“Pooh! Unless I could have locked her up in a cell, it would have been utterly impossible to prevent her from communicating with him. She did not call me, but let him depart. Then she came in and told me that he had renewed his golden promises, that she had informed him her friends objected to her becoming a stage singer, but that she hoped to gain consent, and had requested him to return in three or four days. He was resolved not to lose sight of her, and waited patiently. She tried again to shake my determination, but in vain.
“I then thought of applying to her brother, the priest, for help in combatting her fatal desires and intentions, but he had consented to go to America as a missionary, and was at that time away making some final arrangements—partly settling who should succeed him in his humble cure. In a fortnight more he was to begin his journey. Lucia nearly drove me frantic; but a day or two before that fixed for the final decision, she suddenly became strangely calm and quiet, with the horrible tranquillity of a wild beast which crouches to take its spring upon a victim.”
All these explanations were necessary to render poor Gilardoni’s story intelligible; but the suspense until he should arrive at the conclusive point in his recital was almost sickening to his hearer, for whom the facts possessed an absorbing interest, undreamed of by the narrator.
Captain Desfrayne did not utter a word when Gilardoni paused for a moment.
“Lucia had made up her mind,” the valet continued, “to close with the alluring offers of the stranger. How do you think she contrived to get rid of the impediments caused by my stern obstinacy, as she considered the opposition I raised?”
“How can I tell?”
“She made one or two faint efforts to move me that last day; then she drugged some wine I was to drink in the evening. Having secured a fair start, she went off with the crabbed old man who had thus torn her from the home she had made so happy for a few short months.”
“Did she leave any clue to the place she was bound for?”
“None. A few lines scrawled on a bit of torn paper told me why she had gone, and with whom. I found this paper the next morning when I roused myself from my deathlike sleep. The drug left me weak in body and mind; some days elapsed before I could gain sufficient strength to form any plan. Then I made some careful inquiries, for I wished to avoid being talked about and laughed at by the scandal-loving old women of the village. I found that there was a probability of finding my wife and her new music-master at Turin.”
Paul Desfrayne shuddered. The name of these beautiful Italian cities always brought back feelings of pain and bitterness to his memory.