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“Why do you say he’s a peculiar man?”

“Well – I have heard it whispered among the Italians here that he associates with some queer people sometimes. Of course, he’s an Inglese, and quite in ignorance of what they really are. The better-class Italians have nothing to do with him, and as the English colony here is so very small, poor Lucie’s life can’t be a very gay one. Indeed, I’m often sorry for the girl. Except for visiting us sometimes, and going to the houses of two or three of the English business people here, they go nowhere. Milner, when he’s here, spends each morning alone on the Squarci baths, reading the newspaper, and in the evening takes one turn up and down the promenade.”

“Yes,” declared her daughter. “He’s a most lonely, melancholy man.”

“There’s some mystery behind him, I suppose,” remarked the Countess. “We have so many queer English and Americans out here nowadays. Italy is really becoming the dumping-ground for all people who, from some reason or other, find their own country too sultry for them. Take Rome, for instance: why, the place is simply full of people one can’t possibly know, while Florence is proverbial for undesirables.”

“But you don’t think this man Milner is an undesirable, do you? I mean you’ve never heard anything against him?”

“Well, nothing absolutely direct,” was her answer. “Only if I were you I wouldn’t be too friendly with them. It will go very much against you, more especially in Italian society.”

“Italian society, Countess, doesn’t interest me really very much,” I exclaimed. “I know you think me a terrible barbarian, but remember I’m only a wanderer and a Bohemian at that.”

“Ah!” she sighed, “you men are free. It is unfortunately not so with us women, especially with a woman like myself, who, though I love freedom, am compelled to exist in this narrow-minded little world of the Italian aristocracy. I need not tell you how exclusive we all are – you know us too well. Why, when an English royal prince or princess comes to an Italian city hardly any one ever goes out of his way to call. They actually wait for the royalty to make the first call! And if you hear three school-girls of fourteen talking together, you will most certainly hear them discussing the nobiltà, and sneering at their schoolfellows whose parents are without titles. Yes, Mr Leaf,” she sighed, “ours is a strange complex life here, in modern Italy.”

The Countess was, I knew, “hipped” and embittered. Her husband, a good-looking good-for-nothing fellow, who spent his days idling in the Via Tornabuoni, in Florence, and his nights gambling at the Florence club, possessed a large estate with a fine old castle, away in the Cresentino, but every metre of the land was mortgaged, and in order to redeem the place had married Mary Plant, of Boston, Mass., the daughter of a rich coal-owner. Within three years they had been separated, and now only at rare intervals they met, sometimes finding themselves at the same entertainment in one or other of the palaces in Rome or Florence and greeting each other as comparative strangers. Like thousands of other similar cases in Italy, she had bought her title very dearly, and now bitterly regretted that she had ever been attracted by a handsome face and elegant manner, that she had been entrapped by a man who had never entertained one single spark of affection for her, and who had, in his heart, despised her on account of her readiness to sacrifice herself and her money for the sake of becoming a Countess.

We continued to chat, for it was delightful there, with the clear blue waves lapping close to our feet. In the course of conversation she and her daughter told me several other interesting facts concerning the Millers. They had lived in Rome for two successive winter seasons, the Countess said, in a little furnished flat in the Via Grottino, one of those narrow streets that lead off the Corso.

Was it while there, I wondered, that Lucie had become acquainted with the great politician, Nardini – the man who had died refusing to give her her liberty?

I longed to approach the subject, yet there were matters upon which I could not touch while Gemma was present.

So I sat there idling, laughing and chatting, and recalling the last occasion we had met, up in the pine woods of Camaldoli in the previous August, when I was staying at their hotel, where we had many mutual friends.

I had known the Countess fully ten years, when Gemma was but a child in the nursery, and when she was still a very pretty young woman.

Somehow I saw that she was anxious that I should not know the Milners. Why, I could not discern.

“If I were you,” she said, in a low, confidential tone, when she had sent her daughter along to the kiosque for a newspaper, “I shouldn’t call upon that man. I haven’t told Gemma, but I’ve dropped the girl. After she called upon me the last time I sent her a letter hinting that I should prefer that she did not call again.”

“Why?” I asked, much surprised.

“Well, I have a reason,” was her response. “Quite lately I’ve discovered something that requires a good deal of explaining away. To tell you the truth, I believe Milner is sailing under entirely false colours, and besides I have no intention that Gemma should associate with his daughter any further. Take my advice, Godfrey, and don’t go near them.”

“Then what have you heard?”

“I’ve heard a good deal that surprises me,” replied the Countess. “In fact, the whole affair is a very grave scandal, and I, for one, don’t mean to be dragged into it.”

Chapter Twenty Six
The Home of the Mysterious Englishman

At half-past five o’clock that same afternoon, heedless of the Countess Moltedo’s mysterious warning, I was standing by Lucie’s side at the long French window that opened upon the balcony. Below, hundreds of visitors, mostly dressed in white, as is the mode of Leghorn, were promenading in the little pine wood that lies between the roadway and the sea, while beyond stretched the broad glassy Mediterranean aglow in the fiery rays of the Tuscan sunset, the mystic islands showing dark purple on the far-off horizon.

It was the hour when all Leghorn was agog after the siesta, that period from two o’clock till five, when all persiennes are closed, the streets are silent and deserted, and the city dazzlingly white lies palpitating beneath the blazing sun that blanches everything – the hour for the evening bath, and the stroll and gossip before dinner.

Perhaps nowhere else in all Europe can be seen such a living panorama of beautiful girls as there, upon the Passeggio at Leghorn on a summer’s evening at six o’clock, those dark-haired, dark-eyed, handsome-featured children of the people walking in twos and threes, with figure and gait perfect, and each with her santuzza, or silken scarf of pale blue, mauve, pink, or black, twisted around her head with the ends thrown carelessly over the shoulders.

As the white veil is part of the costume of the Turkish woman so is the santuzza part of that of the merry, laughing coral-pickers, milliners and work-girls of Leghorn. It enhances their marvellous beauty and is at the same time the badge of their servitude.

Of all the people in the whole of proud old Tuscany assuredly none were so easy-going and vivacious, none so light-hearted and full of poetry as those Livornese people passing to and fro below us. The more I had dwelt among the Tuscan people the more I loved them. There is surely no other people on the face of the earth so entirely lovable, even with their many sad faults, as they; none so gregarious, so neighbourly, so courteous, kindly or poetic, none so content upon the most meagre fare that ever held body and soul together.

Your popolano even in his rags will bring a flower to a woman with the air of a king, and he will resent an insult with a withering scorn to which no regal trappings could lend further dignity. It is the land where Love still reigns just as supreme as it did in the days of La Fiammetta, of Beatrice, of Laura, or of Romeo – the Land of Amore– the sun-kissed land where even in this prosaic century of ours men and women live and die – often by the knife-thrust, be it said – for “amore,” that king who is greater and more powerful even than good Vittorio Emanuele himself.

At Lucie’s side I stood in silence, gazing down upon the gay scene below. In those people’s eyes were always dreams, and in the memories there was always greatness.

A writer has asked with deep truth, who, having known fair Tuscany, can forsake her for lesser love? Who, having once abode with her, can turn their faces from the rising sun and set the darkness of the Pisan mountains betwixt herself and them?

Yes. I had been back again in Tuscany for those few brief hours only, yet the glamour of Italy had again fallen upon me, that same glamour that holds so many of the English-speaking race – irrevocably compelling them to return again and again to those amethystine hills and mystical depths of seven-chorded light – the land that is grey-green with sloes and rich with trailing vines, the land of art and antiquity, of youth and of loveliness.

“And your father went on from Pisa?” I said at last, turning to my neat-waisted little companion. “He did not come home with you?”

“No. He has some urgent business down in Rome, and sent me back here to wait for him.”

“When does he arrive?”

“He does not know. His business is very uncertain always. Sometimes when he goes away he’s absent only three days, and at other times three months. Dear old dad is awfully tiresome. He never writes, and Marietta and I wait and wait, and wonder what’s become of him.”

“Is he staying with friends in Rome?”

“With Dr Gavazzi, a great friend of ours.”

“You left Studland very suddenly,” I said.

“Because of a telegram. We left at once, with hardly an hour to pack up. But how did you know we had gone to Italy?”

“I called after you had left, and your aunt told me. I wanted to speak to you, Miss Miller,” I added, turning to her seriously. “I came here to Leghorn purposely to see you.”

“It’s surely a long way to travel,” she said, turning her soft dark eyes upon mine and regarding me with wonder.

“Yes. But the reason I am here is to consult you regarding something which very closely concerns myself – regarding Ella.”

“Ah! It was strange that she left us so suddenly,” she remarked, “and stranger still the events of that night. I wonder who attacked her? She recognised her assailant, otherwise she would have said something to me. I’ve thought over it several times. The whole thing is an utter enigma. She evidently left us because she feared that her assailant would either call to see her, or perhaps make another attempt upon her.”

“Then she said nothing to you?”

“Absolutely not a word, even though when she came in she was half fainting. I naturally concluded that you and she had had some words, and therefore I made no inquiry.”

“We had no words, Miss Miller,” I said, in a low, serious voice. “Our hearts were too full of tragedy for that.”

“Of tragedy?” she cried. “What do you mean?”

“Ella is already engaged to be married.”

“Engaged?” she cried. “Why, I thought she was to be yours? I was congratulating you both!”

“No,” I answered, my heart sinking. “Though we have come together again after that long blank in both our lives, we are yet held apart by a cruel circumstance. She is already engaged to be married to another man.”

“But she will break it, never fear. Ella loves you – you can’t doubt that.”

“I know. I know that. But it is an engagement she cannot break. She will be that man’s wife in a month.”

“You absolutely amaze me. She told me nothing of this, but on the contrary led me to believe that she was still free, and that you were to be her affianced husband.”

“There is some reason – some secret reason why I cannot be,” I said. “It was to discuss this point with you that I have travelled from London. I must ask you to forgive me, Miss Miller, for troubling you with my private affairs, but you are, you know, Ella’s most intimate and most devoted friend.”

“You are not troubling me in the least,” my companion declared. “We are friends, you and I, and if I can help you, I will with pleasure do so.”

“Then I want to ask you a few questions,” I said eagerly. “First, tell me how long you have known Mr Gordon-Wright?”

“Oh! ever since I was quite a little girl. He used to give me francs and buy me bon-bons long ago in the old days in Paris. Why?”

“Because I had an idea that he might perhaps be a new acquaintance.”

“Oh, dear no. My father and he have been friends for many years. He comes here to stay, sometimes for a couple of months at a time. He has bad health, and his London doctor often orders him abroad.”

“Who is he?”

“A gentleman. He was in the Navy on the China station, I think. He’s a most amusing companion, full of droll anecdotes, and seems to know everybody. Dad says that he’s one of the most popular men about London. He has a splendid steam yacht and once or twice he has taken us for cruises. It was in port here for a week at the beginning of the year.”

“Where does he live?”

“In Half Moon Street in London.”

“Has he a country place?”

“I never heard of it.”

Then she was unaware, I saw, that he lived on the Cornish border. Her father, of course, knew the truth, and kept it concealed from her. The fact that he came there to hide for months at a time, and that he travelled about in a steam yacht were sufficient to show that he was one of the clever and ingenious band who had, during the past ten years, effected certain coups so gigantic that they had startled Europe.

“When I met him how long had he been staying with you at the Manor?”

“Only one day. He came on the previous morning, and he left an hour after you did. He wished to consult my father about something – some securities he contemplates purchasing, I think.”

“Was Ella acquainted with him?”

“No. Ella never saw him. He was upstairs in his room, you remember, when we brought her home, and she left in the morning before he was up.”

“You don’t think that it was he who met her in the park after she left me?” I suggested.

She looked at me strangely, as though endeavouring to read my innermost thoughts.

“No, I hardly think that. Why should he, of all men, attack a woman who was a perfect stranger to him?”

“But was Ella a perfect stranger?” I queried. “How do you know that?”

“Of course we can’t say so. He might have met her somewhere else before,” the dark-eyed girl was forced to admit.

“Do not the circumstances all point to the fact that she fled, fearing to face him?” I said.

“Well, it certainly is a theory – but a very strange one,” she answered, her eyes fixed thoughtfully away to the distant horizon. “But what you have told me is so extraordinary. Ella is engaged to be married in a month. To whom? You have not told me that.”

I was silent for a moment, wondering whether I should tell her. So complete were the confidences now between us that I saw I need conceal nothing from her. We entertained a mutual sympathy for each other – I broken and despairing, and she a woman with the mark of fate upon her countenance.

“She is to marry Gordon-Wright,” I said in a low, hard voice.

“Gordon-Wright!” she gasped, drawing back and staring at me open-mouthed. “Ella to marry that man! Impossible!”

“The fellow is compelling her to become his wife. He holds her in his power by some mysterious bond which she fears to break. She is in terror of him. Ella – my own Ella – is that man’s victim.”

“But – but you mustn’t allow this, Mr Leaf!” she cried quickly, and from the anxious expression in her countenance I saw that my announcement had struck her a-heap in amazement. “Ella must never marry him!” she added. “But are you sure of this – are you quite sure?”

“She had admitted it to me with her own lips.”

“Then she must be warned – she cannot know.”

“Know what?”

“Know the facts that are known to me. She is in ignorance, or she would never consent to become that man’s wife!”

“She has been entrapped. She admitted as much.” My companion made no answer. Her brows were knit in thought. What I had revealed to her was both unexpected and puzzling. She evidently knew Gordon-Wright’s true character, though it was hardly likely she would admit it to me.

Yet I wondered, as I had lately very often wondered, whether she were actually in ignorance of her father’s true profession.

“If she has been entrapped, Mr Leaf,” she said slowly, “then she must find a way in which to extricate herself. We must never allow her to become that man’s wife.”

“He is your father’s friend, and yet you hold him in little esteem?” I remarked.

“What I know is my own affair,” was her hard response. “It is sufficient for us to say that Ella is yours, and must be yours.”

“Ah! yes,” I sighed in despair, “if only she could be. Yet I fear that it is impossible. This fellow for some mysterious reason holds her future in his hands. She refuses to reveal anything to me, except that to break away from him is impossible. Indeed, the real reason of her flying visit to you at Studland was to consult him. She knew he was visiting there, and slipped away from her father in order to call upon you.”

“But we had no idea that they were acquainted,” Lucie declared.

“After she had gone to bed your father and Gordon-Wright remained up, talking, she crept back downstairs, I believe, and overheard their conversation.”

“She did!” she gasped, her cheeks going pale. “She heard what they said! Are you quite sure of this?”

“Yes.”

“Then – then she really came to spy upon Gordon-Wright – to spy upon us indeed!”

“Not with any sinister motive,” I hastened to assure her. “She is evidently endeavouring to discover something concerning this man who holds her so utterly powerless in his hands. It is but natural, is it not? It is only what you or I would do in similar circumstances.”

My companion’s face had changed. She was pale and anxious, eager to learn all that I had ascertained.

“She told you this – how she had overheard my father talking to him?”

“No, Gordon-Wright himself charged her with eaves-dropping – and she admitted it.”

“Ah! Then if this be true, Mr Leaf, she had better marry him.”

“Marry him!” I cried. “Why?”

“Because I have a suspicion that she knows something concerning my father. What it is sorely puzzles me.”

“I – I don’t quite understand you,” I said.

“Well – I thought I had spoken plainly enough,” she answered. “You have told me that she admitted to him that she overheard his conversation with my father.”

“Well, and what if she did?” I asked. “Was the consultation between your father and his friend of such a secret nature?”

She hesitated a moment, then lifting her eyes to mine, said: —

“I believe it was.”

“You believe,” I echoed. “You must know, if you are prepared to sacrifice Ella to that man!”

“He probably is in possession of some secret of hers,” she remarked slowly.

“And she on her part, it appears, is in possession of some secret of his.”

“And of my father’s.”

“What is it she knows?” I asked. “Come, give me some hint of it,” I urged. “A moment ago you were my friend, prepared to assist poor Ella to escape – yet now you declare that they must marry.”

“Yes,” was her hard response. “I did not know that she had acted the spy in my father’s house – that she was in love with Gordon-Wright and had come to see him while he was under our roof.”

“She’s not in love with him,” I protested. “She denies it. Unfortunately she is his victim.”

“She deceived you once, remember. Why do you still trust her?”

“Her deception was one for self-sacrifice – to save her father.”

“And my refusal to assist you in saving her from Gordon-Wright is from the same motive.”

“To save your father?”

“How do I know? I tell you I am puzzled.”

“Then the secret is perhaps a guilty one?” I said seriously.

“She must marry this man,” was all her response.

“And this from you, Miss Miller – you, who have always posed as her friend!” I exclaimed reproachfully, for her change of manner had utterly confounded me. I had relied upon her as my friend.

“I am certainly not her enemy,” she hastened to assert. “To see her the wife of Gordon-Wright is my very last desire. Yet it is unfortunately imperative for – ” and she stopped short, without concluding her sentence.

“For what?”

“For – well – for my peace of mind,” she said, though I was sure that she had intended saying something else.

“You have already told me that this fellow is unfitted to be her husband,” I exclaimed. “Surely you, her oldest friend, will never allow her to commit this fatal error – to wreck her own happiness and mine, without lifting a finger to save her. Need I repeat to you what I told you at the riverside at Studland, with what a fierce passion I adore her, how that she is mine – my very life?”

“I know,” my companion said, in a voice slightly more sympathetic. “I admit that she ought to marry you – that she is yours in heart. Yet in her secret engagement to Gordon-Wright there is a mystery which makes me suspicious.”

“Suspicious of what?”

She sighed, and moving forward rested her hands upon the balcony, gazing again towards the fiery sunset.

“Well – to put it plainly – that she is deceiving both of us.”

“Deceiving us! In what way?”

“Ah! that is what we have not yet discovered,” replied the girl. “Think of her ingenuity in coming to our house in order to see that man in secret, of how cleverly she made us believe that they were strangers – of her listening to my father’s words when he spoke with Gordon-Wright! All this proves to me that she is working with some mysterious end.”

“She has been endeavouring to effect her emancipation from that scoundrel,” I protested hotly. “She has been trying to break away from him, but in vain. Her motive, Miss Miller, is not an evil one as regards either your father or yourself, you may rest assured. She only desires freedom – freedom to live and to love, the freedom that you, if you will, can assist her to obtain.”

“I – ” she cried. “How can I?”

“You know who this fellow Gordon-Wright really is. If you will, you can save her.”

“I can’t. That’s just where the difficulty lies.”

“Then if you will not, I will!” I cried, angry at her sudden withdrawal after all the sympathy I had shown her, and goaded by thoughts of my love’s martyrdom. “Fortunately I happen to know that Gordon-Wright alias Lieutenant Shacklock is wanted by the police of half a dozen different countries, as well as certain of his associates, and a word from me will effect his arrest.” She started, and her face went ashen pale. She saw that I knew the truth, and in an instant held me in dread.

“You – ” she gasped. “You would do this —you?”