Sonia Westfield, by strange fatality, was aboard with her child and Aunt Lois. Her presence, when first they came face to face, startled him; not the event, but the littleness of the great earth; that his hatred and her crime could not keep them farther apart. The Endicott in him rose up for a moment at the sight of her, and to his horror even sighed for her: this Endicott, who for a twelvemonth had been so submerged under the new personality that Dillon had hardly thought of him. He sighed for her! Her beauty still pinched him, and the memory of the first enchantment had not faded from the mind of the poor ghost. It mouthed in anger at the master who had destroyed it, who mocked at it now bitterly: you are the husband of Sonia Westfield, and the father of her fraudulent child; go to them as you desire. But the phantom fled humiliated, while Dillon remained horror-shaken by that passing fancy of the Endicott to take up the dream of youth again. Could he by any fatality descend to this shame? Her presence did not arouse his anger or his dread, hardly his curiosity. He kept out of her way as much as possible, yet more than once they met; but only at the last did the vague inquiry in her face indicate that memory had impressions of him.
Often he studied her from afar, when she sat deep in thought with her lovely eyes ... how he had loved them ... melting, damnable, false eyes fixed on the sea. He wondered how she bore her misery, of which not a sign showed on the velvet face. Did she rage at the depths of that sea which in an instant had engulfed her fool-husband and his fortune? The same sea now mocked her, laughed at her rage, bearing on its bosom the mystery which she struggled to steal from time. No one could punish this creature like herself. She bore her executioner about with her, Aunt Lois, evidently returning home to die. That death would complete the ruin of Sonia, and over the grave she would learn once for all how well her iniquity had been known, how the lost husband had risen from his darkness to accuse her, how little her latest crime would avail her. What a dull fool Horace Endicott had been over a woman suspected of her own world! Her beauty would have kept him a fool forever, had she been less beastly in her pleasures. And this Endicott, down in the depths, sighed for her still!
But Arthur Dillon saw her in another light, as an unclean beast from sin's wilderness, in the light that shone from Honora Ledwith. Messalina cowered under the halo of Beatrice! When that light shone full upon her, Sonia looked to his eye like a painted Phryne surprised by the daylight. Her corruption showed through her beauty. Honora! Incomparable woman! dear lady of whiteness! pure heart that shut out earthly love, while God was to be served, or men suffered, or her country bled, or her father lived! The thought of her purified him. He had not truly known his dear mother till now; when he knew her in Honora, in old Martha, in charming Mona, in Mary Everard, in clever Anne Dillon. These women would bless his life hereafter. They refreshed him in mind and heart. It began to dawn upon him that his place in life was fixed, that he would never go back even though he might do so with honor, his shame remaining unknown. It was mere justice that the wretched past should be in a grave, doomed never to see the light of resurrection.
His mother and her party shared the journey with him. The delay of Ledwith's trial had enabled them to make the short tour on the Continent, and catch his steamer. Anne was utterly vexed with him that Ledwith had not escaped the prison. Her plain irritation gave Judy deep content.
"She needs something to pull her down," was her comment to Arthur, "or she'll fly off the earth with the lightness of her head. My, my, but the airs of her since she laid out the ambassador, an' talked to the Pope! She can hardly spake at all now wid the grandher! Whin Father Phil ... I never can call him Mounsinnyory ... an', be the way, for years wasn't I callin' him Morrisania be mistake, an' the dear man never corrected me wanst ... but I learned the difference over in Rome ... where was I?... whin Father Phil kem back from Rome he gev us a grand lecther on what he saw, an' he talked for two hours like an angel. But Anne Dillon can on'y shut her eyes, an' dhrop her head whin ye ask her a single question about it. Faith, I dinno if she'll ever get over it. Isn't that quare now?"
"Very," Arthur answered, "but give her time. So you saw the Pope?"
"Faith, I did, an' it surprised me a gra'dale to find out that he was a dago, God forgi' me for sayin' as much. I was tould be wan o' the Mounsinnyory that he was pure Italian. 'No,' sez I, 'the Pope may be Rooshin or German, though I don't belave he's aither, but he's not Italian. If he wor, he'd have the blessed sinse to hide it, for fear the Irish 'ud lave the Church whin they found it out.'"
"What blood do you think there's in him?" said Arthur.
"He looked so lovely sittin' there whin we wint in that me sivin sinses left me, an' I cudn't rightly mek up me mind afterwards. Thin I was so taken up wid Mrs. Dillon," and Judy laughed softly, "that I was bothered. But I know the Pope's not a dago, anny more than he's a naygur. I put him down in me own mind as a Roman, no more an' no less."
"That's a safe guess," said Arthur; "and you still have the choice of his being a Sicilian, a Venetian, or a Neapolitan."