"Lumley, I do not attempt to defend my feeling. Of course it is absurd to connect her with it, really."
"I was sure that you would say so, mother."
"But, Lumley, although I cannot defend it the feeling remains. Listen. No woman has known greater happiness than I have. My life has been sometimes almost too perfect, and yet I never altogether forgot those passionate words of Leonardo's. They lay like a shadow across my life, darkening and growing broader as the years of his confinement passed away. The time of his release came at last—only a few months ago, and only a few months ago, Lumley, I saw him."
"You saw him! Where?"
"In London, Lumley! Why did he come, almost on the day of his release, here to England? It was a country which he hated in his younger days, and yet, instead of visiting his old home, his love for which was almost a passion, instead of lingering in those sunny southern towns where many friends still remained who would have received him with open arms, he came straight to London alone. I found him at a hotel there, broken down, and almost, as it were, on the threshold of death! Yet, when he saw me, when he heard my voice, the old passion blazed out. Lumley, I prayed to him for forgiveness, and he scorned me. He had never forgotten! He would never forgive! He pointed to his person, his white hairs, to all the terrible evidences of his long imprisonment, and once more, with the same passion which had trembled in his tone twenty-five years ago, he cursed me! It was horrible! I fled from that place like a haunted woman, and since then, Lumley, I have been haunted. Every feature in the girl's magnificent face, and every movement of her figure, reminds me that she is a Marioni!"
She had risen and was standing by his side, a beautiful, but a suffering woman. He took her into his arms and kissed her forehead.
"Mother, you have too much imagination," he said gently. "Look at the matter seriously. Granted that this old man still harbors a senseless resentment against you. Yet what could he do? He forgets the days in which he lives, and the country to which you belong! Vendettas and romantic vengeances, such as he may have dreamt of five-and-twenty years ago, are extinct even in his own land; here, they cannot be taken seriously at all!"
She shivered a little, and looked into his face as though comforted in some measure.
"That is what I say to myself, Lumley," she said; "but there are times when the old dread is too strong for me wholly to crush it. I am not an Englishwoman, you know; I come of a more superstitious race!"
"I am sorry that Miss Briscoe should be the means of bringing these unpleasant thoughts to you," he remarked thoughtfully. "Mother!"