“Marriage: wedlock.”
Under “wedlock” she discovered “marriage.” She hurled the little book from her, and seized a pencil and pad from the stand beside her.
“Love,” she dashed off impetuously, “the divine gift that joins two hearts for eternity.”
This looked nearer the ecstasy of real truth. Not that one could even approach in words the expression of the miracle of love, but this was closer. In the next room Maria sang a tender old chant of the nuns at Leguna Marino, the tiny town that clung to the cliffs below Villa Tittani. This was a ruse, to lift her mind from earthly things, she knew, and yet she tried again, her own improvements in the lexicon of love.
“Marriage,” she wrote carefully. “The blessed union of two souls who love perfectly.”
It was an inspired improvement on the dictionary definition, she thought, and after “love” she added, “the divine gift that awakens souls to life’s meaning.”
Maria would never understand. She would smile at her pityingly and guard her from the passion that was her heritage. Jacobelli would rage and beat the air and denounce all romance as a detractor of art, but the old Marchese, he would sympathize with her. Sometimes, when he sat at dinner with them, smoking leisurely, a smile of content on his fine old face, she had often wondered what memories lay behind his charm of manner and unfailing understanding with youth’s heritage of yearning. With the rose on the pillow beside her and the little pad in her hand, she fell asleep.
In the living-room Maria Roma knelt beside the Florentine chest, selecting the remainder of the Paoli collection to be deposited in the safety vault. It was true, as Ward had told Jacobelli the previous night, coming from the Nevins fête, neither Carlota nor she had appreciated the full value of the royal gems. The stolen rubies alone were worth several hundred thousand dollars, yet Carlota had worn them as if they had been paste. There was not another stone in the world that could compare in purity with the Zarathustra ruby. Maria knew the story of how it had come into the possession of Margherita Paoli, nearly half a century before. She had heard of the impassioned young Balkan prince who had cast all he owned at the feet of the most beautiful woman in Europe. When she would have returned the rubies, he had refused them, even with the knowledge of her affair with Tennant.
“You deny me your love. Let the rubies tell you ever of mine. I may not hold you in my arms. Let them rest on your glorious hair, your throat, your breast, telling you forever that Boris loved you.”
Yet it was doubtful whether Paoli herself had even grasped the great value of the jewels. She had never been the type of woman to seek the price of anything. It belittled rather than enhanced the value of a thing to have it rated. So the rubies had lain for years in the old chest with her other jewels, half forgotten as the years went by, and Crown Prince Boris had long since lain upon his gold and purple catafalque.