Part 55 (1/2)

”I will not reproach you for deserting me. Life is too brief for reproaches--when one longs to fill it with pleasanter things. But be kind to me! Give me the opportunity of finis.h.i.+ng that broken sentence. I shall smoke a cigar on the terrace at eleven to-night.

If you are generous, wrap yourself up, and keep me company for ten minutes. I shall wait--and hope.

”DEEREHURST.”

She read to the end, and stood for a s.p.a.ce staring at the large, straggling writing; at last, as if suddenly imbued with the power of action, she tore the letter across--tearing and retearing it into little strips; then, throwing the fragments on the ground, she turned and fled out of the room.

Milbanke's bedroom was on the same floor as her own, though separated from it by half the length of the corridor. Leaving her own apartment, she hurried towards it; and pausing outside the door, knocked softly and insistently. A delay followed her imperative summons; then Milbanke's voice came faint and nervous, demanding the intruder's name.

She answered; and a moment later the door was opened with a confused sound of shooting bolts.

Milbanke's appearance was slightly grotesque, as the opened door disclosed him, silhouetted against the lighted room. He was garbed in a loose dressing-gown; his scanty hair was disarranged; and there was an expression of alarm on his puckered face. But for once Clodagh was blind to these things. With a swift movement she entered the room, and closing the door, stood leaning against it.

”James,” she said breathlessly, ”you finished your business with Mr.

Barnard to-day, didn't you?”

Milbanke, suddenly conscious of her white face, began to stammer.

”Clodagh! my dear--my dear----”

But Clodagh waved his anxiety aside.

”Tell me!” she said. ”It's finished, isn't it?”

”Yes!--yes! But, my dear----”

She threw out her hands in a sudden, vehement gesture.

”Then take me away!” she cried--”take me away! Let us go in the morning, by the very first train--before any one is up.”

Milbanke paled.

”But, my dear,” he said helplessly, ”I thought--I believed----”

Clodagh turned to him again.

”So did I!” she cried--”so did I! I thought I loved it. I thought I loved it all--the music and the gaiety and--and the people. But I don't. I hate it!--I hate it!--I hate it!”

In a strangled sob, her voice gave way; and, with it, her strength and her self-control. She took a few steps forward; then, like a mechanical figure in which the mechanism has suddenly been suspended, she stopped, swayed a little and, dropping into the nearest chair, broke into a flood of tears--such tears as had shaken her four years ago, when she drove out of Carrigmore on the day of her wedding.

_PART IV_

CHAPTER I

The penetrating Florentine suns.h.i.+ne was enveloping the villa that stood upon the hill above San Domenico; but it was not the full, warm suns.h.i.+ne of late April that had opened the roses in the garden and deepened the shadows of the cypress trees nearly two years earlier, when Clodagh had dreamed of her visit to Venice. It was the cool sunlight of February, and it fell across the polished floors, and threw into prominence the many antique and curious objects that filled the rooms, with a searching clearness that almost seemed like a human scrutiny.

In a small salon that opened upon the terrace Clodagh sat at a bureau.

In front of her was a formidable array of letters and business papers, neatly bound into packets by elastic bands, and under her hand was spread a sheaf of unused, black-bordered note-paper.