The Lure of the Mask by Harold MacGrath (ereader for comics .TXT) 📕

immediate arrest. I am sorry that I have tangled you up in this. I release you all from any promise," proudly.

"If you talk like that-" began O'Mally.

"Sh!" Smith elbowed him sharply in the small ribs.

"It's all right, Smith. No one can force me into a scrape of this sort; but when she speaks like that! Signorina, or I should say, Miss Grosvenor, you have the most beautiful voice in the world. Some day, and we are all out of jail, I expect to hear you in the balcony scene with some famous tenore robusto as Romeo. You will be getting three thousand a week. You needn't bother about the telegram; but I'll have to have a new suit," touching the frayed cuffs of his coat. "Now, if we go to jail, how'll we get out?"

"Trust me!" La Signorina had recovered her gaiety.

"Well," said Smith, "suppose we go and break the news to Worth?"

* * * * *

Hillard refused to canter, so the two walked their horses all the way into Florence. Merrihew spoke but seldom and Hillard not at all. By now the sun had gone down, and deep purple clouds swarmed across the blue face of heaven, forecasting a storm.... It was not dishonorable for him to love this woman, but it was not honorable for her to listen. Sonia Hilda Grosvenor; that solved no corner of the puzzle.

"To-morrow," said Merrihew, "I'm going to look up the jail and engage rooms ahead. It might be crowded."

Hillard raised his face and let a few drops of cooling rain patter on his cheeks. "I love her, I love her!" he murmured.


CHAPTER XXIII

THE DÉNOUEMENT


The morning sun poured over the hills, throwing huge shadows in the gorge below. The stream, swollen by the heavy rains of the past night, foamed and snarled along its ragged bed. The air was fresh and cool, and the stately cypresses took on a deeper shade of green. Lizards scampered over the damp stones about the porter's lodge or sought the patches of golden sunshine, and insects busied themselves with the daily harvest. O'Mally sniffed. As the wind veered intermittently there came to him the perfume of the locust trees, now in full bloom, the flowers of which resembled miniature cascades hanging in mid-air. Pietro rocked, his legs crossed, his face blurred in the drifting tobacco smoke.

"No more tourists, Pietro."

"No." Pietro sighed, a ruminating light in his faded eyes.

"Did you ever see La Signorina before? Do you know anything about her?"

"Never! No!" answered Pietro, with the perfect candor of an accomplished liar.

"Have you ever seen her Highness?"

"When she so," indicating a height about two feet from the ground.

"You said that you had never seen her."

"Meestake."

"How old would she be?"

Pietro wrinkled his brow, "Oh, quaranta, cinquanta; fifty-forty. Who knows?"

"Fifty! How old are you?" suspiciously.

"Settanta; seventy."

"Well, you look it. But why hasn't the princess ever been here, when it's so beautiful?"

"Woman."

"What woman?"

"La Principessa. Many villas, much money."

O'Mally kicked at one of the lizards. "I thought she might be young."

"No. But La Signorina-bah! they ar-r-r-rest her. Patienza!"

"You think so?"

"Wait."

"But her friend the princess will come to her assistance."

Pietro laughed scornfully, which showed that he had some doubts.

"But you won't betray her?"

"Never!" puffing quickly.

"It's a bad business," admitted O'Mally. This old rascal of a gardener was as hard to pump as a frozen well.

Pietro agreed that it was a bad business. "Eenspector, he come to-day, domani-to-morrow. He come nex' day; watch, watch!" Pietro elevated his shoulders slowly and dropped them sharply. "All ar-r-r-rest!"

"You think so?"

"Si."

"But you wouldn't betray her for money, Pietro?"

"No!" energetically.

Pietro might be loyal; still, O'Mally had some shadow of doubt.

"La Signorina is very beautiful," irrelevantly. "Ah!" with a gesture toward the heavens. "And if she isn't a princess, she ought to be one," slyly.

"Zitto! She come!" Pietro got up with alacrity, pocketing his pipe, careful that the bowl was right side up.

She was as daintily fresh in her pink frock as a spring tulip; a frock, thought O'Mally, that would have passed successfully in any ball-room. She was as beautiful as the moon, and to this bit of Persian O'Mally added, conscious of a deep intake of breath, the stars and the farther worlds and the roses close at hand. Her eyes were shining, but her color was thin. O'Mally, for all his buffoonery, was a keen one to read a face. She was highly strung. Where would they all land finally?

"I have been looking for you, Mr. O'Mally," she said.

"At your Highness' command!"

Pietro, hearing this title, looked from one to the other suspiciously.

"I have just received a telegram from her Highness."

An expression of relief flitted over Pietro's withered countenance.

"It wasn't necessary," said O'Mally gallantly.

"But I wish you to read it. I know that you will cease to dream of dungeons and shackles." There was a bit of a laugh in her voice. It was reassuring.

"All right." O'Mally accepted the yellow sheet which the government folds and pastes economically. There were fifty words or more. "I can make out a word or two," he said; "it's in Italian. Will you read it for me?"

"I forgot," apologetically.

Briefly, La Principessa di Monte Bianca gave Sonia Hilda Grosvenor full authority to act as her proxy in giving the ball; that in case of any difficulty with the civil authorities to wire her at once and she would come. As for the invitation, she knew absolutely nothing about it.

This last statement rather staggered the erstwhile concierge. If the princess hadn't issued the invitation, who the deuce had? "This leaves me confused, but it improves the scenery a whole lot. But who, then, has done this thing?"

"To solve that we must look nearer home."

"Have you any idea who did it?" he inquired anxiously.

"No."

"Have you another invitation?"

"I tore up the only one."

"That's too bad. A stationer's imprint might have helped us."

"I was angry and did not think. To-morrow a dozen temporary servants will be added to the household. We shall be very busy."

"Before and after," said O'Mally dryly. He wondered what she on her part had telegraphed the real princess. It was all very mystifying.

"Listen!" she said.

"Horses," declared O'Mally.

"Two," said Pietro, with a hand to his ear.

La Signorina's color deepened.

"Our friends," laughed O'Mally; "come up to see if we are still out of jail."

The dreamy, pleasurable days at the Villa Ariadne were no more. The spirit of suspicion, of unrest, of doubt now stalked abroad, peering from veiled eyes, hovering on lips. And there was a coming and going of menials, a to-and-froing of extra gardeners and carpenters, and the sound of many hammers. The ball-room and the dining-room were opened and aired, the beautiful floors polished, and the dust and cobwebs of twenty years were vanquished.

In Florence there was a deal of excitement over the coming affair, for the Villa Ariadne had once been the scene of many a splendid entertainment. Men chatted about it in their cafés and the women chattered about it in their boudoirs. And there was here and there a mysterious smile, a knowing look, a shrug. There had always been a mystery regarding the Principessa di Monte Bianca; many doubted her actual existence. But the prince was known all over Europe as a handsome spendthrift. And the fact that at this precise moment he was quartered with the eighth corps in Florence added largely to the zest of speculation. Oh, the nobility and the military, which are one and the same thing, would be present at the ball; they were altogether too inquisitive to decline.

Daily the inspector of seals made his solemn round, poking into the forbidden chambers, into the lofts, into the cellars. He scrutinized every chest and closet with all the provocative slowness of a physiologist viewing under the microscope the corpuscles of some unhappy frog. The information he had received from Rome had evidently quieted his larger doubts; but these people, from the princess down to the impossible concierge, were a new species to him, well worth watching. An American princess; this accounted for much. He had even looked up the two Americans who rode up from Florence every day; but he found that they were outside the pale of his suspicions; one of them was a millionaire, known to the Italian ambassador in the United States; so he dismissed them as negligible quantities. He had some pretty conflicts with Pietro; but Pietro was also a Tuscan, which explains why the inspector never obtained any usable information from this quarter.

Hillard and Merrihew eyed these noisy preparations broodingly. To the one it was a damper to his rosal romance; to the other it was the beginning of the end: this woman, so brilliant, so charming, so lovely and human, could never be his. Well, indeed, he understood now why Mrs. Sandford had warned him; he understood now what the great mistake was. Had fate sent her under his window only for this? Bitterness charged his heart and often passed his lips. And this other man, who, what, and where was he all this time?

He was always at her heels now, saving her a care here, doing a service there, but speaking no more of his love. She understood and was grateful. Once she plucked a young rose and gave it to him, and he was sure that her hand touched his with pity, though she would not meet his eyes. And so Merrihew found but little difficulty in picking up the thread of his romance.

As for O'Mally, he spent most of his leisure studying time-tables.

At four o'clock on the afternoon of the day before the ball, now that the noise had subsided and the servants were in their quarters, La Signorina went into the gardens alone. An hour earlier she had seen Hillard mount and ride away, the last time but once. There seemed to bear down upon her that oppression which one experiences in a nightmare, of being able to fly so high, to run madly and yet to move slowly, always pursued by terror. Strive as she would, she could not throw off this sense. After all, it was a nightmare, from the day she landed in New York up to this very moment. But how to wake? Verily, she was mad. Would any sane person do what she had done and was yet about to do? She might have lived quietly and peacefully till the end of her days. But no! And all her vows were like dried reeds in a tempest, broken and beaten. Even now there was a single avenue of escape, but she knew that she could not profit by it and leave these unfortunate derelicts to shift for themselves. It was not fair that they should be made to suffer for her mad caprices. She must play it out boldly to the final line, come evil or not.... Love! She laughed brokenly and struck her hands in suppressed fury. A fitting climax, this!