“Permit me to remind you that we are in Italy, a state several centuries ahead of yours in civilisation, even if we lack your facile divorce laws. I know something of Mr. Blake from Mrs. O’Neil. Can you picture Ora finishing her life with him?”
“No, I can’t, and that’s a fact. I wonder there hasn’t been a grand bust-up before this. It will come some day. Why not now?”
“Quite so.”
“And Mark could get a dozen girls to suit him better, make him nice and comfy. He’ll never get any real companionship out of Ora, fine as she’s always treated him. A man like that needs a running mate.”
“I shall waste none of my mental energy in sympathy for Mr. Mark Blake. American husbands, so far as I have been permitted to observe, are accustomed not only to being deserted for months and even years at a time, but to periodical divorce.”
“It’s not quite as bad as that, but Mark has the elasticity of an india rubber ball, and that’s a fact.”
“Good. Will you help me?”
Ida hesitated an instant longer, then, dimly conscious that her answer in a measure was dictated by a profound instinct she made no attempt to define, exclaimed, “It’s a go. I believe it will be all for the best. Shake.” And she gave his hand a hearty grasp.
“You are a brick,” he murmured, with a sensation of gratitude he had rarely experienced. “But there is one thing more. Please give her no hint of this, for the present at least. Tell her, and make her believe it, that I have not come here to trouble her, that she need never fear to trust herself alone with me. Tell her that I only want to enjoy her society and make things pleasant for her.”
“Right you are. Ora’s not the sort you can rush. But don’t overdo it and make her think you’ve altogether got over it. Sometimes that piques and works out all right and sometimes it don’t. She’s as proud as Lucifer and might get over her fancy for you while she was still mad.”