Bianca did not reply. She seemed to be thinking over her step-mother's last words. A note of kindness found an instant response in her. Princess Montefiano noticed her hesitation, and decided that the moment was opportune for pressing her point. It might quite well be, she thought, that Bianca was really unconscious of the equivocal position in which she might find herself placed before the world.
"You see, Bianca," she continued, gravely, "a young girl cannot act as you have done without laying herself open to very disagreeable things being said of her. Do you suppose that any man would wish to marry you were it to be known that – well, that any such episode as has occurred had happened to you? Most decidedly he would not. Nevertheless, my brother is ready to overlook what another would not overlook, on account of the affection he entertains for you. He knows that you were not to blame so much as that thoughtless young man who ventured to – to persuade you to give him an interview."
"He was not to blame," interrupted Bianca, quickly. "He would have gone away if I had told him to do so, but I did not tell him."
"It does not matter," continued the princess, hurriedly, anxious to avoid a discussion on the subject at that particular moment. "You may be sure that it was only an impudent attempt to compromise you. But the world would never take that into consideration. With my brother, however, it is different."
Unluckily, Princess Montefiano had struck a wrong chord.
"It was nothing of the sort," Bianca exclaimed, indignantly. "It is perfectly true that we met, there in the ilex grove at the Villa Acorari, and I suppose our meeting was seen, and that you were told of it."
"Of course," interrupted the princess. "My brother saw you. Did you not know it was he who heard voices in the casino, and then saw you and – and that young man emerge from it?"
Bianca started violently. "Liar!" she exclaimed, under her breath.
"It seems to me that it is a further proof of my brother's generosity," continued Princess Montefiano. "Knowing all the circumstances, he has from the first endeavored to shield you."
Bianca laughed a quiet but not very pleasant laugh.
"Sicuro!" she said. "It is a further proof of Monsieur d'Antin's generosity. It appears that everybody at Montefiano is disinterested – my uncle, Monsieur l'Abbé, everybody! But you will explain to them that I need no sacrifices. Ah, it is of no use to interrupt me now! I have learned all I wanted to know, and you – you will learn something from me – something final, definite. It is this: I will marry Silvio Rossano when I am Principessa di Montefiano and my own mistress, and until that time I will wait, unless – "
Princess Montefiano turned towards her, her face quivering with anger.
"Unless – what?" she asked.
"Unless he wishes me to marry him before," answered Bianca, quietly.
"You will not dare – "
Bianca laughed again, and threw her head up like a young horse.
"Dare!" she said, scornfully. "When I have given my word, I do not break it – and do you suppose that I shall break my word when I have given my love? Ah, no, per esempio! I am not so vile as that."
"Oh, but the girl is mad, possessed!" ejaculated Princess Montefiano.
Bianca looked at her almost indifferently.
"I think not!" she said, quietly – and then her eyes flashed with sudden contempt, as she added: "And as for Monsieur d'Antin, you will tell him from me that I have no need of the generosity of a coward and a liar."
And turning on her heel, Bianca walked slowly from the room without another word, leaving Princess Montefiano in a condition of speechless astonishment and dismay.
XXII
After leaving her step-mother, Bianca went to her own room, where she shut herself up in order to be able to think quietly. Although she felt that she had been by no means the vanquished party in the unexpected skirmish which had just taken place, she was far more ill at ease in her own mind than she had allowed herself to show to the princess. Whatever might be Bianca Acorari's faults, lack of courage, moral or physical, was certainly not among them; and during the time she had been at Montefiano, her courage and her pride combined had forbidden her to show any external sign of the doubt and uncertainty ever increasing in her heart as the days lengthened into weeks, and yet no word from Silvio Rossano had reached her.
That Silvio's father had written to her step-mother making a formal proposal of marriage on his son's behalf, and that this proposal had been indignantly rejected by the princess, Bianca was already well aware. Monsieur d'Antin had informed her of the fact a very few days after his arrival at Montefiano. It had been this information, indeed, and the kindly and sympathetic manner of its conveyance, that had caused Bianca to regard Monsieur d'Antin as the one person about her to whom she might venture to confide her hopes and difficulties. It had not been long, however, before vague and fleeting suspicions, which she had at first dismissed from her mind as not only absurd, but almost wrong to entertain, as to Monsieur d'Antin's motives for seeking her society, developed into certainties, before which she had recoiled with fear and disgust. Her instinct had very soon told her that there was more in her uncle's – for she had begun to regard him in that relationship – manner towards her than was justified by his professed compassion and sympathy. Sometimes, when alone with her, he had made certain observations which, although apparently in connection with her and Silvio's love for each other, had offended her sense, if not of modesty, at least of propriety and good taste. She could hardly explain to herself why they should have done so, but she was conscious that they did do so. Sometimes, too, she had surprised an expression on Monsieur d'Antin's countenance as he looked at her which had made her shrink from him, as she might have shrunk from some evil thing that meant to harm her. Her suspicions once aroused, Bianca had been quick to perceive that the more she was alone with Monsieur d'Antin, the more apt he became to assume a manner towards her which caused her no little embarrassment as well as distaste. The result had been an ever-growing feeling of distrust, which soon made her regret bitterly that she had ever allowed herself to talk to her uncle about Silvio, and latterly she had sought every pretext to avoid being alone with him. Sometimes, too, she reproached herself deeply for having disregarded her promise to Silvio that she would confide in nobody until he had an opportunity of again communicating with her. This promise, however, as she repeatedly told herself, had been given when they had still a channel of communication in the person of Mademoiselle Durand, and before she had become, to all intents and purposes, a prisoner at Montefiano. But now Mademoiselle Durand had utterly vanished from the scene – gone, as Monsieur d'Antin informed her, to Paris with the wife and children of a secretary of the French embassy in Rome, and Bianca had quickly realized that no communication, direct or indirect, from her lover would be allowed to reach her as long as she was within the walls of Montefiano.
Monsieur d'Antin, moreover, had certainly played the opening moves of his game very well, and a more experienced person than Bianca might have been deceived by them. He had extracted her confidence by impressing upon Bianca that he, and he alone, could by degrees overcome the objections that his sister entertained to an alliance with the Rossano family. He had explained to her how these objections came in reality much more from the Abbé Roux than from the princess, and that the latter would infallibly relent if the abbé's good-will could be secured. It had been Monsieur d'Antin, too, who had warned Bianca that her step-mother had decided, always by the Abbé Roux's advice, absolutely to ignore, at any rate for the present, the fact of her having met Silvio and allowed him to propose to her. He had carefully impressed upon her that any attempt on her part to overcome the princess's objections, any allusion, indeed, to the subject, would only result in failure; and that Bianca's best plan, in her own and her lover's interests, would be to maintain an absolute silence, except, of course, to himself. No questions, he told her, would be asked her by her step-mother, and no lectures on her conduct given to her. Therefore, there would be no need for her to give her confidence in a quarter where it was not demanded, and where the giving of it could only prejudice her cause. And everything had happened as Monsieur d'Antin had foretold. The princess had not made the slightest allusion to her step-daughter regarding the meeting in the grounds of the Villa Acorari, and, save for the sense of being continually guarded and watched, Bianca could not truthfully say to herself that her life at Montefiano differed in any particular degree from the life she had been accustomed from childhood to lead.
At first, when Bianca had finally decided to yield to her uncle's suggestions and confide in him, she had more than once asked him to assist her in sending or in receiving some communication from Silvio. But Monsieur d'Antin had always declared this to be impossible. He had explained plausibly enough that if his sister and the Abbé Roux were once to suspect him of such a course, all the influence he might be able to use with them in order to overcome their objections would be hopelessly destroyed. Moreover, his sister would certainly ask him to leave Montefiano, and then Bianca would be left without her only friend and sympathizer.
And so long as Monsieur d'Antin, counselling patience, had himself been patient, matters had progressed fairly well for the furtherance of the object he and the Abbé Roux had in view. Bianca was, if not easy in her mind, at least satisfied that there was no other course open to her but to keep silence and wait for her uncle's influence to do its work.
But Monsieur d'Antin had not had patience. The success attending his first efforts to gain Bianca's confidence had been his undoing. The constant companionship of the young girl, whose very youth and inexperience had kindled afresh his well-worn passions, had brought about its almost inevitable psychological result. Monsieur d'Antin began to lose his head, and to be unable, or at any rate unwilling, to place the restraint upon himself that a younger man would probably have done. He believed that Bianca would certainly in the end be compelled by force of circumstances to see that a marriage with Silvio Rossano was impossible for the heiress of the Acorari. It was true that she might come to realize this, and yet make up her mind to marry some other young man who might present himself – some flaccid, Roman youth with empty pockets, but the possessor of a spurious title which would render him, in the eyes of the little, but strangely snobbish Roman world, an eligible husband for Donna Bianca Acorari. But Baron d'Antin felt comfortably convinced that even should this contingency arise, he still held in his hand the trump-card which would win him the game. If such a young man were to present himself – well, a few words spoken in a few Roman drawing-rooms, a hint or two dropped at the clubs of what had recently occurred at the Villa Acorari, a suggestion that the Princess Montefiano was anxious to marry her step-daughter in order to prevent her making a mésalliancein a quarter in which she had already compromised herself – and the young man's family would at once break off negotiations.
But there had come a day when Monsieur d'Antin, in the course of a walk with Bianca in the parco at Montefiano, had allowed his passion momentarily to get the better of him, and in that moment Bianca had understood all. She had entertained no suspicions since that instant – only the certainty that she was the object of Monsieur d'Antin's desires. Indignation rather than fear, or even aversion, had been her first sensation – indignation at the cowardice of this elderly hypocrite who had tricked her into giving him her confidence. Monsieur d'Antin probably never knew how near he had been to receiving a blow in the face from Bianca's clinched fist, as, with a few scathing words of anger and disgust, she had left him and almost run back to the terrace, where Princess Montefiano was sitting reading in the shade under the castle.
Nor had this episode been all that had occurred during the last few days to confirm Bianca Acorari's suspicions and make her doubly uneasy in her mind.
It so happened that, while wandering through some of the disused apartments of the castle, in the wing opposite to that occupied by the princess and herself, she had overheard a portion of a conversation between domestics, certainly not intended for her ears. Her attention was arrested by the mention of her own name in a loud and rather excited female voice; and approaching nearer to the room whence the voices proceeded, she saw her own maid, Bettina, and a girl whom she recognized as the fattore Fontana's daughter, engaged in mending some linen. They were also, apparently, occupied in a discussion of which she herself was the object, and the agent's daughter appeared to be taking her part with some vigor.
"It was a shame," Bianca heard the girl exclaim, "that the principessina should be forced to marry an old man like the baron, when there was a bel giovanotto who loved her and whom she loved. For her part, if she were the Principessina Bianca she would box the baron's ears —uno, due– so! and marry the lad she loved. What was the use of being a princess if one could not do as one chose?"
Then had followed some words in a lower tone from Bettina, the sense of which Bianca could not catch, but which appeared to have the effect of still further arousing Concetta Fontana's indignation.
"Ah, the poor girl!" Bianca heard her reply. "They shut her up here in this dreary place, and they will keep her here until she lets that old he-goat have his own way. And the priest is at the bottom of it – oh, certainly, the priest is at the bottom of it! It is useless to tell me. I have heard him and the Signor Barone talking together – and I know. If one could ever approach the principessina to get a word with her, I would warn her that it is a trap they are laying for her – just as though she were a bird, the poor child!"
Bianca Acorari turned away, sick at heart. The servants, then, and the people about Montefiano, knew for a fact what she had never even suspected. She had regarded Monsieur d'Antin's attempt to make love to her as odious and cowardly, and also, perhaps, as ludicrous – but she had not until then suspected that others were aware of his passion for her, and still less that her having been brought to Montefiano was part of a deliberately laid plan to force her to yield to that passion.
Concetta Fontana's words seemed suddenly to make everything clear to her, and to reveal Monsieur d'Antin's treachery in its full light. She understood now, or she thought that she understood. She had been purposely allowed to confide in her uncle, purposely thrown in his company, in the hope that she might in time consent to relinquish her love for Silvio as a thing out of the question.
And her step-mother? Of course her step-mother would do what the Abbé Roux counselled. She had always done so ever since Bianca could remember, and she always would do so. What the priest's motives might be for desiring that she should marry Baron d'Antin, Bianca did not stop to consider. Monsieur l'Abbé had always tried to interfere in her life; and the fact that he knew she wished to marry Silvio Rossano was quite sufficient to account for his determination to marry her to somebody else.
Well, they should see that she, Bianca Acorari, was not to be forced to marry anybody against her will. She was not a foreigner, not a Belgian, thank Heaven – but an Italian – a Roman, the head of an ancient Roman house. And so her pride came to her rescue, as, indeed, it had often done before. And with it had come the courage to face her new difficulties. She could give her step-mother plainly to understand that she knew what steps had been taken and what plans had been made to compel her to abandon all idea of marrying the man she intended to marry. After that, the abbé and Monsieur d'Antin might do their worst. She had only to be firm and patient for three years, and then they could have no more power to interfere with her.
It had been a certain comfort to her to discover that there was one person at Montefiano, however humbly placed, who was her friend. Bettina, she knew well, had an eye only to her own interests, and would not hesitate to betray any confidences Bianca might be tempted to make to her, were she to consider it to her advantage to do so. She had several times noticed Concetta Fontana since her arrival at Montefiano, and had been struck by the honest and straightforward bearing both of the girl and of her father. Fontana himself, indeed, had been very marked in the deference and attention he paid to his young mistress. As a matter of fact, he regarded both the princess and Monsieur d'Antin in the light of foreign intruders, while for the Abbé Roux he felt nothing but the suspicion and dislike with which priests, as a general rule, Don Agostino always excepted, inspired him. The Principessina Bianca, on the contrary, he regarded as his liege lady, the daughter and representative of the princes of Montefiano whom he and his forefathers had served for several generations in one capacity or another.
Bianca Acorari could not have explained why the thought that the agent's daughter took a friendly interest in her was a consolation, but it certainly was so. She had scarcely spoken to the girl beyond wishing her "Good-morning" or "Good-evening" if they met in the passages or the courtyard of the castle.
As she sat alone in her room after the stormy scene with her step-mother, Bianca thought long and calmly over the situation in which that scene must inevitably have placed her. On the whole, she felt rather relieved than otherwise that it had taken place. The keeping up for so many weeks of a pretence that there was nothing unusual in the position between the princess and herself had become more than irksome; and Bianca would certainly not have submitted to Silvio's proposal being passed over in silence by her step-mother, had it not been for Monsieur d'Antin's assurances that nothing but harm would result were she to insist on discussing it.
Her amazement and indignation had been great, however, at hearing from her that it had been no other than Monsieur d'Antin himself who had been a witness to her interview with Silvio in the ilex grove of the Villa Acorari. She had always concluded that one of the servants of the place had been her step-mother's informant, and Monsieur d'Antin had never said anything to lead her to suppose the contrary. It was, of course, but another instance of his treachery and double-dealing towards her; but all the same, Bianca was glad to know the truth. She could understand the course of events more clearly now, and the last discovery, immediately following the remarks she had overheard from Concetta Fontana, pointed without doubt to the existence of some intrigue between her uncle and the Abbé Roux of which she was to be the victim. It was certainly as well that she had that day spoken plainly to her step-mother. In a day or two Monsieur d'Antin would return from Rome, and then she supposed there would be war to the knife.
Well, they should see that she would not give way – not one centimetre. Better to have open war to the knife than to continue to be surrounded by an atmosphere of intrigue and deception.
Ah, but if she could only have one line from Silvio, one word to assure her that he was faithful to her as she was to him! She could afford to wait patiently then – to wait, if need be, till three years were over and she was accountable to nobody for her actions. She could not doubt Silvio – not for one moment; but it was strange that he had not as yet discovered some means of communicating with her. Sometimes a deadly fear struck her that he had believed her step-mother's rejection of his offer to have been written with her knowledge and consent. It was more than likely that an attempt would have been made to induce him to believe this. But she put the thought away from her persistently. Silvio and she had known from the first that his offer would be declined – it had only been made, indeed, as a formality, and as being in accordance with the usages of society.
Nevertheless, she longed for some message, some word to comfort her and give her courage to face the weary months in front of her. Surely he would find some means of sending her this word! It seemed so long ago since his arms were round her and his lips lay upon hers – so long ago and yet she felt their pressure still. What had he said to her "I will marry no woman if I do not marry you." Ah, but she was sure of that – very sure. And so it was ridiculous to be afraid – cowardly to be afraid and not to trust in his word, that as soon as he could possibly do so with the certainty that his message would reach her, he would communicate with her as to what their next step should be.