“It would be the simplest way of solving a difficulty; but if he were necessary to your happiness he should stay with us, Lisa. I would do anything to make you happy.”
She looked at him with a touch of sadness, and shook her head.
“You are a generous lover,” she said, “if you mean what you say; but it is all useless. You could not make me happy; and I could not make you happy. You would very soon be sorry for your sacrifice. You would regret the English lady and her million. I am content as I am—content if not happy. I have as much money as I want, and this room is fine enough for me. If you saw the hovel in which I was reared you would think me a lucky woman to have such a beautiful home. In ten years I shall have saved a fortune, and la Zia and I can go back to Venice and live like ladies on the Canal Grande; or I can go on singing if I’m not tired, and then I shall grow richer every day.”
“Lisa, Lisa, how cold and how cruel you are—cruel to a poor wretch who adores you. To me you are ice, but to Vansittart you are fire. Your face lighted, your whole being awoke to new life, at sight of him.”
Lisa shrugged her shoulders, irritated by his persistency, and provoked into candour.
“Suppose I like him and don’t like you, can I help it? God has made me so,” she said carelessly. “Ah, here is la Zia—la Zia whom you would banish,” she cried, clapping her hands as a key turned in the vestibule door.
“It looked like rain,” said la Zia, as she came in, “so Paolo and I made haste home.”
Lisa caught the boy up in her arms, and kissed him passionately. Never had she felt so glad to see him. Her active imagination had pictured herself separated forever from her son, living in an atmosphere of pomp and powdered footmen, learning to forget her fatherless boy.
He had thriven on English fare, and the mild breezes of Battersea Park, and frequent airings upon the Citizen steamers. He was a great lump of a boy, with large black eyes, and long brown hair, and his mother’s Murillo colouring. The only traces of the other parentage were in the square Saxon brow and the firm aquiline of the nose. He was a magnificent outcome of a mixed race, and a fine example of what a boy of four years old ought to be. Lisa dropped into a chair with her burden, still hugging him, but borne down by his weight.
“Santo e santissimo!” exclaimed la Zia. “You will be late at the theatre. You must take a cab, quanto che costa.”
The Venetians had a horror of cabs, which were not alone costly, but fraught with the hazard of vituperation from fiery-faced cabmen. They delighted in the penny distances of road cars and other public conveyances. To exceed the limit of a penny ride was to la Zia’s mind culpable extravagance. A cab was only to be thought of in emergencies.
“Pardon, Signor,” she said, “the pleasure of your most desired company has made my niece forget her duties.”
She bustled into the adjoining room, and returned with Lisa’s black lace hat and little merino cape. There was no chorus girl at the Apollo who dressed as shabbily as the Venetian prima donna. La Zia bundled on the hat and tied on the cape, and dismissed her niece with a kiss.
“Zinco will bring you home, as always,” she said.
The cello lived in a shabby old street hard by, and was Lisa’s nightly escort from the Apollo to Chelsea. On fine nights they walked all the way, hugging the river, and praising the Embankment, which Zinco declared to be as much finer than the Lung ’Arno, as London was in his opinion superior to Florence.
Lisa and Sefton went downstairs together, both silent. He hailed a crawling hansom a few paces from the house-door, and put her into it, without a word. When she was seated he lifted his hat, and bade her good night; and it seemed to her that there was deadly hatred in the face which had looked at her a little while ago transfigured by passionate love.
Hatred of someone; herself, perhaps; or it might be of a fancied rival. Her heart grew cold as she thought of Vansittart. Unreasoning jealousy on her account had cost one man his life, and had burdened the life of another man with inextinguishable remorse. Would Sefton, whose love expressed itself with appalling vehemence, try to injure the one man she cared for, the man for whose sake she would give her life? It would be well to warn him, perhaps. To warn him? But how? She did not even know where he lived; but she knew his sister’s house, and his sister’s servants would be able to tell her his address. She knew his real name now—Vansittart, a grandly sounding name. She repeated it to herself with a kind of rapture as the cab rattled along the King’s Road, taking her to the Apollo.
She wrote to Vansittart next day, telling him that Sefton had offered to marry her, and that she had refused him.
“He is jealous and angry about you,” she told him, in conclusion. “He fancies because I was so pleased to see you that day on the river that it is my love for you that made me refuse him, and I think he would like to kill you. His face looked like murder as he bade me goodbye—and I’m afraid it is you he wants to murder, not me. Pray be on your guard about him. He may hire someone to stab you in the street, after dark. Please don’t go out at night except in
