Part 5 (1/2)

And, after all, what could have been more natural than the attraction which, from that time forth, manifested itself between the Count and his small countrywoman? If the little girl, in making her very marked advances, had been governed by the unwavering instinct which always guided her choice of companions, the old man, for his part, could not but find refreshment, after his long, solitary voyage, in the pretty Tuscan prattle of the child. Most Italians love children, and the Count Giovanni Battista Allamiraviglia appeared to be no exception to his race.

The two would sit together by the hour, absorbed, neither in the lovely sights of this wonderful Mediterranean voyage, nor in the movements of those about them, but simply and solely in one another.

”She's telling her own story better than we could do,” Mr. Grey used to say.

It was now no unusual thing to see the child established on the old gentleman's knee, and once Blythe found her fast asleep in his arms.

But it was not until the very last day of the voyage that the most wonderful thing of all occurred.

The sea was smooth as a lake, and all day they had been sailing the length of the Riviera. All day people had been giving names to the gleaming white points on the distant, dreamy sh.o.r.e,--Nice, Mentone, San Remo,--names fragrant with a.s.sociation even to the mind of the young traveller, who knew them only from books and letters.

Blythe and the little girl were sitting, somewhat apart from the others, on the long bench by the hatchway where Cecilia had first laid siege to the Count's affections, and Blythe was allowing the child to look through the large end of her field-gla.s.s,--a source of endless entertainment to them both. Suddenly Cecilia gave a little shriek of delight at the way her good friend, Mr. Grey, dwindled into a pigmy; upon which the Count, attracted apparently by her voice, left his chair and came and sat down beside them.

As he lifted his hat, with a polite ”_Permetta, Signorina_,” Blythe noticed, for the first time on the whole voyage, that he was without his gloves. Perhaps the general humanising of his att.i.tude, through intercourse with the child, had caused him to relax this little point of punctilio.

Cecilia, meanwhile, had promptly climbed upon his knee, and now, laying hold of one of the ungloved hands, she began twisting a large seal ring which presented itself to her mind as a pleasing novelty.

Presently her attention seemed arrested by the device of the seal, and she murmured softly, ”_Fideliter_.”

Blythe might not have distinguished the word as being Latin rather than Italian, had she not been struck by the change of countenance in the wearer of the ring. He turned to her abruptly, and asked, in French:

”Does she read?”

”No,” Blythe answered, thankful that she was not obliged to muster her ”conjugations” for the emergency!

There was a swift interchange of question and answer between the old man and the child, of which Blythe understood but little. She heard Cecilia say ”Mamma,” in answer to an imperative question; the words ”_orologio_” and ”_perduto_” were intelligible to her. She was sure that the crest and motto formed the subject of discussion, and it was distinctly borne in upon her that the same device--a mailed hand and arm with the word _Fideliter_ beneath it--had been engraved on a lost watch which had belonged to the child's mother. But it was all surmise on her part, and she could hardly refrain from shouting aloud to Mr.

Grey, standing over there, in dense unconsciousness, to come quickly and interpret this exasperating tongue, which sounded so pretty, and eluded her understanding so hopelessly.

The mind of the Count seemed to be turning in the same direction, for, after a little, he arose abruptly, and, setting the child down beside Blythe, walked straight across the deck to the Englishman, whom he accosted so unceremoniously that Blythe's sense of wonders unfolding was but confirmed.

The two men turned and walked away to a more secluded part of the deck, where they remained, deep in conversation, for what seemed to Blythe a long, long time. She felt as if she must not leave her seat, lest she miss the thread of the plot,--for a plot it surely was, with its unravelling close at hand.

At last she saw the two men striding forward in the direction of the steerage, and with a conspicuous absence of that aimlessness which marks the usual promenade at sea.

The little girl was again amusing herself with the gla.s.ses, and, as the two arbiters of her destiny pa.s.sed her line of vision, she laughed aloud at their swiftly diminis.h.i.+ng forms. Impelled by a curious feeling that the child must take some serious part in this crucial moment of her destiny, Blythe quietly took the gla.s.ses from her and said, as she had done each night when she put her little charge to bed:

”Will you say a little prayer, Cecilia?”

And the child, wondering, yet perfectly docile, pulled out the little mother-of-pearl rosary that she always wore under her dress, and reverently murmured one of the prayers her mother had taught her.

After which, as if beguiled by the a.s.sociation of ideas into thinking it bedtime, she curled herself up on the bench, and, with her head in Blythe's lap, fell fast asleep.

And Blythe sat, lost in thought, absently stroking the little head, until suddenly Mr. Grey appeared before her.

”You have been outrageously treated, Miss Blythe,” he declared, seating himself beside her, ”but I had to let the old fellow have his head.”

”Oh, don't tell me anything, till we find Mamma,” Blythe cried. ”It's all her doing, you know,--letting me have Cecilia up here,” and, gently rousing the sleeper, she said, ”Come, Cecilia. We are going to find the Signora.”

”And you consider it absolutely certain?” Mrs. Halliday asked, when Mr. Grey had finished his tale. She was far more surprised than Blythe, for she had had a longer experience of life, to teach her a distrust in fairy-stories.