cried the general in surprise, speaking in French. “So you actually have the audacity to pose as a friend of His Excellency, after those very plain words I spoke in the Florence Club! You accept my friend’s invitation and dare pay court to mademoiselle! Is this not a dangerous game you are playing, my friend?”
“I conceive no danger in it – as far as I am concerned,” replied the young Frenchman, Jules Dubard, coolly. “Besides, my private affairs are surely no concern of yours! If His Excellency does me the great honour to invite me to his English home, I shall certainly accept, even at risk of incurring your displeasure,” he added, with a supercilious smile.
“You recollect what I told you?”
“Perfectly,” replied the well-dressed young count, with an air of extreme politeness, as he rearranged his cravat in the mirror. “But you appear to overlook one rather important fact.”
“And what is that, pray?” inquired the Sicilian, with an evil flash in his dark eyes.
“Exposure to His Excellency is synonymous with exposure of yourself in quite another quarter, my dear general,” replied the guest, in a meaning tone. “You cannot afford to risk that, you know. We both of us may threaten, but it is, after all, what these English call a fool’s game. Neither of us dare give each other away. So we may just as well be friends as enemies – eh?”
Chapter Three
In which Mary Reveals Certain Suspicions
Dinner, served with that same stiff stateliness that characterised everything in the Morini household, was over, and the three men had rejoined the ladies in the drawing-room.
Mary, in a pretty décolleté dinner-gown of pale pink chiffon, with a single tea-rose in her corsage, had, at Dubard’s suggestion, gone to the piano, and in a sweet contralto had sung some of those old Florentine folk-songs, or stornelli, as they are called, those weirdly mediaeval songs that are still sung by the populace in the streets of Florence to-day. Then as conclusion she ran her fingers lightly over the keys and sang —
“Fiorin Fiorello!
Di tutti i fiorellin che fioriranno,
Il fior del’ amor mio sara il piu bello?”
“Brava! Brava!” cried the young Frenchman standing by the piano, and as she raised her eyes to his, it was patent that the pair entertained a regard for each other.
“Your songs of old Florence are so charming, so different from everything else in music, mademoiselle,” he declared. “We have nothing like them in France. Our chansons are, after all, inharmonious rubbish. It is not surprising that you in Italy have a contempt for our literature, our music, and our drama, for it cannot compare with yours. We have had no poet like Dante, no composer like Verdi, no musician like Paganini – and,” he added, dropping his voice to a low whisper as he bent quickly to her ear, “no woman so fair as Mary Morini.”
She blushed, and busied herself with her music books in order to conceal her confusion. The general was chatting with her father and mother at the farther end of the long room, and therefore did not notice that swift passage of admiration on the part of Jules Dubard.
The Frenchman was a friend of the family, mainly because he had been helpful to Morini in a variety of ways, and also on account of his pleasant, easy-going manner and quiet elegance. He was from the South. The old family château – a grey, dismal place full of ghostly memories and mildewed pictures of his ancestors – stood high up in the Pyrenees above Bayonne, five miles from the Spanish frontier; yet he had always lived in Paris, and from the days when he left college on his father’s death he had led the gay, irresponsible life of the modern Parisian of means, was a member of the Jockey Club, and a well-known figure at the Café Américain and at Maxim’s.
As a young man about the French capital he gave frequent bachelor parties at his cosy flat in the Avenue Macmahon, and possessing a very wide circle of friends, he had been able to render the Italian Minister of War several confidential services.
Two years ago, while in Rome, he had received an invitation to dine one evening at His Excellency’s splendid old palace – once the residence of a Roman prince – and from that time had been on terms of intimacy with the family and one of Mary’s most ardent admirers. He spent a good deal of his time in the Eternal City, and had during the past season become a familiar figure in society.
His Excellency, quick of observation, had, however, detected Borselli’s antipathy towards the young man, even though it was so cleverly concealed. And he had wondered. As fellow-guests beneath his roof they had that evening chatted and laughed together across the dinner-table, had referred to each other by their Christian names, and had fraternised as though they were the best friends in the world. Yet those words uttered by Angelo Borselli while awaiting the ladies had been full of hidden meaning.
The Morinis were in ignorance of the truth – and Mary most of all.
Dubard was not a handsome man – for it is difficult to find a man of the weak, anaemic type of modern Parisian who can be called good-looking from an English standpoint. He was thin-featured, lantern-jawed, with a pale complexion, dark eyes, and a brown moustache. He wore his hair parted in the centre, and as an élégant was proud of his white almost waxen hands and carefully manicured finger-nails. His dress, too, often betrayed those signs of effeminacy which in Paris just now are considered the height of good form in a man. His every movement seemed studied, yet his stiff elegance was on the most approved model of the Bois and the ballroom. He played frequently at his cercle, he wore the most hideous goggles and fur coat and drove his motor daily, and he indulged in le sport in an impossible get-up, not because he liked tramping about those horrid muddy fields, but because it was the correct thing for a gentleman to do.
But his greatest success of all had, he told himself, been the attraction of Mary Morini. All through the past winter in Rome he had danced with her, flirted with her, raised his hat to her as she had driven on the Pincio, and had joined her in her mother’s box at the Constanzi. To the Quirinale he had, of course, not been bidden, but he lived in the hope of next season receiving the coveted royal command.
With Camillo Morini as his friend, everything in Italy was possible.
Yet Angelo Borselli’s presence disturbed him that evening. He knew the man who had been given the post of Under-Secretary. They had met long before he had known Morini – under circumstances that in themselves formed a strange and remarkable story – a story which he feared might one day be made public.
And then?
Bah! Why anticipate such a terrible contretemps? he asked himself. Then he bit his under lip as he glanced at his enemy standing beneath the light of the rose-shaded lamp talking with madame, and afterwards turned again to laugh and chat with mademoiselle.
“I lunched at the Junior United Service Club to-day with a friend of yours,” he was saying; for she had risen from the piano and they had gone out upon the moon-lit verandah together, where, obtaining her permission, he lit a cigarette.
“A friend of mine?”
“Captain Houghton, the British naval attaché at Rome. He is home for a month’s leave, and sent his compliments to you.”
“Oh, Freddie Houghton?” she exclaimed. “He was longing to get home all the winter, but couldn’t get leave. He’s engaged, they say, and of course he wanted to see his enchantress. He’s the best dancer in Rome.”
Then suddenly lowering his voice, he asked abruptly —
“Why
