I met him, and even if he would
love me? I am married to another man, and am as far from him as the
heavens from the earth--parted by the fatal bond that binds me to a
hated husband,” she told herself, in secret meditation, for she did not
keep a journal now, as in her younger days. In the mature wisdom of
nineteen, she considered it imprudent.