“But always with a flower ready to bloom safe and warm in its heart,” he added. And he told her how hope had come to him the day before in the ruined monastery, where he had gone to live again, in its delicious memories, that hour they passed during the hailstorm.
“The leaves were thick on the eglantine,” he said, “and the chapel was gay with sunshine and the voices of birds. All the growing, living things had entered upon their heritage of joy, and then it was that the light of a great hope, as if from prophecy, filled——”
She had started a little and admonished him to silence at sight of a familiar figure in the arched entrance to the main wards, whither their steps had led them. It was the large frame, ruddy face, flaxen hair and beard of Ulrich the Austrian. The man who had sent Hera the false telegram stood wide-eyed with astonishment and comprehension to behold her in the company of Mario Forza. But he quickly recovered his air of effusive good nature. With uncovered head and smiling he approached to greet her.
“I have been through the wards,” said Tarsis’s most confidential retainer, “and everywhere are the beautiful flowers your Excellency has given. Ah! the rooms are filled with their fragrance—and,” he added, bowing low, one hand pressed upon his chest, “with the praises of your Excellency.”
Wondering that chance should have brought the man there, and conscious for the first time that in this walk and converse with Mario there was aught of indiscretion, and preoccupied as well with an intuition that the Austrian’s presence boded a new ill, Hera replied to his compliments with few words, and she and Mario passed on.
The meeting, in itself a trivial occurrence, proved a source of much illumination for the Austrian. It explained what had puzzled his mind ever since the night he had performed for Tarsis the service of sending the message that made Hera listen to his plea. He had tried in vain to account for that affair as some ruse in a political game where his resourceful master had set his skill against that of the leader of the New Democracy. Now he divined that a woman—no other than she who became his wife—was the stake that Tarsis had won. He recalled the words of the telegram, and felt sure that he had hit the mark.
The Honourable Forza, he reasoned, was a rival before the marriage, and, plainly, was a rival still. The thought of intrigue obtruded itself in his survey of the situation, and, in the light of his new knowledge, duty demanded that in this branch of his master’s affairs he perform another confidential service. It was only just, he told himself, that Signor Tarsis, too great a man to keep a watch on his wife, should know that she had an interest in the General Hospital that was not confined to visiting the sick and cheering their lot with gifts of flowers.
Together Mario and Hera entered a ward for women, and he was with her still as she moved through the great sick-room, pausing here and there for a word to some patient. She told him that she wished above all to visit a certain little girl, because it was the last opportunity she would have to do so. “The doctor says that she will not be here when I come next week. They cannot save her. She is only twelve years old, but she worked in a mill ten hours a day.”
“Was it there she contracted the disease?” Mario asked.
“The doctors think the bad air of the place did as much as the work and long hours to break down her health.”