"You're very kind——" Mary began; but suspecting hesitation, Lady Dauntrey broke in. "That's settled, then. I'm so pleased! And would you care to go to a dance on Christmas eve?—a rather wonderful dance it will be, on board a big yacht in the harbour. You must have noticed her—White Lady her name is—and she belongs to Mr. Samuel Holbein, the South African millionaire. You've heard of him, of course. His wife and daughter are on board, and they've begged me to bring as many girls to the dance as I can, for there'll be a lot of men. You know there are heaps more young men about here than there are girls—so unusual except at Monte Carlo."
"A dance on a yacht!" Mary echoed. The idea tempted her, though she hardly felt friendly enough yet with Lady Dauntrey to accept two invitations from her at once. "It sounds interesting."
"It will be. Do say yes. I shall love to chaperon you."
They were at the steps of the Hôtel de Paris.
"Then I say 'yes,'" answered Mary, "and thank you!"
In a few minutes it was all arranged. And Lady Dauntrey bade Miss Grant goodbye, gayly, calling her a "mascotte." She turned the corner as if to go to the shop of the hats. But there was no hat there which she particularly wanted. She had merely sought an excuse to walk as far as the Hôtel de Paris with Mary. When the girl had disappeared behind the glass doors, Eve went back quickly to the Casino, where her husband was playing. She could not bear to be long away from him when he was there. It was agony not to know whether he had lost or won.
XV
After the aviation week Vanno Della Robbia still had the excuse of waiting for Prince Angelo and his bride. It was as well therefore to be at Monte Carlo as anywhere else in the neighbourhood of the villa they would occupy at Cap Martin.
They had been detained in England by a "command" visit to royalty, but would soon come to the Riviera. In a letter Angelo asked his younger brother to go over to Cap Martin and look at the house, which Vanno did: and prolonging his excursion to the ruined, historic convent on the Cap, met Miss Grant strolling there with Jim Schuyler and Dick Carleton. He passed near enough to hear that Schuyler was telling the legend of the place: how the nuns played a joke on the men of Roquebrune, the appointed guardians of their safety, by ringing the alarm bell to see if the soldiers of the castle town on the hill would indeed turn out to the rescue. How the very night after the men had run down in vain, the bell pealed out again, and the guardians remained snugly in their beds, only to hear next day that this time the alarm had been real. Saracens had sacked the convent, carried off all the young and pretty nuns, and murdered the old ones.