He bowed his head, and shrugged his eyebrows. "If I had not given my word to my friend," he murmured. "For to-day "Arethusa" is his."
"I believe he's bribed you!" the words sprang from my lips, without my meaning to speak them; but they hit their mark as if I had taken close aim. The scarred features flushed so painfully that they seemed to swell; and with the lightning that darted from under the black thundercloud of his brows, the man was hideous. He bit his lip to keep back an angry answer, and Aunt Kathryn screamed at me, "Maida! I'm ashamed of you. You'd better go to your cabin and not come out till you're in a—a more ladylike frame of mind."
I took her at her word and walked sharply away with Airole trotting at my heels.
There were six cabins on "Arethusa", as I knew, because I had been shown them all. I knew also which was Count Corramini's, which his wife's, which her maid's, and which were reserved for guests. Now I walked into one of the spare cabins, of which the door stood open, and whether it was meant for me or for Aunt Kathryn I wasn't in a mood to care.
Various toilet things had been ostentatiously laid out, and there was a bunch of roses in a glass, which in my anger I could have tossed out of the window; but I hate people who are cruel to flowers almost as much as those who are cruel to animals, and the poor roses were the only inoffensive things on board.
"Oh, Airole," I said, "she takes it as a compliment! Well—well—well!"
My own reflections and the emphasis of Airole's tiny tail suddenly brought my anger down from boiling point to a bubbly simmer; and I went on, thrashing the matter out in a conversation with the dog until the funny side of the thing came uppermost. There was a distinctly funny side, seen from several points of view, but I didn't intend to let anybody know that I saw it. I made up my mind to stay in the cabin indefinitely; but it was not necessary to the maintenance of dignity that I should refrain from enjoying as much of the scenery as the porthole framed in a picture. Accordingly I knelt on the bed, looking out, too excited to tire of the strained position.
We had passed a long tongue of land, beaten upon by white rollers of surf, that seemed as if they strove to overwhelm the old forts set far above their reach. A rocky island too, rising darkly out of a golden sea; and then we entered the mouth of a wonderful bay, like the pictures of Norwegian fords. As we steamed on, past a little town protected by a great square-towered, fortified castle, high on a precipitous rock, I guessed by the formation of the bay, which Mr. Barrymore had shown me on a map, that we were in the famous Bocche di Cattaro.
"Yes," I told myself, "that must be Castelnuovo. Mr. Barrymore said the bay was like the Lake of Lucerne, with its starfish arms. This can't be anything else."
The yacht glided under the bows of two huge warships, with officers in white, on awninged decks, and steamed into a long canal-like stretch of water, only to wind out again presently into a second mountain-ringed bay. So we went from one to another, passing several pretty towns, one beautiful one which I took to be Perasto, if I remembered the name aright, and two exquisite islands floating like swans on the shining water, illuminated by the afternoon sun. Then, at last we were slowing down within close touch of as strange a seaside place as could be in the world. Close to the water's edge it crept, but climbed high on the rocks behind the houses of the foreground, with a dark belt of ancient wall circling the lower town and upper town, and finishing at the top with fortifications marvellous enough for a dream. In the near background were green hills; but beyond, towered desolate grey mountains crowned with dazzling snow, and on their rugged faces was scored a tracery of white lines seemingly scratched in the rock. I knew that they must mean the twistings of a road, up and up to the junction of mountain and sky, but the wall of grey rock looked so sheer, so nearly perpendicular, that it was impossible to imagine horses, or even automobiles mounting there.