“We will not lose sight of him. If she dies let him look out—that’s all,” Giorno was saying at the moment that Pippo touched his mother’s shoulder and warned her of Ida’s approach.
“His bride,” thought the woman. “Shall they love, shall they be happy? Ah, I will plant the seeds of strife between them, and, please the saints, they will grow!” And then she had crossed the churchyard and had accosted the young lady.
Ida had listened to the tale, saying never a word, her face growing white and whiter, her features seeming to harden as if they were being turned into stone.
Then a great wave of indignation swept over her.
This the man whom she had vowed to love and honour, to cleave to till death parted them! Impossible! If there were no other way, death should part them at once.
But there was another way. It did not for a moment occur to her to go back to her father and insist on a separation from her newly-made husband.
No, she could not see her father arranging such a separation, although easily enough she could picture him endeavouring to patch up a peace between Sefton and herself, and doing his utmost to induce them to live together as husband and wife.
Her hope of deliverance seemed to lie in another quarter. She would go at once straight to Alta Lauria to the discarded Violante, and ask her to receive as her guest one who was more unhappy in her wifehood than was the girl in her slighted maidenhood. To Violante’s presence she would summon her father to hear the girl’s story from her own lips. And Sefton likewise should be summoned, and there, face to face with the two women he had wronged, he should be made to sign a deed of separation that would guarantee to his wife her freedom to the last hour of her life.
The mere thought of her possible release from bondage set the blood dancing in her veins, and brought back the colour to her cheek.
Francesca heard, with unconcealed amazement, of the young lady’s resolve. For a moment she said nothing. Then, pointing to Giorno, still lying on the grass with his hat tilted over his eyes, she said that she must go and consult her son as to whether the thing were possible.
There had followed a short whispered colloquy between the two, at the end of which Francesca had come back, saying respectfully that if the young lady would trust herself to her guidance, she would conduct her safely to Alta Lauria.
Then had succeeded a necessary arrangement of plans. Pippo was despatched to see if Captain Culvers were still patiently awaiting his bride in the street below, and Ida and Francesca, leaving the churchyard by its back entrance, had made their way along by-streets to the church of “Saint Mary, Star of the Sea,” whither Pippo had directions to follow them.
It was in the church of “Saint Mary, Star of the Sea,” that Ida, tearing a leaf from her notebook, had written the hurried line to her father which Pippo had carried to Glynde Lodge.
There, too, they had arranged the successive steps of their journey. Ida would travel alone to London, leaving by a train from Hastings station, not Saint Leonard’s, where her maid was awaiting her. An excursion train, Francesca said, left in an hour or so, and in the crowd and hurry that usually attends the departure of such a train, it was not likely that the quietly-dressed young lady would attract attention.
Once in London, with a thick veil, a long cloak, and—necessary item!—a full purse, no difficulties in the way of a journey to South Italy had need to be anticipated.
XX
Ida’s spirit and determination held out as far as to Naples. Then the fatigue and excitement of the journey began to tell upon her, her strength gave way, and she was confined to her bed for nearly a week in the quiet hotel where she had taken up her quarters.
Throughout that week Francesca waited on her with unremitting attention and the respectful solicitude of an attached maid.
During the long hours of the wakeful nights the girl’s resolution began somewhat to waver, and she asked herself one or two questions, to which it was not easy to find satisfactory answers. Such as:
Was this hurried flight and impetuous action altogether the best way of meeting difficulties which she could not deny she had brought upon herself? Would it not have been wiser to have taken time to consider the matter, and have called into counsel some older and wiser head than her own?
It seemed impossible, however, to answer these questions with either a yea or a nay; so she put them on one side, telling herself that she had gone too far to retreat now. It was altogether too late to think of retracing her steps. It would seem puerile to her father and her friends if she were to return, having accomplished but half of her journey and her purpose. It would be, in fact, tantamount to a confession of her own inability to manage her own affairs; and she must be prepared to see them taken out of her hands and managed for her.
So as soon as her strength rallied somewhat, she set off on the other half of her journey, making Francesca understand that the more quickly it was got through the better pleased she would be.
From Naples they went direct to Cosenza, and thence they diverged through a nest of small villages into the district dominated by the Sila Mountains, among which Alta Lauria is situated.
The country through which she travelled was
