"Why take such a person for your heroine?" Angelo wanted to know.
"She's thrust upon us by the exigencies of the story. And, besides—why, Angelo, if you could meet the girl as I see her in real life, you'd admire her beyond anything! She would be exactly your style. You, being a man, wouldn't know that she was deceitful and a cat."
"I'm sure I should know," he protested, with an involuntary glance at Marie, so saintlike and virginal in her meekly fichued dress. "You've just said that you considered me a good judge."
"Not of a woman's character, but of what ought to happen to the heroine of our story in the end," Idina explained. "That's what I meant. You must give us the end of the story. But I'll go on. The girl—our heroine—comes upon the scene first at a convent-school in Scotland."
Idina paused for an instant, as if taking thought how to go on. The faint creaking of the hammock chains abruptly ceased. Mary glanced across at her friend, but Princess Della Robbia had stopped swinging only to lean forward and stroke the beautiful Persian dog Miro, who had come up the steps. She put an arm round his neck and bent her head over him. Though he adored his master exclusively, he tolerated the new member of the family, and yielded himself reservedly to her caress.
"It must be a coincidence about the convent," Mary told herself. Why should Miss Bland wish to torture Angelo's wife, even if she knew anything? And she could not know. It was impossible that she should know. But suddenly the girl remembered Marie's hints about a long-ago flirtation between the cousins. And Idina's manner had been odd when she begged Angelo to smoke because of old times. A dreadful idea opened a door in Mary's mind and leered at her, with the wicked eyes of a face seen in a nightmare, vague, yet growing larger and drawing inevitably near. She felt helpless and frozen as in a nightmare too; for she could do nothing to rescue Marie, if need arose. To stop Idina somehow might be possible, yet surely that would do more harm than good. To show fear would be to acknowledge cause for fear. Yet at this moment of suspense Mary would have given her right hand to be cut off, if that could have saved her friend.
"Our heroine is the last person who ought to be put into a convent-school," Idina went on, "for she cares more about flirting and fun and intrigue than anything else. Being shut up with a lot of girls and religious women bores her dreadfully, and after she's been there for a while she looks round for a little amusement. The pupils are allowed to go out sometimes, and she meets a man who's staying in a big country-house near by. He looks at her, and she looks back at him. That settles everything. He contrives to find out her name. Men are clever about such things. Then he begins smuggling letters for the girl into the convent. She consents to see him in the garden at night, if he can climb over the wall, or manage to get in somehow. He does manage it. All this appeals to her vanity and love of intrigue. She has a new interest in life—and a secret. They have these night meetings often. By and by the man begs the girl to run away with him. He says he will marry her at once, of course. He's good-looking and seems to be rich; and he's staying in the house of a Lord Somebody or Other, so she thinks he must be of importance in the world. She herself is—just nobody, with hardly a penny of her own, and only distant relatives who've put her in the convent to get rid of the bother she made them. But when our heroine has escaped in the most romantic fashion with her lover, she soon discovers that he can't marry her, even if he wished, for he has a wife already. And it's the wife who owns all the money. They don't live together, but they are quite good friends, he and his wife, who's a common sort of person, a beer-heiress or something like that. What do you think of our story so far, Angelo? Isn't it a good plot?"
Angelo had been smoking continuously as his cousin talked, sending out little quick puffs of smoke which, to those who knew him, betrayed annoyance. And Idina knew him well.
"Do you want me to say what I really think, or to pay you compliments?" he asked.
"What you really think, of course."