you.”
“It was very kind of him,” was the young man’s laughing reply. “I merely went as interpreter to Mr Morgan-Mason, who had business at your Ministry of War.”
Then, as they halted beneath the trees at the water’s edge, where there was a cool, refreshing breeze, she exclaimed suddenly, with a slight sigh, “Ah, how I wish we always lived in dear old England! I always look back upon my schooldays by the sea as the happiest in all my life; but now,” – and she drew a long breath again. “It is so different in Italy.”
Yes. She was sad, he recognised – very sad. But why? Her young heart seemed oppressed by some hidden grief. He saw it in her fine dark eyes at the moments when she was serious. Time after time, as he spoke to her and she answered, he recognised that upon her mind rested some heavy burden which oppressed and crushed her. Her resolute yet gentle spirit, her simple, serious, domestic turn of mind distinguished her from all the other women of his acquaintance. Her reveries, her simplicity, her melancholy, her sensibility, her fortitude, her perfectly feminine bearing, even though that of a cosmopolitan, were the characteristics of a womanly woman – a woman who would struggle unsubdued against the strangest vicissitudes of fortune, meeting with unshaken constancy reverses and disasters such as would break the most masculine spirit.
George Macbean recognised all this, and more. He saw that she was at heart a thoroughly English girl, fond of tennis, hockey, and a country life, who had been transplanted into an artificial world of glare and glitter, of empty etiquette and false friendships, and yet who, at the same time, seemed to be held transfixed by some secret upon her conscience.
What was it? he wondered. Was he, after all, mistaken?
The longer he remained in her company, the more mystified did he become. He knew too well the character of Jules Dubard; he knew that she was marked down a victim, and he intended to stand as her friend – her champion if need be – even at peril to himself.
As she leaned over the old wooden rail at the river brink, gazing across the calm, unruffled waters, she chatted with gay vivacity about their mutual friends in the neighbourhood, and related her failure at a tennis tournament held on the previous day by a colonel’s wife on the other side of Rugby.
“I suppose you often see Count Dubard in Rome,” he said at last, with some attempt at indifference. “He is in Italy a great deal nowadays, I have heard.”
“He was in Rome this winter,” she answered. “He often came to my mother’s receptions.”
“He has a very wide circle of acquaintances, has he not?”
“Yes, mostly military men. He seems to know half of the officers in Rome. I thought I knew a good many, for crowds come to us every Thursday, but he knows far more.”
“And of course your father sends him cards for the official receptions at the Ministry of War?”
“Certainly – why?” she asked, glancing quickly at her companion with some surprise.
“Oh, nothing,” he laughed uneasily. “I was only reflecting that he must have a very pleasant time in Italy, that’s all.”
“I believe he enjoys himself,” she said. “But every foreigner who has money and is recognised by his Embassy can have a pleasant time in Rome if he likes.”
“But not every foreigner enjoys the friendship of the Minister of War,” he remarked – “nor of his daughter,” he added, with a smile.
Her cheeks flushed slightly.
“Ah!” she protested, with one of those quaint little foreign gestures. “There you are again, Mr Macbean! Teasing me because these ignorant people here say that I’m engaged to the count. It is really too bad of you! Did I not assure you the other day that it is quite untrue?”
“Forgive me!” he exclaimed, raising his panama hat, bowing as though she were an entire stranger, and yet laughing the while. “I had no intention of giving offence. Envy is permitted, however – is it not?”
“Oh, it hasn’t given me offence at all?” she laughed frankly. “You see, there’s no truth in the rumour, therefore I can afford to laugh.”
Her words struck him as very strange. They seemed to convey that if the engagement were really a fact it would cause her regret and annoyance.
“I wanted to meet Dubard so much,” he remarked in a tone of regret. “I suppose there is no chance he will return to Orton?”
“Not this summer, I think. He left us to go direct to Paris, and then I believe he goes to his estate in the Pyrenees.”
“But he came here intending to spend a week or so at Orton, did he not?”
“Yes; but he received a letter recalling him to France,” she said. “Father says he didn’t receive any letter. If he really didn’t, he surely could have left without telling us a lie.”
Macbean smiled. How little she knew of the real character of Jules Dubard, the plausible élégant who was such a prominent character at the Jockey Club and in the Bois.
“Very soon,” she added, in a tone of regret, “we shall have to return. My father is due back at the Ministry on the fourth of next month, and while he is there we shall go up to San Donato, our villa above Florence, and stay for the vintage, which, to me, is the best time in Italy in all the year.”
“Ah yes,” he sighed. “I have always heard so. Myself I love Italy – I only wish I could escape from this country with its long dismal winters and live in sunshine always.”
“You would very soon tire of it,” she assured him, looking him straight in the face with her fine eyes. “Even our bright sun gives one fever, and our blue sky becomes so monotonous that one longs for the calm of a grey English day.”
“I would like to try it for a year or two,” he declared wistfully.
“Then why don’t you?”
He was silent, and their eyes met again.
“Because I am not my own master, Miss Morini,” was his low response. “My living, such as it is, lies here in England. I am the factotum of a man who has elevated money to be his god, and I am compelled to serve him in silence and without complaint because it happens to be my lot in life.”
“A rather unhappy and uncomfortable one, I should imagine,” she remarked, suddenly growing grave.
“At times, yes,” was his brief reply. He did not wish to burden her with his own disappointments and misfortunes. She knew what was his position, a mere secretary, and that was sufficient. What hope could he ever have of daring to aspire to her hand? He might stand as her friend, but become her lover, never!
And when, a week later, he called at Orton to wish her farewell, as his vacation was at an end and he was compelled to return to his chambers in the Temple, and to that room in Mr Morgan-Mason’s flat in Queen Anne’s Mansions, he looked in vain in her eyes for some sign of genuine regret. There was none. No, she too had realised that on account of his position love was forbidden him.
“We shall meet here again, I hope, Mr Macbean – next summer,” she exclaimed, laughing airily, as she gave him her small white hand.
“I hope so,” was his fervent reply in a low, meaning voice, as their hands clasped.
And
