"I should love it," she answered, with an enthusiasm which still lacked something.
"A villa somewhere on the slopes of Fiesole," he continued, "with a garden, a real Italian garden, with fountains and statuary, and straight paths, and little strips of deep lawn, and a few cypress trees. And there must be a view of Florence. I think that you would work well there, Marcia. If things go as I expect, I thought that we might leave England about Christmas-time, and loiter a little on the Riviera till the season for the cold winds has passed. Browning wrote of the delights of an English spring, but he lived in Florence."
"There is so much there that I am longing to see again," she murmured.
"You shall see it all," he promised. "If you wish, you shall live with it. I do not know whether there is anything strange about me," he went on, after a moment's hesitation, "but I must confess that I find myself a little out of touch with modern English life. The atmosphere of my sister's house, for instance, invariably repels me. The last generation was amused by the efforts of those without just claims to penetrate into the circles of their social superiors. To-day the reverse seems to be the case. The men, and the women especially, of my order, seem to be perpetually struggling to imitate the manners and weaknesses of a very interesting but irresponsible world of Bohemia. I find myself with few friends, nowadays. The freedom and yet the isolation of foreign life, therefore, perhaps appeals to me all the more.
"But you would not care to leave Mandeleys, surely?"
"My dear Marcia," he said, "I am possessed, perhaps, of a peculiar temperament, but I can assure you that Mandeleys is spoiled for me so long as that—that ridiculous old man—you will forgive me—your father, sits at the end of his garden, invoking curses upon my head. To every one except myself, the humour of the situation is obvious. To me there is something else which I cannot explain. Whether it is a presentiment, a fear, an offence to my dignity, I cannot tell. I have spent all the spare money I have in the world trying to get that Vont cottage back again into the family estates, but I have failed. Really, your father might just as well have Mandeleys itself."
"You know that I went to see him?" she asked.
"I remember your telling me that you were going," he replied.
"My mission was a dismal failure," she confessed. "I felt as though I were talking to a stranger, and he looked as though he were speaking to a Jezebel. We stood in different worlds, and called to one another over the gulf in different languages."
"Perhaps," the Marquis sighed, "it is as well that he is your father. The other morning I passed down the fencing gallery and examined my father's collection of rifles. There was one there with a range of six hundred yards, which was supposed in those days to be marvellous, and some cartridges which fitted it. The window was open. You think, Marcia, that I am too placid for impulses, yet I can assure you that I slipped a cartridge into the magazine of that rifle, closed it, and knelt down before the open window. I held your father covered by the sight until I could have shrieked. Then I turned away and fired at a log of wood in the park. I found the bullet afterwards, half a foot deep in the centre of it."