And then, taking out his pencil, with Sefton’s aid he jotted down various stations from which they could despatch their telegrams, and where also they could receive them should need arise.
Lord Culvers allowed himself to be persuaded. To impede the young men at such a time would have been sheer folly; and it was impossible to disguise even from himself the fact that in his present depressed and nervous condition, he could be nothing but an impediment to them.
“And there is something to be done in Paris,” pursued Clive, anxious once more to rouse Lord Culvers from his depression by turning his attention to the practical details of the “situation.” “The Prefect of Police, not a doubt, must be told of the turn affairs have taken; he may have suggestions to make that may be of value to us—you can telegraph them to us, you know, at one of the stations we have named.”
Sefton, at any rate, had a suggestion to make to Clive as he strapped together his hand-portmanteau, and he made it in a voice so low that it did not reach Lord Culvers’s ear. It was:
“Whatever you do or don’t take with you, don’t forget your revolver. Mine is in my breast-pocket.”
As the train by which Clive and Sefton started on the first stage of their journey was about to move from the platform, two persons, hurriedly passing through the barrier, swung themselves into a third-class compartment. One of these two was a man of about five-and-twenty, a handsome, reckless, insolent looking young fellow, wearing a slouch hat and a gay necktie; the other was a black-eyed, olive-skinned boy, with a barrel-organ and a monkey.
XIX
“Mother, it is done—Juliet will be happy. Oh, that I could lie down to rest beside you now!”
These were the words with which Ida laid her bridal flowers on her mother’s grave.
Then bowing her head on a corner of the marble monument, her tears fell thick and fast upon the white slab on which it rested.
The sacrifice she had planned was finished; her nerves had been as steel and her heart as stone till her self-imposed obligation had been fulfilled to its uttermost letter. Now the inevitable reaction was setting in, and she was beginning to count the cost of what she had done.
And the cost, when counted, could be summed up in a sentence—the happiness of her life to its very last hour.
The renunciation of Clive and his love had been bitter enough; but even that to her fancy now counted as nothing beside the terrible bondage into which she had voluntarily entered by becoming the wife of a man for whom she had neither liking nor respect.
When she had played the part of a scornful, cold-hearted maiden, and had sent Clive from her side to pay court to Juliet, and also, later on, when, in order to put Juliet’s happiness beyond a doubt, she had consented to marry Sefton, she had said to herself:
“What does anything in life matter, so long as those two are happy!”
Now, however, as she faced the fact that nothing but death could release her from the fealty which she had just vowed to a man whom she thoroughly despised, her heart failed her, and she stood appalled at the thought of the dreary years that stretched before her—a “life of night with never a hope of dawn.”
It was no wonder, with thoughts such as these, that her tears should fall thick and fast; nor that she should moan to the mother who had been laid to rest so long ago: “Would that I were lying beside you now!”
The sunshine gleamed whitely on the many tombstones. A light breeze, fresh with the salt of the sea, fanned the hillside, and ruffled the long grasses amid which she stood. A lark rose from the turf, and went soaring upwards into the “living blue,” high and higher, till it became literally a “sightless song.” A woman rose slowly from a gravestone on which she was seated a few yards distant, and, with a slow, hesitating tread, drew near the sorrowing girl.
Ida had been so absorbed in her own sad thoughts as she had made her way towards her mother’s grave, that she had not noticed a group of three persons seated among the tombstones, who had started, and then exchanged glances one with the other at her approach.
A picturesque group these three made among the white tombstones and tall, flowering grasses. The woman, who was about forty-five years of age, was dark-skinned and handsome, with the beauty of South Italy; she was dressed in a pretty peasant’s costume—a dark-blue skirt with broad orange border, and wore on her head a white panni-cloth. Beside her, lounging on the grass, was a fine-featured, insolent-looking young man, with gay necktie, and slouch hat tilted over his eyes to keep out the dazzling sunshine. A little in the rear of these two, a black-eyed, olive-skinned boy stood resting his barrel-organ against some iron railings that enclosed a monument, and on his organ was perched a monkey, gravely munching a green apple.
These three persons were Francesca Xardez, Giorno her eldest son, and Pippo her youngest.
Pippo had leaned forward, touched his mother’s shoulder, and whispered in her ear as Ida approached, and passed within a few yards of them. Upon which Francesca had started, and exclaimed, “O gran cielo! Non è possibile!” and then she had risen to her feet, and with slow, hesitating steps, had made her way towards the young lady.
Ida did not turn her head until she heard a deep voice saying, at her elbow, in Italian:
“This is fate! Signora, can you understand me?”
Ida understood her easily enough. Her recent frequent visits to Italy to study art had familiarised her with the Italian language.
She naturally enough concluded that the woman was begging, and, wishing to keep her own sad solitude unbroken, took out her purse at once, and offered her some
