He walked to the fireplace and turned and stood in the middle of the rug, looking at her as if she was a serpent he had never suspected he was harbouring in his bosom.
“How old are you?” he demanded icily. “N-nineteen,” she answered.
“And I suppose you think that nineteen years experience of life gives you the right to talk to me as if you were thirty-nine?”
“I haven’t had any experience of life, but I—I . . .” Her throat went dry, and her voice trailed away. If only she could tell him about the night when she had discovered Heather in Peter Hurst’s arms in the library—at a time when she was still obviously intending to go through with the wedding, for purely mercenary reasons — but she knew that she couldn’t do that. Not even to support the strength of her own arguments, and make it seem less appalling that she was airing her opinions at all, could she do him further hurt, if that was possible.
“You what?” with almost brutal sarcasm.
“I felt doubtful about Heather from the beginning,” rather feebly.
“You mean you disliked her?”
“No, I ------ ”
“You disliked her and she disliked you, because she probably realized—as I never did—that in spite of all I’ve done for you you were an unnatural little hypocrite who wouldn’t yield an inch.”
“But that’s not fair!” she gasped, taken completely aback. “I never showed my dislike! ”
“Oh, yes, you did,” with harsh grimness. “And you can’t blame Heather if she resented it! She was prepared to accept you because you were my ward— be nice to you for my sake—but I realize now that you made it impossible for her to be that. She warned me about you—that you were the type to get the bit between your teeth and turn out to be ungrateful. But I wouldn’t listen. I was constantly taking up the cudgels on your behalf, and because I did------ ”
“Because you did you lose Heather? Is that what you think?” Rose asked, with sudden, extraordinary calmness.
Sir Laurence had the grace to look faintly ashamed of himself—even doubtful and unsure of himself. And then, as he saw her large, extraordinarily clear green eyes watching him as if there was something about him that hypnotized her, he answered in a hard tone:
“There’s no doubt about it, you complicated matters! After all, Heather isn’t much older than you are, and I suppose I hadn’t actually the right to expect her to look upon you as a kind of daughter. Naturally, she didn’t like the idea of my having a ward at all.”
“Then in that case, I—I’m sorry for having brought you so much unhappiness! if I’d known,” in a strangled voice, “that I, and I alone, was going to be the cause of ruining everything for you, I’d never have come back to England at all! I told you I didn’t want you to have to go on being responsible for me, and now I—I’ll go away at once. . .”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” he said shortly, turning and staring at the logs that were smouldering on the wide hearth, for the October evening was chill. “I’m going away—right away!—and it needn’t matter to anyone where I’m going! But you’ll stay here with the housekeeper to look after you until you’ve made some plans, and your allowance will be paid to you regularly through my solicitors. Whatever you decide to do that allowance will continue, and when I get back—if you still feel that you want some sort of a career . . .”
“I don’t want a career, and I don’t want your money,” she answered numbly. “But I’d like to go to bed now if I may.”
“Of course.” He turned, and all at once his voice was more gentle. “Rose, don’t take to heart any of the things I’ve been saying! I’m—” he made a hopeless little gesture with his beautiful long-fingered hands— “I’m not quite myself, I suppose.”
But sympathy for him seemed to have become frozen in her heart. She only felt that she wanted to get away from him—somewhere where she could stay away:
“Please,” she repeated, “if you’ve no more to say I’d like to go upstairs. . . .”
“I won’t keep you, child.” He suddenly held out his hand to her. “I shall be gone in the morning, Rose. Let’s part friends.”
But as she put hers into it her finger-tips struck him as cold as ice. There was a blind, hurt look in her eyes which he remembered for a long time afterwards.
“Good-bye,” she whispered. “And thank you for all you’ve—done for me!”
And then she fled from the room.
CHAPTER VI
Six months later, in the corridor of an express train which was carrying her to Rome, Rose was standing looking out of the window and enjoying the flying scenery when a young man emerged from a compartment behind her and stood lighting a cigarette and regarding her with interest.
Rose was not really aware of him, although she had heard the compartment door open and close. She was thinking how very fortunate—quite singularly fortunate—she was, to be on her way to the Eternal City, and a first visit to Italy after spending several weeks in Austria at a winter sports centre. And before that it had been Christmas in Northern Ireland with friends of Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett, and before that some extraordinarily pleasant and peaceful weeks at Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett’s flat in London.
Rose was already sincerely attached to Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett, and there were occasions when she was quite sure she would end up by becoming extremely devoted to her. If one overlooked her slight eccentricities, her assumed cynicism—for at heart, Rose had discovered, she was an incurable romantic and extremely sentimental, hence the false curls and the clinging to girlish fripperies and lavish displays of jewellery—she was unusually kind and considerate, and very easy to get on with. While Rose was standing in the corridor, having expressed a desire to stretch her legs, she was dozing in their compartment after rather a heavy lunch, and occasional snores finding their way out into the corridor caused the girl to smile suddenly, and to turn and make certain that the compartment door was securely fastened so that others might not hear the slightly discordant noises above the rattle of the train wheels.
It was then that she discovered the young man behind her, and flushed because he was unmistakably engrossed with her appearance.
“The lady with whom you travel is enjoying a siesta,” he remarked, carrying his freshly-lighted cigarette to his lips and studying her over the glowing tip of it out of a pair of extraordinarily lustrous and quite remarkably handsome dark eyes. He was, she thought—feeling oddly startled by his nearness—the handsomest young man she had ever seen in her life, with an olive skin and amazingly long eyelashes and a graceful, slender build. She remembered catching a glimpse of him when he boarded the train at Verona that morning with an older man, and she had actually looked for him in the restaurant car at breakfast, although she wasn’t quite certain why.
“Y-yes,” she found herself stammering in answer. Then all at once she smiled naturally. “I’m afraid it’s rather obvious, isn’t it?”
The young man smiled back, quickly, flashingly. He had the whitest teeth and they were almost too faultlessly even.
“She is your duenna?” he inquired.
Rose shook her head.
“Oh, no.” She wasn’t quite certain how to describe Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett, since the old lady herself had forbidden her to proclaim to the world that she was her employer. And since she paid her a very generous salary for doing practically nothing, she certainly was an employer, although an extremely unusual one. “She is a—very dear friend,” she concluded.
“Since you say so, signorina, I will accept it as nothing less than the truth, and a recommendation to get to know your very dear friend.”
His smiling eyes were taking in the lovely golden tan she had acquired during recent weeks in the mountains, and the way her carnation flush mounted beneath it. The splendour of her red curls had captivated him the instant he caught his first glimpse of her, and those hazel-green eyes were surprisingly shy for a young woman whose appearance was both soignee and sophisticated. He was not to know, of course, that the latter
was due to Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett’s insistence, before they left London, on spending a great deal of money on her latest diversion; but he was able to recognize the cut of expensive clothes, and grooming that was the result of a good deal of expenditure also.
“As a matter of fact,” he admitted, as a slightly cool look overspread Rose’s face, “my uncle, who is with me, is certain that he has seen your friend before.”
“Oh!” Rose exclaimed..
“In fact, he’s so certain that he is most anxious to recall himself to her memory.”
Rose’s delicate eyebrows arched.
“Then why doesn’t he do so?”
“Because I promised to make certainty doubly certain by speaking to you on the subject first!” His smile this time was tinged with apology because he realized that he was inviting a rebuff himself; but there was something about that smile, and the delightful deference in his voice, which prevented Rose from freezing him with a glance. Instead, when he threw his half-smoked cigarette out of the window, and then produced a gold case with some sort of a monogram engraved on it, and offered it to her, she accepted—a thing she would have declined to do six months before.
“Your—uncle?” she echoed, as he applied a gold lighter to the end of her cigarette.
“Prince Paul de Lippi. I am Camillo de Lippi.” He introduced himself with an air of quiet grace, and apologized for not having done so immediately with even more courtly charm and correctness. “But I was a little diffident in approaching you, signorina, although the moment I caught sight of you on the platform this morning I knew that I had to know you,” looking at her with somewhat disconcerting directness. “That is why it struck me as very fortunate that my uncle is so certain he and your friend are acquainted.”
“But I don’t think my friend is at all certain she is acquainted with your uncle,” Rose murmured, a little awkwardly.
“And the name of your friend?”
“Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett.”
“Ah! Then it is so!” He sounded vastly relieved. “Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett is the sister of the Marchesa de Cantonelli, and the two ladies are so much alike that one could pass easily for the other. My uncle has known the Marchesa for many years, but your Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett he has not met for quite a long while. Therefore you will understand that he could not be absolutely sure he was not making a mistake.”
“Yes,” Rose agreed, “I do see that.”
“And,” with unmistakable eagerness, “may I take it that you are on your way to stay with the Marchesa in Rome?”
“Well, no,” Rose replied to this, “I’m afraid we aren’t. At least—the Marchesa is in America at the moment, receiving treatment for a rheumatic condition, but if she returns before we leave we shall probably visit her. And, as a matter of fact, she has offered her villa to Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett if she cares to stay in it.”
“But for a while at least you will be staying in a hotel?”
Rose nodded.
“Then that is almost as good!” The dark eyes positively sparkled. “And you will permit me to see something of you—?”
A sudden tapping on the glass window of the compartment behind her, indicating that Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett was awake, saved Rose the necessity for committing herself one way or the other, and the young man hastened away to return with his
uncle, Prince Paul de Lippi. Although a good many years older than his nephew, the prince had as much silken-voiced charm as Camillo, and in spite of the fact that there were touches of pure white in his night-dark hair at the temples, he was almost as startlingly handsome. And the poise and polish his extra years had bestowed on him commended him very favourably to Rose.
Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett, too, seemed delighted to renew an acquaintance that she had all but forgotten, and when they arrived in Rome there was no question of taking a taxi to their hotel. A beautiful Italian car, pale ivory and black, glittering with chromium fittings, in the charge of a liveried chauffeur, awaited the de Lippi uncle and nephew, and Rose found herself sharing the back seat with her employer and Camillo, while Prince Paul occupied the seat beside the driver in front.
The journey to the hotel seemed to pass in a flash—although they climbed one of the Seven Hills of Rome while it lasted—and Rose was a little disappointed because her first impressions of the Eternal City were a little confused. Normally she would have looked about her eagerly, following their arrival in the extremely modern and impressive great railway station. But with Camillo’s dark, absorbed eyes on her face she felt constrained to keep her enthusiasm in check, at any rate until she was free to indulge it without every excited turn of her red head being so closely observed.
Nevertheless, she was aware of warm spring sunshine, turning a little red because the afternoon was near its close, falling across magnificent streets and squares, and fountains sparkling like diamonds in the arrestingly beautiful light. There seemed to be domes and cupolas and arches soaring into the unclouded blue of the sky on all sides of her, and just before the car decanted them outside the hotel Camillo pointed out to her the dome of St. Peter’s, rising out of the thirteen-acre Vatican city which, she was to discover later, was an independent state, without any visible barriers to exclude the curious. In fact—and this, too, she was to discover later— there were three Romes: Ancient, Modern and Papal, and all three had an overwhelming amount to offer to someone who had never seen anything like them before.
Just before the car drove off again, and their luggage was carried into the hotel, Camillo bent over Rose’s hand and saluted it in a fashion which for an instant surprised her so much that she almost instinctively pulled her hand away. And then, when he looked into her eyes in the dying light and murmured: “I shall see you soon again, signorina,” she felt herself blushing absurdly, and was conscious of a curious sensation on the backs of her fingers where a handsome pair of masculine lips had pressed themselves for a moment, and left, as it were, an imprint.
She was not at all sure whether she approved of the sensation or not.
Inside the hotel, with its lights and its flowers and its atmosphere of almost oppressive luxury, Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett pulled off her hat before ever the lift had carried them to the suite reserved for them—for somehow such matters as currency never seemed to cause any serious inconvenience to the wealthy widow, who had financial interests, Rose surmised, in a good many countries—and announced that now they had arrived in Rome she was going to rest. She rang the bell for tea to be brought to them and a chambermaid to unpack their things, and then sank down in a comfortable chair and looked at Rose with a twinkle of amusement in her eyes.
“But you, my dear, will not be dull,” she said. “Not unless that young man with the extraordinary eyelashes is unlike every member of his family I’ve ever known or heard of!”
“What do you mean?” Rose inquired, feeling oddly embarrassed as she poured out the tea. “Have they some sort of a peculiarity as a family?”
“Not at all, my dear,” with a definitely amused smile. “But they do have what is known as an ‘eye’ for a pretty face—the male members, of often told you. And Camillo recognized that immediately. He’ll see to it that you get to know Rome very well indeed!”
But when Rose finally went to her own room to change for the evening it was not of Camillo de Lippi she was thinking as she stood before her handsomely-curtained window and looked out at a crescent moon climbing into a tender sea of blue above the misty towers of Rome. She was thinking of another man of whom she had heard nothing at all in the past six months, and wondering in which corner of the globe he was wandering at that moment, and whether the same crescent moon was by any chance shining down on him.
Mrs. Wilson-Plunkett’s statement that Rose would not be allowed to be dull, although she herself proposed to rest for a while after their journey from Austria, was proved to be entirely correct in the next few days. Camillo de Lippi gave Rose twenty-four hours to get her bearings, as it were, and then descended on her and the hotel in a rakish-looking
bright blue sports type of car, and offered to show her anything and everything that she wished to see.
In his company Rose made the acquaintance of the Colosseum, and sat in the forum with a guidebook on her knees and tried to re-create for herself the wonders of that world of Ancient Rome which are now no more than pages of passionate history. She visited St. Peter’s and the gorgeous Sistine Chapel, which took away her breath with its lasting testimonials to the brilliance of Raphael and Michelangelo. Her eyes were dazzled by the splendour of the Papal Guard, and enchanted by the doves fluttering down from the shadows of the mighty church to search for crumbs between the feet of the passers-by, while the sunlight fell with a kind of white-hot brilliance, although it was only spring. She visited each of the fountains in turn—because for some reason they fascinated her more than anything else in Rome—and dropped a coin into the famous Fountain de Trevi, which would ensure for her, Camillo assured her, a return to Rome.
“To fail to drop a coin into the Fountain de Trevi is as good as an admission that you do not wish to return to Rome,” he added as he watched her bending eagerly above the marble basin and studying the coins that already lay there in the crystal-clear water.
“Then I must certainly drop one in,” she replied, smiling up at him, “because I’m in love with it already!”
“Make a wish,” he said suddenly as she extracted a lira from her purse and poised it between thumb and finger.
Rose looked surprised.
“If I do, is it likely to come true?”
“Of course—just as you will be certain to return to Rome!”
So she closed her eyes and wished and dropped her coin into the marble basin, and when she opened her eyes again Camillo was smiling at her.
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