THERE IS ALWAYS THE SKELETON.
When Mr. and Mrs. Greswold left the church, the stranger was taking his
place in the Hillersdon wagonette, a capacious vehicle, drawn by a pair
of upstanding black-brown horses, set off by servants in smart liveries
of dark brown and gold.
Mildred gave a sigh of relief. If the stranger was a visitor
at Riverdale it was not likely that he would stay long in the
neighbourhood, or be seen again for years to come. The guests at
Riverdale were generally birds of passage; and the same faces seldom
appeared there twice. Mr. and Mrs. Hillersdon of Riverdale were famous
for their extensive circle, and famous for bringing new people into the
county. Some of their neighbours said it was Mr. Hillersdon who brought
the people there, and that Mrs. Hillersdon had nothing to do with the
visiting list; others declared that husband and wife were equally
fickle and equally frivolous.
Riverdale was one of the finest houses within ten miles of Romsey,
and it was variously described by the local gentry. It was called a
delightful house, or it was called a curious house, according to the
temper of the speaker. Its worst enemy could not deny that it was
a splendid house—spacious, architectural, luxurious, with all the
appendages of wealth and dignity—nor could its worst enemy deny its
merit as one of the most hospitable houses in the county.
Notwithstanding this splendour and lavish hospitality, the local
magnates did not go to Riverdale, and the Hillersdons were not received
in some of the best houses. Tom Hillersdon was a large landowner,
a millionaire, and a man of good family; but Tom Hillersdon was
considered to have stranded himself in middle life by a marriage
which in the outer world was spoken of vaguely as “unfortunate,” but
which the straitlaced among his neighbours considered fatal. No man
who had so married could hold up his head among his friends any more;
no man who had so married could hope to have his wife received in
decent people’s houses. In spite of which opinion prevailing among
Tom Hillersdon’s oldest friends Mrs. Hillersdon contrived to gather a
good many people round her, and some of them the most distinguished
in the land. She had Cabinet Ministers, men of letters, and famous
painters among her guests. She had plenty of women friends—of a sort:
attractive women, intellectual and enlightened women; sober matrons,
bread-and-butter girls; women who doated on Mrs. Hillersdon, and,
strange to say, had never heard her history.
And yet Hillersdon’s wife had a history scarcely less famous than
that of Cleopatra or Nell Gwynne. Louise Hillersdon was once Louise
Lorraine, the young adventuress whose Irish gray eyes had set all
London talking when the Great Exhibition of ’62 was still a monstrous
iron skeleton, and when South Kensington was in its infancy. Louise
Lorraine’s extravagance, and Louise Lorraine’s devotees, from German
princes and English dukes downwards, had been town-talk. Her box at the
opera had been the cynosure of every eye; and Paris ran mad when she
drove in the Bois, or exhibited her diamonds in the Rue Lepelletier;
or supped in the small hours at the Café de Paris, with the topmost
strawberries in the basket. Numerous and conflicting were the versions
of her early history—the more sensational chronicles describing her
as the Aphrodite of the gutter. Some people declared that she could
neither read nor write, and could not stir without her amanuensis at
her elbow; others affirmed that she spoke four languages, and read
a Greek play or a chapter of Thucidydes every night, with her feet
on the fender, while her maid brushed her hair. The sober truth lay
midway between these extremes. She was the daughter of a doctor in a
line regiment; she was eminently beautiful, very ignorant, and very
clever. She wrote an uneducated hand, never read anything better than
a sentimental novel, sang prettily, and could accompany her songs on
the guitar with a good deal of dash and fire. To this may be added that
she was an adept in the art of dress, had as much tact and finesse as
a leader of the old French noblesse, and more audacity than a Parisian
cocotte in the golden age of Cocotterie. Such she was when Tom
Hillersdon, Wiltshire squire, and millionaire, swooped like an eagle
upon this fair dove, and bore her off to his eerie. There was howling
and gnashing of teeth among those many admirers who were all thinking
seriously about making the lovely Louise a _bonâ fide_ offer; and it
was felt in a certain set that Tom Hillersdon had done a valiant and
victorious deed; but his country friends were of one accord in the idea
that Hillersdon had wrecked himself for ever.
The Squire’s wife came to Riverdale, and established herself there
with as easy an air as if she had been a duchess. She gave herself
no trouble about the county families. London was near enough for the
fair Louise, and she filled her house—or Tom Hillersdon filled it—with
relays of visitors from the great city. Scarcely had she been settled
there a week when the local gentry were startled at seeing her sail
into church with one of the most famous English statesmen in her
train. Upon the Sunday after she was attended by a great painter and
a well-known savant; and besides these she had a pew full of smaller
fry—a lady novelist, a fashionable actor, a celebrated Queen’s
Counsel, and a county member.
“Where does she get those men?” asked Lady Marjorie Danefeld, the
Conservative member’s wife; “surely they can’t _all_ be—reminiscences.”
It had been supposed while the newly-wedded couple were on their
honeymoon that the lady’s arrival at Riverdale would inaugurate a reign
of profanity—that Sunday would be given over to Bohemian society,
café-chantant songs, champagne, and cigarette-smoking. Great was the
surprise of the locality, therefore, when Mrs. Hillersdon appeared in
the Squire’s pew on Sunday morning, neatly dressed, demure, nay, with
an aspect of more than usual sanctity; greater still the astonishment
when she reappeared in the afternoon, and listened meekly to the
catechising of the school-children and to the baptism of a refractory
baby; greater even yet when it was found that these pious practices
were continued, that she never missed a Saint’s-Day service, that
she had morning prayers for family and household, and that she held
meetings of an evangelical character in her drawing-room—meetings at
which curates from outlying parishes gathered like a flock of crows,
and at which the excellence of the tea and coffee, pound-cake and
muffins, speedily became known to the outside world.
Happily for Tom Hillersdon these pious tendencies did not interfere
with his amusements or the pleasantness of his domestic life. Riverdale
was enlivened by a perennial supply of lively or interesting people.
Notoriety of some kind was a passport to the Hillersdons’ favour. It
was an indication that a man was beginning to make his mark when he
was asked to Riverdale. When he had made his mark he might think twice
about going. Riverdale was the paradise of budding celebrities.
So to-day, seeing the stranger get into the Hillersdon wagonette, Mrs.
Greswold opined that he was a man who had made some kind of reputation.
He could not be an actor with that beard. He was a painter, perhaps.
She thought he looked like a painter.
The wagonette was full of well-dressed women and well-bred men,
all with an essentially metropolitan—or cosmopolitan—air. The
eighteen-carat stamp of “county” was obviously deficient. Mrs.
Hillersdon had her own carriage—a barouche—which she shared with an
elderly lady, who looked as correct as if she had been a bishop’s wife.
She was on bowing terms with Mrs. Greswold. They had met at hunt-balls
and charity bazaars, and at various other functions from which the wife
of a local landowner can hardly be excluded—even when she has a history.
Mildred thought no more of the auburn-haired stranger after the
wagonette had disappeared in a cloud of summer-dust. She strolled
slowly home with her husband by a walk which they had been in the habit
of taking on fine Sundays after morning service, but which they had
never trodden together since Lola’s death. It was a round which skirted
the common, and took them past a good many of the cottages, and their
tenants had been wont to loiter at their gates on fine Sundays, in the
hope of getting a passing word with the Squire and his wife. There
had been something patriarchal, or clannish, in the feeling between
landlord and tenant, labourer and master, which can only prevail in a
parish where the chief landowner spends the greater part of his life
at home.
To-day every one was just as respectful as of old; curtsies were as low
and tones as reverential; but George Greswold and his wife felt there
was a difference, all the same. A gulf had been cleft between them and
their people by last summer’s calamity. It was not the kindred of the
dead in whom this coolness was distinguishable. The bereaved seemed
drawn nearer to their Squire by an affliction which had touched him
too. But in Enderby parish there was a bond of kindred which seemed to
interlink the whole population. There were not above three family names
in the village, and everybody was everybody else’s cousin, when not
a nearer relative. Thus, in dismissing his bailiff and dairy people,
Mr. Greswold had given umbrage to almost all his cottagers. He was no
longer regarded as a kind master. A man who could dismiss a servant
after twenty years’ faithful service was, in the estimation of Enderby
parish, a ruthless tyrant—a master whose yoke galled every shoulder.
“Him seemed to be so fond of we all,” said Luke Thomas, the village
wheelwright, brother of that John Thomas who had been Mr. Greswold’s
bailiff, and who was now dreeing his weird in Canada; “and yet offend
he, and him can turn and sack yer as if yer was a thief—sweep yer off
his premises like a handful o’ rubbish. Faithful service don’t count
with he.”
George Greswold felt the change from friendly gladness to cold
civility. He could see the altered expression in all those familiar
faces. The only sign of affection was from Mrs. Rainbow, standing at
her cottage gate in decent black, with sunken cheeks worn pale by many
tears. She burst out crying at sight of Mildred Greswold, and clasped
her hand in a fervour of sympathy.
“O, to think of your sweet young lady, ma’am! that you should
lose her, as I lost my Polly!” she sobbed; and the two women wept
together—sisters in affliction.
“You don’t think we are to blame, do you, Mrs. Rainbow?” Mildred said
gently.
“No, no, indeed, ma’am. We all know it was God’s will. We must kiss the
rod.”
“What fatalists these people are!” said Greswold, as he and his wife
walked homeward by the sweet-smelling common, where the heather showed
purple here and there, and where the harebells were beginning to dance
upon the wind. “Yes, it is God’s will; but the name of that God is
Nemesis.”
Husband and wife were almost silent during luncheon. Both were
depressed by that want of friendliness in those who had been to them as
familiar friends. To have forfeited confidence and affection was hard
when they had done so much to merit both. Mildred could but remember
how she and her golden-haired daughter had gone about amongst those
people, caring for all their needs, spiritual and temporal, never
approaching them from the standpoint of superiority, but treating
them verily as friends. She recalled long autumn afternoons in the
village reading-room, when she and Lola had presided over a bevy
of matrons and elderly spinsters, she reading aloud to them while
they worked, Lola threading needles to save elderly eyes, sewing
on buttons, indefatigable in giving help of all kinds to those
village sempstresses. She had fancied that those mothers’ meetings,
the story-books, and the talk had brought them all into a bond of
affectionate sympathy; and yet one act of stern justice seemed to have
cancelled all obligations.
Mr. Greswold lighted a cigar after lunch, and went for a ramble in
those extensive copses which were one of the charms of Enderby Manor,
miles and miles of woodland walks, dark and cool in the hottest day of
summer—lonely footpaths where the master of Enderby could think his own
thoughts without risk of coming face to face with any one in that leafy
solitude. The Enderby copses were cherished rather for pleasure than
for profit, and were allowed to grow a good deal higher and a good deal
wilder and thicker than the young wood upon neighbouring estates.
Mildred went to the drawing-room and to her piano, after her husband
her chief companion and confidante now that Lola was gone. Music was
her passion—the only art that moved her deeply, and to sit alone
wandering from number to number of Beethoven and Mozart, Bach or
Mendelssohn, was the very luxury of loneliness.
Adhering in all things to the rule that Sunday was not as other days,
she had her library of sacred music apart from other volumes, and it
was sacred music only which she played on Sundays. Her _répertoire_ was
large, and she roamed at will among the classic masters of the last two
hundred years, but for sacred music Bach and Mozart were her favourites.
She was playing a Gloria by the latter composer when she heard a
carriage drive past the windows, and looked up just in time to catch
a glimpse of a profile that startled her with a sudden sense of
strangeness and familiarity. The carriage was a light T-cart, driven by
a groom in the Hillersdon livery.
A visitor from Riverdale was a novelty, for, although George Greswold
and Tom Hillersdon were friendly in the hunting-field, Riverdale and
the Manor were not on visiting terms. The visit was for her husband,
Mildred concluded, and she went on playing.
The door was opened by the new footman, who announced “Mr. Castellani.”
Mrs. Greswold rose from the piano to find herself face to face with
the man whose countenance, seen in the distance, in the light of the
east window, had reminded her of Judas. Seen as she saw him now, in the
softer light of the afternoon, standing before her with a deprecating
air in her own drawing-room, the stranger looked altogether different,
and she thought he had a pleasing expression.
He was tall and slim, well dressed in a subdued metropolitan style;
and he had an air of distinction and elegance which would have marked
him anywhere as a creature apart from the common herd. It was not
an English manner. There was a supple grace in his movements which
suggested a Southern origin. There was a pleading look in the full
brown eyes which suggested an emotional temperament.
“An Italian, no doubt,” thought Mildred, taking this Southern
gracefulness in conjunction with the Southern name.
She wondered on what pretence this stranger had called, and what could
be his motive for coming.
“Mrs. Greswold, I have to apologise humbly for presenting myself
without having first sent you my credentials and waited for your
permission to call,” he said, in very perfect English, with only the
slightest Milanese accent; and then he handed Mrs. Greswold an unsealed
letter, which he had taken from his breast-pocket.
She glanced at it hastily, not a little embarrassed by the situation.
The letter was from an intimate friend, an amateur _littérateur_, who
wrote graceful sonnets and gave pleasant parties:
“I need not excuse myself, my dear friend, for making Mr. Castellani
known to you in the flesh, as I have no doubt he is already familiar
to you in the spirit. He is the anonymous author of _Nepenthe_, the
book that _almost every one_ has been reading and _quite every one_
has been talking about this season. Only the few can _understand_ it;
but you are of those few, and I feel assured your _deepest_ feelings
have been stirred by that _most exceptional_ work. How delicious it
must be with you among green lanes and English meadows! We are just
rushing off to a land of extinct volcanoes for my poor husband’s
annual cure. _A vous de cœur_,
DIANA TOMKISON.”
“Pray sit down,” said Mildred, as she finished her gushing friend’s
note; “my husband will be in presently—I hope in time to see you.”
“Pardon me if, in all humility, I say it is _you_ I was especially
anxious to see, to know, if it were possible—delightful as it will
be also to know Mr. Greswold. It is with your name that my past
associations are interwoven.”
“Indeed! How is that?”
“It is a long story, Mrs. Greswold. To explain the association I must
refer to the remote past. My grandfather was in the silk trade, like
your grandfather.”
Mildred blushed; the assertion came upon her like an unpleasant
surprise. It was a shock. That great house of silk merchants from which
her father’s wealth had been derived had hardly ever been mentioned in
her presence. Lord Castle-Connell’s daughter had never grown out of the
idea that all trade is odious, and _her_ daughter had almost forgotten
that her father had ever been in trade.
“Yes, when the house of Fausset was in its infancy the house of Felix &
Sons, silk manufacturers and silk merchants, was one of the largest on
the hillside of old Lyons. My great-grandfather was one of the richest
men in Lyons, and he was able to help the clever young Englishman, your
grandfather, who came into his house as corresponding clerk, to perfect
himself in the French language, and to find out what the silk trade
was like. He had a small capital, and when he had learnt something
about the trade, he established himself near St. Paul’s Churchyard as
a wholesale trader in a very small way. He had no looms of his own in
those days; and it was the great house of Felix, and the credit given
him by that house, which enabled him to hold his own, and to make a
fortune. When your father began life the house of Felix was on the
wane. Your grandfather had established a manufactory of his own at
Lyons. Felix & Sons had grown old-fashioned. They had forgotten to
march with the times. They had allowed themselves to go to sleep; and
they were on the verge of bankruptcy when your father came to their
rescue with a loan which enabled them to tide over their difficulties.
They had had a lesson, and they profited by it. The house of Felix
recovered its ascendency, and the loan was repaid before your father
retired from business.”
“I am not surprised to hear that my father was generous. I should have
been slow to believe that he could have been ungrateful,” said Mildred
softly.
“Your name is among my earliest recollections,” pursued Castellani.
“My mother was educated at a convent at Roehampton, and she was very
fond of England and English people. The first journey I can distinctly
remember was a journey to London, which occurred when I was ten years
old. I remember my father and mother talking about Mr. Fausset. She had
known him when she was a little girl. He used to stay in her father’s
house when he came to Lyons on business. She would like to have seen
him and his wife and daughter, for old times’ sake; but she had been
told that his wife was a lady of rank, and that he had broken off all
associations with his trading career. She was too diffident to intrude
herself upon her father’s old ally. One day our carriage passed yours
in the Park. Yes, I saw you, a golden-haired child—yes, madam, saw you
with these eyes—and the vision has stayed with me, a sunny remembrance
of my own childhood. I can see that fair child’s face in this room
to-day.”
“You should have seen my daughter,” faltered Mildred sadly.
“You have a daughter?” said the stranger eagerly.
“I _had_ a daughter. She is gone. I only put off my black gown
yesterday; but my heart and mind will wear mourning for her till I go
to my grave.”
“Ah, madam, how deeply I sympathise with such a grief!” murmured
Castellani.
He had a voice of peculiar depth and beauty—one of those rare voices
whose every tone is music. The pathos and compassion in those few
commonplace words moved Mildred to sudden tears. She commanded herself
with an effort.
“I am much interested in your reminiscences,” she said, after a brief
pause. “My father was very dear to me. My mother came of an old Irish
family, and the Irish, as you know, are apt to be over-proud of high
birth. I had never heard my father’s commercial life spoken about until
to-day. I only knew him as an idle man, without business cares of any
kind, able to take life pleasantly. He used to spend two or three
months of every year under this roof. It was a terrible blow to me when
we lost him six years ago, and I think my husband mourned him almost as
deeply as I did. But tell me about your book. Are you really the author
of _Nepenthe_, that nameless author who has been so much discussed?”
“And who has been identified with so many distinguished people—Mr.
Gladstone—Cardinal Newman.”
“Mr. Swinburne—Mr. Browning. I have heard all kinds of speculations.
And is it really you?”
“Yes, it is I. To you I may plead guilty, since, unfortunately, the
authorship of _Nepenthe_ is now _le secret de Polichinelle_.”
“It is a—strange book,” said Mildred. “My husband and I were both
interested in it, and impressed by it. But your book saddened us both.
You seem to believe in nothing.”
“‘Seems,’ madam! nay, I know not ‘seems;’ but perhaps I am not so
bad as you think me. I am of Hamlet’s temper—inquiring rather than
disbelieving. To live is to doubt. And I own that I have seen enough of
this life to discover that the richest gift Fate can give to man is the
gift of forgetfulness.”
“I cannot think that. I would not forget, even if I could. It would be
treason to forget the beloved ones we have lost.”
“Ah, Mrs. Greswold, most men have worse memories than the memory of the
dead. The wounds we want healed are deeper than those made by Death;
his scars we can afford to look upon. There are wounds that have gone
deeper, and that leave an uglier mark.”
There was a pause. Mr. Castellani made no sign of departure. He
evidently intended to wait for the Squire’s return. Through the open
windows of a second drawing-room, divided from the first by an
archway, they could see the servants setting out the tea-table on
the lawn. A Turkey carpet was spread under the cedar, and there were
basket-chairs of various shapes, cushioned, luxurious, and two or
three small wicker-tables of different colours, and a milking-stool or
two, and all the indications of out-door life. The one thing missing
was that aerial figure, robed in white, which had been wont to flit
about among the dancing shadows of branch and blossom—a creature as
evanescent as they, it seemed to that mourning mother who remembered
her to-day.
“Are you staying long at Riverdale?” asked Mildred presently, by way of
conversation.
“If Mrs. Hillersdon would be good enough to have me, I would stay
another fortnight. The place is perfect, the surrounding scenery has
your true English charm, and my hostess is simply delightful.”
“You like her?” asked Mildred, interested.
No woman can help being curious about a woman with such a history as
Mrs. Hillersdon’s. All the elements of romance and mystery seem,
from the feminine standpoint, to concentre in such a career. How
many hearts has such a woman broken; how many lives has she ruined;
how often has she been on the brink of madness or suicide?—she, the
placid matron, with her fat carriage-horses, and powdered footmen,
and big prayer-book, and demure behaviour, and altogether bourgeois
surroundings.
“Like her? Yes; she is such a clever woman.”
“Indeed!”
“Yes, she is a marvel—the cleverest woman I know.”
He laid a stress on the superlative. His praise might mean
anything—might be a hidden sneer. He might praise as the devil
prays—backwards. Mildred had an uncomfortable feeling that he was not
in earnest.
“Have you known her long?” she asked.
“Not very long; only this season. I am told that she is fickle, or that
other people are fickle, and that she seldom knows any one more than a
season. But I do not mean to be fickle; I mean to be a house-friend at
Riverdale all my life if she will let me. She is a very clever woman,
and thoroughly artistic.”
Mildred had not quite grasped the modern significance of this last word.
“Does Mrs. Hillersdon paint?” she asked.
“No, she does not paint.”
“She plays—or sings, I suppose?”
“No. I am told she once sang Spanish ballads with a guitar
accompaniment; but the people who remember her singing tell me that her
arms were the chief feature in the performance. Her arms are lovely
to this day. No; she neither paints, nor plays, nor sings; but she is
supremely artistic. She dresses as few women of five-and-forty know
how to dress—dresses so as to make one think five-and-forty the most
perfect age for a woman; and she has a marvellous appreciation of
art, of painting, of poetry, of acting, of music. She is almost the
only woman to whom I have ever played Beethoven who has seemed to me
thoroughly _simpatica_.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Mildred, surprised, “you yourself play, then?”
“It is hardly a merit in me,” answered Castellani modestly; “my father
was one of the finest musicians of his time in Italy.”
“Indeed!”
“You are naturally surprised. His genius was poorly appreciated. His
name was hardly known out of Milan and Brussels. Strange to say, those
stolid Flemings appreciated him. His work was over the heads of the
vulgar public. He saw such men as Verdi and Gounod triumphant, while he
remained obscure.”
“But surely you admire Verdi and Gounod?”
“In their places, yes; both are admirable; but my father’s place should
have been in a higher rank of composers. But let me not plague you
about him. He is dead, and forgotten. He died crown-less. I heard you
playing Mozart’s ‘Gloria’ as I came in. You like Mozart?”
“I adore him.”
“Yes, I know there are still people who like his music. Chopin did;
asked for it on his death-bed,” said Castellani, with a wry face, as
if he were talking of a vulgar propensity for sauerkraut or a morbid
hankering for asafœtida.
“How I wish you would play something while we are waiting for my
husband!” said Mildred, seeing her visitor’s gaze wandering to the open
piano.
“If you will go into the garden and take your tea, I will play with
delight while you take it. I doubt if I could play to you in cold
blood. I know you are critical.”
“And you think I am not _simpatica_,” retorted Mildred, laughing
at him. She was quite at her ease with him already, all thought of
that Judas face in the church being forgotten. His half-deferential,
half-caressing manner; his easy confidences about himself and his own
tastes, had made her more familiar with his individuality in the space
of an hour than she would have been with the average Englishman in
a month. She did not know whether she liked or disliked him; but he
amused her, and it was a new sensation for her to feel amused.
She sauntered softly out to the lawn, and he began to play.
Heavens, what a touch! Was it really _her_ piano which answered with
tones so exquisite—which gave forth such thrilling melody? He played
an improvised arrangement of Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” and she stood
entranced till the last dying _arpeggio_ melted into silence. No one
could doubt that he came of a race gifted in music.
“Pray don’t leave the piano,” she said softly, from her place by the
open window.
“I will play till you call me away,” he answered, as he began Chopin’s
Etude in C sharp minor.
That weird and impassioned composition reached its close just as George
Greswold approached from a little gate on the other side of the lawn.
Mildred went to meet him, and Castellani left the piano and came out of
the window to be presented to his host.
Nothing could be more strongly marked than the contrast between the two
men, as they stood facing each other in the golden light of afternoon.
Greswold, tall, broad-shouldered, rugged-looking, in his rough brown
heather suit and deerstalker cap, carrying a thick stick, with an iron
fork at the end of it, for the annihilation of chance weeds in his
peregrinations. His fine and massive features had a worn look, his
cheeks were hollow, his dark hair and beard were grizzled here and
there, his dark complexion had lost the hue of youth. He looked ten
years older than his actual age.
Before him stood the Italian, graceful, gracious in every line and
every movement; his features delicately chiselled, his eyes dark, full,
and bright; his complexion of that milky pallor which is so often seen
with hair tending towards red; his brown beard of silkiest texture;
his hands delicately modelled and of ivory whiteness; his dress imbued
with all the grace which a fashionable tailor can give to the clothes
of a man who cultivates the beautiful, even in the barren field of
nineteenth century costume. It was impossible that so marked a contrast
could escape Mildred’s observation altogether; yet she perceived it
dimly. The picture came back to her memory afterwards in more vivid
colours.
She made the necessary introduction, and then proceeded to pour out the
tea, leaving the two men to talk to each other.
“Your name has an Italian sound,” Greswold said presently.
“It is a Milanese name. My father was a native of Milan; my mother
was French, but she was educated in England, and all her proclivities
were English. It was at her desire my father sent me to Rugby, and
afterwards to Cambridge. Her fatal illness called me back to Italy
immediately after I had got my degree, and it was some years before I
again visited England.”
“Were you in Italy all that time?” asked Greswold, looking down
absently, and with an unwonted trouble in his face.
Mildred sat at the tea-table, the visitor waiting upon her, insisting
upon charging himself with her husband’s cup as well as his own; an
attention and reversal of etiquette of which Mr. Greswold seemed
unconscious. Kassandra had returned with her master from a long walk,
and was lying at his feet in elderly exhaustion. She saluted the
stranger with a suppressed growl when he approached with the tea-cups.
Kassandra adored her own people, but was not remarkable for civility to
strangers.
“Yes; I wasted four or five years in the South—in Florence, in Venice,
or along the Riviera, wandering about like Satan, not having made up
my mind what to do in the world.”
Greswold was silent, bending down to play with Kassandra, who wagged
her tail with a gentle largo movement, in grateful contentment.
“You must have heard my father’s name when you were at Milan,” said
Castellani. “His music was fashionable _there_.”
Mildred looked up with a surprised expression. She had never heard her
husband talk of Milan, and yet this stranger mentioned his residence
there as if it were an established fact.
“How did you know I was ever at Milan?” asked Greswold, looking up
sharply.
“For the simplest of reasons. I had the honour of meeting you on
more than one occasion at large assemblies, where my insignificant
personality would hardly impress itself upon your memory. And I met you
a year later at Lady Lochinvar’s palace at Nice, soon after your first
marriage.”
Mildred looked up at her husband. He was pale as ashes, his lips
whitening as she gazed at him. She felt her own cheeks paling; felt
a sudden coldness creeping over her, as if she were going to faint.
She watched her husband dumbly, expecting him to tell this man that he
was mistaken, that he was confounding him, George Greswold, with some
one else; but Greswold sat silent, and presently, as if to hide his
confusion, bent again over the dog, who got up suddenly and licked his
face in a gush of affection—as if she knew—as if she knew.
He had been married before, and he had told his wife not one word of
that first marriage. There had been no hint of the fact that he was a
widower when he asked John Fausset for his daughter’s hand.