Rose looked wistful, but she did not ask to go. The others were not thinking of her.
"Do you know the Château Lontana?" she inquired of Schuyler's chauffeur. "And have you got your papers for Italy?"
The man, who was English, touched his cap. "Yes, Madam, I know where the place is. And everything is in order."
As a last thought, Vanno went to the beggar and put two gold pieces into his knotted hand. The little man's red-rimmed eyes glittered with joyful astonishment. He bit first one coin, then the other.
Peter had expected Jim in the afternoon, but Rose promised to telephone.
Neither the girl nor Vanno thought of lunching. They went on without a pause except for the formalities at the Italian frontier, and it was early in the afternoon when the car slowed down before the closed gates of the Château Lontana. The chauffeur got out and tried to open them, but they were locked. He turned to the Prince for instructions. "What are we to do, sir? There is no bell." His tone was plaintive, for he was hungry and consequently irritable.
Vanno jumped out and tried the gates in vain. The chauffeur looked at the ground to hide his pleasure in the gentleman's failure. Peter peered from the car anxiously. "Perhaps Mary didn't come here after all, or else she's gone away," the girl suggested. "It would have meant a horrid delay, trying to find the cabman who drove her from Monte Carlo, but after all it might have been better."
Vanno was ungallant enough not to answer. He was hardly conscious that Peter was speaking. The iron gates, set between tall stone posts, were very high. On the other side an ill-kept road overgrown with bunches of rough grass wound up the cypress and olive clad hill. At the very top stood the house which somewhat pretentiously named itself a château. It was built of the beautiful mottled stone of the country, brown and gray, veined and splashed with green, purple, yellow, and rose pink. There were two square towers and several large balconies and terraces with windows looking out upon them; but the windows in sight were closed and shuttered. The thick flowering creepers which almost covered the walls as high as the windows of the second story—roses, bougainvillea, plumbago, and convolvulus—were tangled and matted together, great branches trailing over the shut eyes of the windows. Cypresses and olives were untrimmed, and there was a straggling wilderness of orange trees. The place had a sad yet poetic look of having been forgotten by the world.
Vanno knew little of its history, except that an elderly French woman, a great actress long before his time, had bought and lived in the house for many years, letting the whole property fall into decay while her money was given to the Casino.