Part 33 (1/2)
”I hope you'll be happy,” he remarked in a hard voice. ”I always thought you would marry Solaro--poor devil! Do you remember him?”
”Remember!” she echoed. ”Yes; I recollect everything. You may well say `poor devil.' He has been convicted of being a traitor--of selling army secrets to France.”
”I know--I know,” answered her companion quickly. ”We had all the papers concerning the charges through the Emba.s.sy, and I am aware of all the facts. My own idea is that he's innocent, yet how can it be proved?
He was betrayed by some heartless woman in Bologna, it seems. She made all sorts of charges against him.”
”She lied!” cried Mary quickly. ”He is innocent. I know he is, and some day I hope to be able to prove it.”
”Ah, I wish I could help you!” was his fervent declaration. ”He was my friend, you know. Perhaps the real truth may be known some day, but until then we can only wait, and he must bear his unjust punishment.”
”But it is a crying scandal that he should have been degraded when he is innocent!” declared the daughter of the Minister of War.
”Your father, no doubt, ordered the most searching inquiry. It is strange that, if he is really innocent, his innocence has not been proved.”
”You are quite right,” she said. ”That very fact is always puzzling me.”
”There may be some reason why he has been consigned to prison,” remarked the diplomatist, thoughtfully twisting his champagne-gla.s.s by the stem, ”some reason of State, of which we are ignorant.”
”But my father would never willingly be party to such an injustice.”
”Probably not; but what seems possible is that Solaro is held in prison by some power greater than your father's--the power of your father's enemies.”
She thought deeply over those strange words of his. It almost seemed as though he were actually in possession of the truth, and yet feared to reveal it to her!
Presently they rose again, and returned to where the cotillon had commenced. She did not take part in it, because her heart was too full for such frivolities. The young diplomatist had left her at a seat, when almost immediately her father's enemy, Angelo Borselli, approached, and bowed low over her hand.
She knew well how he had endeavoured to ruin and disgrace her father, and how he intended to hold the office of Minister himself; yet, owing to the instructions His Excellency had given her, she treated him with that clever diplomacy which is innate in woman. In common with her father, she never allowed him to discern that she entertained the slightest antipathy towards him, and treated him with calm dignity as she had always done.
Borselli, in ignorance that the Minister was aware of all the ramifications of his shrewd scheming, still affected the same friends.h.i.+p for Morini and his family, and affected it with a marvellous verisimilitude of truth. One of the cleverest political schemers in Europe, he was unrivalled even by Vito Ricci, who in the past had performed marvels of political duplicity. Yet Mary's tact was a match for him.
Only three days ago she and her father had dined at his big new mansion in the Via Salaria, and neither man had betrayed any antagonism towards the other. It is often so in this modern world of ours. Men who inwardly hate each other are outwardly the best of friends. Neither Morini nor Mary had any trust in him, however, for both knew too well that he intended by some clever _coup_ one day to deal the blow and triumph as usurper. Yet both, while wary and silent, masked their true feelings of suspicion beneath the cloak of indifference and friendliness.
Having taken a seat beside her, he began to gossip pleasantly, while his dark eyes were darting quick glances everywhere, when suddenly he asked--
”Is not Jules here? I thought he was commanded here to-night.”
”No. To the next ball. He is in Paris,” she said simply, without desire to discuss the man to whom she had engaged herself.
”And you do not regret his absence--eh?” remarked the Sicilian in a low voice, bringing his sallow, sinister face nearer to hers.
”I do not understand you,” she exclaimed, drawing herself up with some hauteur. ”What is your insinuation?”
”Nothing,” was his low response. ”You need not be offended, for I do not mean it in that sense. I merely notice how you are enjoying yourself this evening during his absence, and the conclusion is but natural.” And his face relaxed into a smile.
”Well,” she declared, as across her fair face fell a shadow of quick annoyance, ”I consider, general, your remark entirely uncalled for.”
And she rose stiffly to leave him.
But he only smiled again, a strange, crafty smile, that rendered his thin, sallow face the more forbidding, as he answered in a low voice, speaking almost into her ear, and fixing his eyes on hers--
”I may surely be forgiven as an old friend if I approach the truth in confidence, signora. You have accepted that man's offer of marriage, but you have done so under direct compulsion. You desire to escape from your compact. You see I am aware of the whole truth. Well, there is one way by which you may escape. But recollect that what I tell you is in the strictest secrecy and confidence from your father--from everyone.