THE PRINCE ARRIVES.
Mrs. Howard lost no time in sending her orders to Paris for an
elaborate trousseau for her adopted daughter.
When she had got this important affair off her mind, she turned her
attention to the wedding festivities.
She declared that Fair should have a grand wedding. The affair should
be worthy of, and even a credit to, the prince’s villa.
The best caterers, florists, and musicians were engaged. The best
people in Florence were invited. Mrs. Howard sent out three hundred
invitations, and was induced to send out one more at almost the
eleventh hour, for Prince Gonzaga had suddenly returned to Florence,
and the Fraynes insisted that it would be simple courtesy to send him a
card to the marriage that was to take place in his own villa.
Augustus Frayne had met the nobleman at Miss Beatrice Consani’s the day
before the wedding, and was favorably impressed by him.
“Handsome, in a dark Italian fashion, but after that almost American,”
he told his sisters. “In fact, his mother was an American, and he was
born in New York--told me so himself. Some sort of a romance about the
thing. Father was poor, doffed the title of prince, and went to America
and worked for his living. Died, and the son amassed a fortune and
returned to Italy, took up the title that had descended to him, bought
this beautiful villa, then went back to America to bring his mother,
but she had died in his absence. ’Pon honor, I was sorry for the
macaroni! He seemed down in the mouth and cut up over losing her. Told
me he didn’t care for weddings much, but was coming to ours because
it was to be at his old ancestral home. Didn’t I say it was quite a
romance? I would give it to Lorraine for that novel that hangs fire so,
but I won’t, because he cut me out with Fair.”
“Return good for evil,” suggested Nettie Frayne.
“I shan’t do it! I can’t forgive the fellow yet,” answered Augustus
gayly.
“I mean to set my cap at the prince,” cried Clara Frayne, and Augustus
grinned.
“I think several caps are set at him--Bee Consani’s among the
number--but he doesn’t strike me as being a marrying man--not much!”
“Wait till he sees me!” cried Nettie, rolling up her blue eyes, with
pretended egotism, and just then Fair came down the garden path toward
them, lovely in a soft white dress and garden hat, with a warm color on
her round cheeks and a bright light streaming from her splendid eyes.
She had just parted from her lover, and the love light on her face was
dazzling.
“Whew! your eyes are so bright, Miss Howard, it is like looking at the
sun!” Augustus Frayne exclaimed, pretending to shield his gray orbs
with his hands. She made him a merry bow of acknowledgment, then sat
down by Nettie on the broad garden seat.
“What were you all laughing about?” she inquired, putting her arm
around Nettie’s waist.
“It is those silly girls going out of their senses because Prince
Gonzaga is coming to your wedding to-morrow,” returned the young man.
“Yes, Fair, only think, you’re going to have the honor of the prince’s
company at your wedding,” cried Clara vivaciously; and the beautiful
bride-elect thought wonderingly:
“This is like a story from the ‘Arabian Nights.’ Only two years ago I
was a poor working girl in New York, miserable and starving, and now I
am to be the bride of the man I worship; I am surrounded by wealth and
splendor, I have trunks full of magnificent clothing, I have caskets
of rare jewels, and the proudest people in this city will assemble to
do honor to my marriage. Yes, even a prince will be looking on while I
give my hand to my beloved until death.”
Suddenly there came to her a memory of that other dark wedding day, and
of her humble friend, Sadie Allen, and she sighed to herself:
“Dear Sadie, if it were possible, I would rather have you here than the
prince.”
The Italian prince did not care for festivities, as he had told
Augustus Frayne, but he had made up his mind to attend the wedding at
the villa, not because it was his ancestral home so much as because
the name Fairfax Howard on the wedding cards had excited in his mind a
languid interest.
“I knew a Fairfax once,” he said to Miss Beatrix Consani, with whom he
was on friendly terms. “If this Miss Howard is half as lovely as the
Fairfax I knew, the bridegroom is a lucky dog.”
“Oh, she is perfectly beautiful!” cried Beatrix enthusiastically. “Her
eyes are so big and so starry bright, her hair like sunshine, and
her face makes one think of a beautiful flower. Indeed, she is the
loveliest girl I ever saw.”
Prince Gonzaga looked a little startled.
“The Fairfax I knew was just like that,” he said. “She was a New York
girl, beautiful but poor, and of obscure origin.”
“This girl is from New York, too, but she is a great heiress, and has
had many admirers. Lord Leigh and Augustus Frayne both wanted to marry
her,” said the Italian beauty.
“Heiresses are always sought after,” commented the prince, and he
added, with a touch of bitterness: “There is not much genuine love in
the world, Miss Consani. Every one wants to marry money.”
“Or beauty,” said Miss Consani. “Beauties, even though poor, can
generally make good matches. How was it with your New York beauty? Did
she marry rich?”
“She wished to do so. She was mercenary, like most women, but she had a
bitter lesson,” answered the prince, and by the moody way in which he
drew his dark brows together she guessed that he had had some unusual
interest in her of whom he spoke. Her dark eyes began to sparkle with
interest, and she exclaimed:
“Please tell me all about it. I’m sure it’s interesting.”
“Perhaps,” said the prince, and his dark eyes seemed to flash beneath
their jetty brows. Pulling nervously with his slim, dark hand at his
black mustache, he continued:
“She was poor and ambitious, as I said just now, and her mind was
made up to sell her beauty for a rich husband; but a poor fool fell
in love with her, and when she refused to have anything to say to
him, he pretended to be rich and of good birth. The beauty snapped
at the glittering bait, and married him, expecting to go at once to
a magnificent palace on Fifth Avenue. The young husband was fool
enough to think she loved him a little and would forgive him when she
found out he was poor. But, alas, for his hopes! The very hour of her
marriage she left him forever, giving way to undisguised scorn at his
poverty, and vowing she would never live with him.”
“What did he do then?” asked Beatrix, opening her black eyes with
wonder.
“He haunted her like a shadow for a few weeks, alternately begging for
her forgiveness and threatening to enforce her wifely obedience; but
she was obstinate, and still refused to forgive him. Then her mother,
with whom she had taken refuge, died quite suddenly, and soon after the
girl disappeared. She went to the bad, Miss Consani; flung away her
life to avenge herself on the husband who had won her by a trick, and
to gratify her greed for gold.”
“Oh, how dreadful!” the pretty Italian exclaimed, with a shudder. “She
was a wretch, for all her beauty.”
His eyes gleamed luridly at her words, and his dark face gloomed over
strangely. He did not speak, and the girl continued:
“What did her husband do then, prince?”
“When he found out that she was irrevocably lost to him in such a
horrible fashion, he went mad with despair, and committed suicide,
drowning himself in the East River.”
“Oh, how sad, how romantic!” exclaimed Beatrix. “He did not do right
in deceiving her, but as it was for the sake of his great love, I pity
him. He was better than she was, for his love was some excuse for his
sin. I wonder if she repented when she found out that he had drowned
himself for her sake?”
“I do not know. I have never heard anything more about her, but I
should think, from what I know of her, that she was probably glad when
she heard that she had driven him to suicide,” returned the prince
bitterly, and presently he took leave, having promised Beatrix that he
would not fail to attend the wedding to-morrow.
And he kept his promise, for the names of the plighted pair had
awakened in him a painful interest.
“It can be nothing but a coincidence,” he muttered gloomily, as he
walked along. “Still, I should judge that it’s the same man whose hated
name I have such bitter cause to remember. She loved him, I think, for
she would draw me on to talk of him, and her eyes would shine, her
cheeks redden at his name. It was the one charm I had for her, that
I would tell her lies by the hour about the man who saved her life. I
wonder if she ever saw him again? I wonder what was her fate, and if
the bullet I have carried for her for years will ever find its way to
her heart?”
A fierce, grim smile distorted his dark face, and he involuntarily
laid his hand upon his breast, where he habitually carried a pistol,
so small that it looked like a toy, but which held one deadly bullet,
which was destined for a false woman’s heart.
“Revenge, revenge!” he muttered bitterly, and the intense Italian side
of his nature shone in his glittering dark eyes, and made his voice
hoarse and intense with passion. If Nettie Frayne could have seen and
heard him, she would have given up her girlish hopes of captivating
him, and fled in terror from the evil gleam of his strange, dark eyes.