Part 21 (1/2)

When the count had sat with him that evening making his request, he recollected the strange story Mary had told him regarding the secret examination of his papers. It was curious--so curious and so utterly devoid of motive that he could see no reason in it. Yet if that Frenchman had really discovered certain things concealed behind that green-painted steel door, it was to his interest that he should become his son-in-law and so preserve the secret.

Yes, he was anxious to see his daughter married to that man to whom he had taken such a personal liking, yet he affected to leave the decision entirely in her own hands.

She spoke at last in a hard, tuneless voice, as though her youth and life were slowly dying just as surely as the day was fading.

”If it is your wish, father, that I should become his wife, you may give him an affirmative answer. But--”

And she suddenly burst into a torrent of hot tears.

”Ah no! no!” her father cried, touching her pale cheek tenderly. ”No.

Do not give way, dear. I have no desire that you should marry this man if you yourself do not really love him. Perhaps your mother has been mistaken, but by various signs and looks that both of us noticed in Rome and in England, we believed that you entertained for him a warm affection.”

”I know that my marriage would please you,” she said. ”Mother gave me to understand that two months ago, therefore,”--and she paused as though she could not utter the words which were to decide her fate--”therefore I am willing to accept him.”

”Ah, Mary!” he exclaimed quickly, his face brightening, for her decision aroused hope within him. ”I need not tell you what happiness your words bring to me. I confess to you that I have hoped that you would give your consent, for I would rather see you the wife of the count, with wealth and position, than married to any other man I know. He loves you--of that I am convinced. Has he never told you so?”

She did not answer for a few moments. She was reflecting upon that scene in the little salon in Rome when he had revealed himself to her in his true colours.

”Yes,” she answered at last in that same hard, colourless voice. ”He told me so once.”

He attributed her blank, despairing look to the natural emotion of the moment. It was the great crisis of her young life, for she was deciding her future. He was in ignorance of how already she had made the compact with Dubard--of how she had decided to sacrifice herself in order to save him.

Her father, in ignorance of the truth of how n.o.bly she was acting, went on to a.n.a.lyse the young Frenchman's good qualities and relate to her all that he had learnt regarding him.

”His youth has been no better and no worse than that of any young man brought up in Paris,” he said, ”yet from the information I have gathered it seems that he has sown his wild oats long ago, and for the past couple of years he has given up racing and gambling and all such vices of youth, and has become a perfect model of what a young man should be.

Men who know him in Paris speak highly of him as a man of real grit--a man with a future before him. You do not think, Mary,” he went on, ”that I should have welcomed him as a guest at my table if I were not sure that he was a man worthy the name of friend?”

”Ah!” she sighed, ”you have, my dear father, sometimes been disappointed in your friends.h.i.+ps, I fear. Angelo Borselli, for instance, has been your friend through many years.”

”Angelo!” he exclaimed impatiently. ”Yes, yes, I know. But I am speaking of Jules--of the man you have consented to marry.”

A slight hardness showed at the corners of her mouth at mention of the man who had so cleverly entrapped her. She knew that escape was impossible. He could place her father in a position of triumph over his enemies, and in return claimed herself. Ah! if she could only speak the truth; if she could only take her father into her confidence, and show him the reason she so readily gave her consent to a union that was odious to her! Yet she knew that if she gave him the slightest suspicion of her self-sacrifice he would withhold his consent, and the result would be dire disaster.

She knew her father's brave, unflinching n.o.bility of character. Rather than he would allow her to marry a man whom she hated and mistrusted, he would face ruin--even death.

And for that reason she, pale and silent, gazing into the rising mists, accepted the man who had made her father's honour the price of her own life.

”Tell the count,” she said, in a voice broken by emotion, ”tell him that I am ready to be his wife.”

And her father, gladdened at what he, in his ignorance, believed to be a wise decision, bent to her and pressed his lips to her cheek with fatherly affection, in a vain endeavour to kiss her tears away.

They were not tears of emotion, but of a sweet and tender woman's blank despair.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

TELLS THE TRUTH.

On the following afternoon, in consequence of a telegram, the Minister of War drove into Florence, and met Vito Ricci at the club.

He seldom took the train to Florence because, on account of his position, the obsequious officials treated him with so much ceremony.