The curé moved forward, holding out his hand. He made it evident that this was goodbye. "Will you not take Madame's advice, and my invitation?" he asked, his good brown eyes warm and gentle.
"Yes!" Mary answered impulsively, laying her hand in his.
He clasped it, looking kindly into her face. "I am very glad. Thank you. I will meet you in the church," he said; no more; but Mary knew that he meant, "Thank you for trusting me."
"His Highness is out," was the answer at the Hôtel de Paris to the curé's inquiries. No, the Prince had left no word as to when he would come in. Often he was away for dinner, and sometimes did not return until late at night.
"Eh bien! I will wait," said the curé with a sigh. He had determined to carry the thing through, and would not fail for lack of persistence.
Vanno might be in any one of a dozen places, but the curé with his mind's eye saw the young man at the Casino. There he could not seek him even if he would, as a man in clerical dress would not be admitted. Resignedly the priest sat down in a retired corner of the hall, where he could watch those who came in by the revolving door. That he should be sitting in this home of gayety and fashion at Monte Carlo appealed to his sense of humour. "A bull in a china shop," he thought, "is in his element compared to poor Father Pietro Coromaldi in the hall of the Hôtel de Paris."
At first he was half shyly diverted by the gay pageant around him, the coming and going of perfectly dressed men and women of many nations, who drank tea and ate little cakes, while the band played the sort of music which can have no mission save as an incentive to conversation.
But time went on, and Vanno did not come. The curé tired of the people, most of whom he felt inclined to pity, as no real joy shone out of their eyes, even when they laughed. He thought the pretty, smiling young women were like attractive advertisements for tooth-pastes, and face-powders, and furs, and hats. They did not look to him like real people, living real, everyday lives; and Miss Grant, though perhaps she led just such an existence, seemed to belong to a different order of being.
At last Lady Dauntrey, in her smart purple dress, came in with a tall, haggard man who had the eyes of a chained and starving dog. They joined a conspicuous party whose principal members were a fat woman massaged to the teeth, a dark girl who had evidently a sharp eye to the main chance as well as to the picturesque, and a hook-nosed, appallingly pompous man who would strut on the edge of the grave.