Her Excellency Signora Morini was an Englishwoman, and for that reason
the Minister rented Orton Court, that picturesque old Queen Anne house
in Leicestershire, where, with their daughter Mary, they each year spent
August and September, the two blazing months of the Italian summer.
Standing back amid wide level lawns, high box-hedges, quaint old
flower-gardens, and spreading cedars, about four miles out of Rugby on
the Leicester road, it dominated a wide stretch of rich, undulating
pastures of bright fresh green, so pleasing to the eye after the
sun-baked, thirsty land of Italy. The house, a quaint, rambling old
place full of odd nooks and corners, was of time-mellowed red brick,
partly ivy-covered, with a wide stone portico, spacious hall, and fine
oak staircase. One wing, that which faced the tennis-lawn, was covered
with roses, while around the lawn itself were iron arches over which
trailing roses also grew in abundant profusion.
The Morinis kept but little company when in England. They came there
for rest after the mad whirl of the Roman season, and so careful was His
Excellency to keep his true position a secret, and thus avoid being
compelled to make complimentary calls upon the English Ministers and
officials in London, that very few persons, if indeed anyone in the
neighbourhood, were really aware that the tall, courteous foreigner who
came there for a few weeks each year--Mr Morini, as they called him--
was actually one of the most powerful Ministers in Europe.
They were civil to their neighbours in a mild, informal way, of course.
Foreigners are always regarded with suspicion in England. Madame Morini
made calls which were returned, and they usually played tennis and
croquet in the afternoon; for Mary, on account of her bright,
cosmopolitan vivacity, was a particular favourite with everyone.
The local clergy, headed by the rural dean and his wife, were fond of
drinking tea on the pretty lawn of Orton Court, and on this afternoon
among the guests were several rectors and their curates, together with
their women-folk. The wife of the Minister of War had been the daughter
of a poor Yorkshire clergyman. She had, while acting as English
governess in the family of a Roman prince, met her husband, then only a
struggling advocate in the Florence courts, and, notwithstanding that
she was a Protestant, they had married, and she had never for one moment
repented her choice. Husband and wife, after those years of strange ups
and downs, were still entirely devoted to each other; while Mary, their
only child, they mutually idolised.
The scene upon that sunny lawn was picturesque and purely English.
Madame Morini, a dark-haired, well-preserved woman in pale mauve, was
seated at a bamboo table in the shade serving tea and gossiping with her
friends--for the game had been suspended, and cake and biscuits were
being handed round by the men in flannels.
An elderly woman, wife of a retired colonel, inquired for "Mr Morini,"
whereupon madame answered--
"He is in the house, detained on business, I think. A gentleman has
come down from London to see him." And thus was her husband's presence
excused.
Ten minutes later, however, when Mary, watching her opportunity, saw her
mother alone, she ran up to her, whispering in her ear--
"That man Borselli has come from Rome, mother! I saw his face at the
study window. Why can't he leave father alone when we are here on
holiday?"
"I suppose it is some affair of state, my dear," was her mother's calm
reply. "Your father told me he was to arrive this afternoon. He is to
remain the night."
"I hate the man!" declared the pretty, dark-haired girl with emphasis.
"I watched him through the window just now, and saw him look so black at
father behind his back. I believe they have quarrelled."
"I think not, my dear. Your father and General Borselli are very old
friends, remember."
"Of course. But he's a Sicilian, and you know what you've always told
me about the Livornese and the Sicilians."
"Don't be silly, Mary," exclaimed the Minister's wife, laughing.
"Matters of state do not concern us women. Go and continue your game."
The girl shrugged her shoulders with the queer little foreign gesture
due to her cosmopolitan upbringing, and turned away to rejoin the young
man in grey flannels who stood awaiting her on the other side of the
court.
She was twenty-one, with perfect, regular features, a pointed chin, dark
chestnut hair, and a pair of large, lustrous eyes in which gleamed all
the fire and passion of the sunny South. Her figure, neat-waisted and
well-proportioned, was always admired in the salons of Rome and
Florence, and she had for the past couple of years been the reigning
beauty in the official and diplomatic world of the Eternal City.
Possessed of an easy grace, a natural modesty, with a sweet, pleasant
expression, she had, soon after returning from school at Broadstairs,
been chaperoned into Roman society by her mother, and had now, at
twenty-one, become essentially a woman of the world, well-dressed,
_chic_, and full of vivacity. A remarkable linguist--for she spoke
English, Italian, French, and Spanish with equal fluency--she had
quickly made her mark in that very difficult circle, Italian society, a
fact which pleased her parents, and induced her father to increase her
allowance until she was enabled to have her ball dresses from Paris and
her tailor-made gowns from London.
Morini, compelled, for the sake of his prominent position, to make a
show of affluence, saw that by dressing his daughter better than other
girls he was exhibiting a prosperity that would be noticed and talked
about.
As she crossed the lawn that warm August afternoon, plainly attired in
her cream flannel skirt and pale blue blouse, there could be no two
opinions regarding her marvellous beauty. It was of an unusual kind, a
combination of the handsome classic model of the ancients with the sweet
womanliness of modern life. Her carriage, too, was superb. The casual
observer, watching her retreating form, would not require to look twice
to recognise that she was of foreign birth; for no Englishwoman carries
herself with that easy, elastic swing which is inherent in the Italian
girl of the upper class. Yet, perhaps owing to her mother's English
birth and teaching, she admired to the full everything that was British.
She was a keen, outspoken critic of all things Italian, and was never
so happy as when they were living unostentatiously in semi-privacy for
those two welcome months each year in rural Leicestershire.
At heart, she hated that brilliant circle in which they were compelled
to move when at home--the continual functions, the official balls, the
court receptions, the gay, irresponsible world of intrigue and scandal,
of dazzling uniforms and glittering decorations, in which she was so
continually courted and flattered. Already she had become nauseated by
its vices and its shams, and longed always for the rural peace of the
country, early hours, and the ease of old frocks. Yet it was
impossible, she knew. She was compelled to live in that fevered
atmosphere of wealth and officialdom that revolved around the throne of
His Majesty King Humbert, to receive the admiration and homage paid to
her because of her striking beauty, and to act her part, as her father
instructed her--a prominent part in one of the most brilliant courts of
Europe.
Was it any wonder that, scarce out of her teens, she was already a
_femme du monde_, with a wide knowledge of the hypocrisies of society,
the tortuous ways of political intrigue, and the foetid moral atmosphere
of those gilded salons and perfumed boudoirs?
"I wonder if you'll forgive me if I don't play any more, Mr Macbean?"
she asked of the dark-haired young man in grey who stood, racquet in
hand, awaiting her return. "I am very tired. I played in the
tournament at your uncle's yesterday, you know, and we from the South
are exotic plants, after all."
"Forgive you! Of course!" cried the young man gallantly. "The sun is
still too warm to be comfortable. Perhaps you will show me the gardens
instead?"
"Willingly," she answered. "But there's not much to see here, I fear,"
and they strolled together between the high box-hedges, into the
well-kept flower-garden with its grey old sundial and beds edged with
curbs of lichen-covered stone. Beyond lay another lawn, which rose
gently until it gave entrance into a small shady wood of high old oaks
and elms wherein the rooks were cawing.
The pair were comparatively strangers. A fortnight before, he had
called with his uncle, the rector of Thornby, whom he was visiting, and
on several occasions since they had met at tennis or at tea in the
drawing-rooms of various houses in the neighbourhood.
They chatted while strolling around the great sloping lawn, and he was
expressing admiration at the excellent game she had played. She
inwardly reflected that he seemed a very pleasant companion--so
different from those over-dressed young Roman nobles, all elegance,
swagger, and pose.
To George Macbean Nature had been kind and Chance had been cruel.
He was tall, slender, and athletic, with pale, refined features and a
look of thoughtful and reticent calm. People looked at him far oftener
than they did at handsomer men. It was one of those faces which suggest
the romance of fate, and his eyes, under their straight brows and their
drooping lids, could gaze at women with an honest, open look. And yet
women seldom saw him for the first time without thinking of him when he
had passed from sight. He aroused at a first glance a vague speculative
interest--he was a man whom women loved, and yet he was utterly
unconscious of it all.
He was son of a younger son of the Macbeans of Castle Douglas; the blood
of the ancient Galloway lairds ran in his veins; yet it was all that
remained to him of the vanished greatness of a race that had fought so
valiantly on the Border. He had, on his father's death, been compelled
to come down from Cambridge only to find himself launched upon the world
practically penniless, when, by good fortune, an influential friend of
his father's in the City had contrived to obtain for him a situation as
private secretary to Mr Morgan-Mason, a wholesale provision merchant,
who, having made a fortune in business, sought to enter society by the
parliamentary back door. He sat for South-West Norfolk, and was mainly
distinguished in the House by his loudness of dress and his vulgar
ostentation.
The post of secretary to such an impossible person was by no means a
congenial occupation for a gentleman. The white-waistcoated vulgarian
smiled at the poverty of the peerage, and treated his secretary as he
would one of his shopmen in the Goswell Road; yet George Macbean could
only "grin and bear it," for upon this aspiring merchant of cheese and
bacon his very living depended. He could not afford to lose the one
hundred and eighty pounds a year which the bacon merchant paid him.
It being the recess, and Mr Morgan-Mason having followed in the wake of
a needy earl and his wife to Vichy, Macbean was spending a month with
the Reverend Basil Sinclair, his bachelor uncle, when he had become
acquainted with that bright, vivacious girl who was walking beside him.
She was speaking of Italy, and life there in winter, without, of course,
mentioning the official position of her father, when he said--
"Ah! I too love Italy. I have been to Rome and Florence several times.
Both cities are delightful--even to the mere visitor like myself."
"Perhaps you speak Italian?" she hazarded in that language.
"I am fairly well acquainted with it," he responded in the purest
Tuscan, laughing the while. "Before I went to Cambridge I lived five
years with my mother's brother, who was a priest in Pisa."
"Why, you speak like a born Italian!" she laughed. "It is so difficult
for us English to roll our r's--to give the exact accent, for instance,
to _cane_ and to _carne_. Over those two words we make ourselves
ridiculous." They had entered the wood, where the damp smell of
decaying leaves, so essentially English, met their nostrils, and were
strolling up one of the mossy paths in the cool shadow. Yes, she was
certainly lovely, he reflected. Report had not lied about her. She was
more beautiful than any woman he had ever before beheld, more graceful,
more cosmopolitan.
Morini? Morini? Yes, he had heard the name before. It was not at all
uncommon in Tuscany. She was Anglo-Italian, and the girl born of
Anglo-Italian parents is perhaps the most charming and cosmopolitan of
any in Europe.
Chatting gaily, they lingered in the wood, strolled through the long
range of hothouses, and then back again to the lawn, where they found
the guests bidding farewell to their hostess and departing.
The Reverend Basil Sinclair was bending over Madame Morini's hand, an
example which his nephew, though loth to leave the side of the girl who
had so entirely charmed him, was bound to follow, and five minutes later
the two men mounted into the rector's pony-cart, raised their hats, and
drove away.
Later that evening, as General Borselli, ready dressed for dinner,
stood, a well-set-up figure in the long, low, old-fashioned
drawing-room, with its perfume of pot-pourri, awaiting the appearance of
the ladies, the door suddenly opened, and there entered a dark,
good-looking, brown-bearded man of about thirty, who was a guest at
Orton, but having been up to London for the day, had only just returned
in time to slip into his dinner-jacket.
The two men faced each other.
The new-comer, also a foreigner, started back, halting on the threshold
as he recognised the sallow, sinister countenance of the other in the
dim half-light. Angelo Borselli was the very last man he expected to
meet beneath the Minister's roof in England, and the encounter was, to
him, somewhat disconcerting.
"You!" cried the general in surprise, speaking in French. "So you
actually have the audacity to pose as a friend of His Excellency, after
those very plain words I spoke in the Florence Club! You accept my
friend's invitation and dare pay court to mademoiselle! Is this not a
dangerous game you are playing, my friend?"
"I conceive no danger in it--as far as I am concerned," replied the
young Frenchman, Jules Dubard, coolly. "Besides, my private affairs are
surely no concern of yours! If His Excellency does me the great honour
to invite me to his English home, I shall certainly accept, even at risk
of incurring your displeasure," he added, with a supercilious smile.
"You recollect what I told you?"
"Perfectly," replied the well-dressed young count, with an air of
extreme politeness, as he rearranged his cravat in the mirror. "But you
appear to overlook one rather important fact."
"And what is that, pray?" inquired the Sicilian, with an evil flash in
his dark eyes.
"Exposure to His Excellency is synonymous with exposure of yourself in
quite another quarter, my dear general," replied the guest, in a meaning
tone. "You cannot afford to risk that, you know. We both of us may
threaten, but it is, after all, what these English call a fool's game.
Neither of us dare give each other away. So we may just as well be
friends as enemies--eh?"