There was no question of choice in apportioning the three "best rooms," prepared for occupation, because two adjoined each other, with a door between; and these suggested themselves naturally for Lord and Lady Dauntrey. The third and smaller room was at a distance, and had only one door, which opened to the hall; but there was a great French window leading to a balcony and evidently looking southward, over the slopes of the garden down to the sea.
"This was the room the poor Captain loved," Apollonia announced; "therefore it is right the Signorina should have it for her own. He hoped she might choose it, I know. Sometimes he spent a night here, toward the last. Perhaps he can see the Signorina at this moment, and if he can, I am sure he is very happy."
Had there been a possibility of changing from that room to any other in the house, even the worst and meanest, Mary would have changed gladly; but she could not take one of the rooms she had given the Dauntreys; and to order another got ready would have seemed heartless to Apollonia, whose quick intuition would have told her the reason.
Mary resigned herself to sleep in the room where Hannaford had thought and dreamed of her.
When they had bidden their hostess good-night, and their doors were locked, Lord and Lady Dauntrey stood together for a moment at one of the long windows of the larger room. This Eve had taken, and on the bed with the high, carved walnut back lay the night-dress borrowed from Mary. Through torn clouds a few stars glittered like coins in a gashed purse, and very far away to the west, at the end of all things visible, was a faint, ghostly gleam which meant the dazzling lights of the Casino and its terrace, at Monte Carlo.
Lady Dauntrey rested against her husband's shoulder, as if his companionship were dear and essential to her. She had done this often before their marriage and shortly after; but not once for many months now. It seemed to him that he could remember every one of the caresses which had bound him to her as with ropes from which he could not, and did not desire to, escape. A long time ago in South Africa, when she had first made him love her, she had been pleased when he called her his "beautiful tigress." She had kissed him for the name, and said that of all animals she adored tigers; that she believed she had been a tigress once; and when they were rich—as they would be some time—he must buy her a splendid tiger skin to lie on. This very day the tigress thought of her had been in his heart, but not as a loving fancy. She had seemed to him cruel and terrible as a hungry animal despising her mate because he fails to bring her prey as food. He had said to himself in shame and desolation of soul that she had never cared for him really, but only for what he might give; and because he had disappointed her, giving little, she hated and would perhaps leave him, to better herself. Now the touch of her shoulder against his breast, and the tired, childlike tucking of her head into his neck, warmed his blood that had run sluggishly and cold as the blood of a prisoner in a cell. New courage flowed back to his heart. Vague thoughts of suicide flapped away like night-birds with the coming of light. If Eve cared for him still he had the incentive to live.
"That place seems to haunt us," she murmured, as they stood together in seeming love and need of one another. He knew what she meant. Their eyes were on the distant glimmer of Monte Carlo. "Its influence follows us."
"From here the lights look pure white, like the lights of some mysterious paradise, seen far off across the sea," Dauntrey said.
"No," his wife answered; "to me they're more like the light that comes out of graves at night time; the strange, phosphorescent light of decayed, dead things. We've done with that lure light forever, haven't we?"