Part 35 (1/2)

Mary was already engaged, otherwise neither Morini nor his wife would probably have allowed the two young people to be thrown so constantly into each other's society. Thus, however, the bond of friends.h.i.+p gradually became strengthened between them, he loving her fondly in secret, while she regarded him as a man in whom she might one day confide. She had no friend in whom she could trust, save her father.

Amid her thousand acquaintances in that brilliant world around the throne there was not one who would not betray her confidence at the moment any profit might be made out of it. Therefore she kept herself to herself, and mixed with them only as etiquette or her father's policy demanded.

George Macbean was, on his part, filled with wonder. She was actually to marry Jules Dubard--that man of all men!

Surely her parents were in ignorance of who and what the fellow had been; surely by his clever cunning and shrewd manoeuvring he had misled even the sharp-eyed Minister himself, and induced him to give his consent to his daughter's marriage.

He pitied Mary--pitied her from the bottom of his heart. He knew that there must be some secret which she held and would not divulge; for if not, why should she regard her forthcoming marriage with such a lack of enthusiasm--why, indeed, should she purposely abstain from discussing Dubard? He closely watched her, and recognised how she had sadly changed since those bright days at Orton. Upon her brow was now a settled expression of deep thought and sadness, and when she thought herself un.o.bserved a low sigh would sometimes escape, her, as though her thoughts were bitter ones.

Was it possible that she suspected the truth concerning Jules Dubard?

Was it even possible that she was marrying him under compulsion?

In the silence of his own apartment he sat for hours, smoking his English pipe and wondering, while the babel of sounds of the foreign city came up from the street below. How strange were the ways of the world, how bitter the ironies of life! He loved her--ah yes! He loved her with all the pa.s.sion of his soul, with all the deep and earnest devotion of which an honest man is capable. Yet, poor as he was, merely her father's underling, how could he ever hope to gain her hand? No, he sighed day after day, it was hopeless--utterly hopeless. Hers was to be a marriage of convenience--she was to wed Dubard, and become a countess.

But if he only dared to speak! He might save her--but at what cost?

His own disgrace and ruin.

And he bit his lip to the blood.

Fortune had lifted him out of the drudgery of Morgan-Mason's service and brought him there to Rome, to a position of confidence envied by ten thousand others. Could he possibly sacrifice his future, his very life, just as it had suddenly opened up to him?

And he pondered on, meeting her, talking with her, and each hour falling deeper under the spell of her marvellous grace and beauty.

Mary, on her part, was full of thought. A frightful gulf was opened before her; she could not fly from its brink; she was goaded onwards though she saw it yawning beneath her feet.

While sitting alone with her father in his room one evening she approached the subject of Felice Solaro; but he instantly poured forth such a flood of invectives upon the condemned man that she was compelled to at once change the subject. To her it seemed that for some unaccountable reason he was prejudiced against the imprisoned man, and anything she might say in his favour only served to condemn him the more.

On looking back upon the past, she found that she had regarded love as a matter of everyday occurrence. She heard of it, saw it wherever she moved; every man who approached her either felt or feigned it; and so accustomed was she to homage and devotion that its absence alone attracted her attention. She had considered it part of her state--and yet of the real nature of true affection she had been perfectly unconscious.

She had more than once imagined herself in love, as in the case of Felice Solaro, mistaking gratified vanity for a deeper emotion--had felt pleasure in the presence of its object, and regret in absence; but that was a pastime and no more--until now.

But now! She held within her heart a deep secret--the secret of her love.

And this rendered her future all the more serious--her marriage all the more a fearful undertaking. She had no escape from her fate; she must marry a man who at least was indifferent to her. Could she ever suffer herself to be decked for this unpromising bridal, this union with a man who at heart was the enemy of her family and whom she hated?

One evening she again met George Macbean. He had returned from Naples, where he had executed a commission given him by the Minister, and had reported to his chief his visit to the commandant of the military district. He afterwards sat with Mary and her mother in one of the smaller reception-rooms of the ponderous old mansion. Mary, who was in a black dinner-dress slightly _decollete_, took up her mandoline--the instrument of which he was so fond--and sang the old Tuscan song, in which, with his heart so overburdened, he discerned a hidden meaning--

”Io questa notte in sogno l'ho veduto, Era vest.i.to tutto di broccato; Le piume sul berretto di velluto, Ed una spada d'oro aveva allato.

E poi m'ha detto con un bel sorriso.

Io non posso piu star da te diviso!

Da te diviso non ci posso stare, E torno per mai piu non ti lasciare!”

These words sank as iron into his soul. Did she, he wondered, really reciprocate his concealed and unexpressed feelings? Ah no, it was impossible--all impossible.

And when she had laid aside her instrument, he commenced to describe to them the grand review of troops which he had witnessed outside Naples that morning, and how the general staff had treated him as an honoured guest.

”Ah!” sighed Madame Morini. ”If we were to tell the truth, Mr Macbean, both Mary and I are tired of the very sight of uniforms and the sound of military music. Wherever my husband goes in Italy a review is always included in the programme, and we have to endure the heat and the dust of the march past. Once, when I was first married, I delighted in all the glitter and display of armed forces, but nowadays I long and ever long for retirement at dear old Orton.”

”And so do I,” declared her daughter quickly. ”When I was at school in England I used to look forward to the day when I would be presented at the Quirinale and enter Roman society. But oh, the weariness of it all!