"It slipped out. I suppose, after all, I'm conventional. Providence and destiny are the same. Think how everything has worked up to this. Even the datura in the garden!"
"It can stay there!" Dauntrey blurted out, savagely.
With a hand on each of his shoulders, she held herself off from her husband at arm's length, looking him straight in the eyes with her level, compelling gaze.
"I swear to you," she said slowly, giving each word its full value, "that if you won't do this for me, I will kill Mary Grant, and go away with her jewels, to lead my own life without you. If you choose you can denounce me. But in no other way, unless you help, and so save her life, can you prevent me from keeping my word. I love you now, and if you're brave enough to get fortune and a new start for us at this small risk, I'll love you all the rest of my life as no woman ever loved a man. If not——"
"I'll do it!" he answered, the blood streaming up to his face.
She laced her fingers round his neck and drew him against her bosom. For a moment they stood thus, very still, clasped in each other's arms, her lips pressed to his.
XXXVI
At last Mary had time to think, and to write to Vanno.
In her dressing-bag, which the caretaker had carried up to her room, were writing materials. On a table in the middle of the room was the best lamp in the house. Apollonia had brought it to the beloved Signorina, as her ancestresses in the wild mountain village might have laid offerings on Baal's shrine. The new mistress was to have all the most beautiful and desirable things that the house could provide—was to have them in spite of herself; for Apollonia's heart held no warmth for those friends whom the Signorina had placed in the best rooms.