With a touch of impetuosity, Clodagh picked up an envelope and addressed it to Laurence Asshlin at Orristown; then, rising from the bureau, she rang a bell.
An Italian man-servant responded to the summons—the same man-servant who had waited at breakfast on the morning that Milbanke had received Barnard's summons to Venice. Entering the room with sympathetic deference, he paused just inside the door.
"Signora!" he murmured.
Clodagh turned to him, the black-edged envelope in her hand.
"Tell Simonetta to bring me my hat and cloak," she said. "I'm going down into Florence—to post a letter." And without waiting to see what expression her declaration brought to the man's face, she crossed the room and stood once more in the flood of clear, cool sunlight that poured through the open window.
CHAPTER II
Exactly one week later Clodagh arrived in Paris on her way to England. Simonetta Ottolenghi—an Italian woman, who had been in her service as maid for nearly four years—was her only companion; there was no friend to meet or welcome her in the unfamiliar city, and even the dog Mick—the companion of so many solitary hours—had been left behind in Florence until she could conveniently send for him; yet, incongruous as it may sound, her feelings were happy—her mind was free from loneliness as her train steamed into the crowded railway station and she found herself free to drive to her hotel. After all, life undeniably stretched before her, and there was no prohibition against letting her eyes dwell upon the vistas it opened up!
Knowledge of duty done—be the doing ever so tardy—is the best stimulus for the wayfarer in the world's by-ways; and Clodagh, as she stepped from her train on that February afternoon, was conscious of some such reassuring certainty.
In the last two years, life for her had been a thing of physical inaction, accompanied by a subtle process of mental development. The night of tempestuous excitement—when, in a whirl of pain, chagrin, and passionate self-contempt, she had repudiated Venice and her newly made friends—had been the birth of a fresh phase in her existence. With all the ardour, all the enthusiasm, whereof her vivid nature was capable, she had veered from her former point of view to another almost as extreme. The return to Florence, the taking up of existence in the secluded villa, had been like the incidents of a dream; then, in the days that had succeeded—in the early mornings, or the late evenings—as she sat upon the marble rim of the drowsy fountain in the garden, gazed down from Fiesole upon the sleeping Roman amphitheatre, or knelt in a dim recess of the old church of San Dominico, rendered mystical by the smell of incense and the flicker of wax tapers, the dream had shaped itself. It had become a tapestry, into the pictures of which many figures were woven, but where only two took place and prominence—her own and one other.
For in those silent hours the thought of Gore—the remembrance of Gore—had come back to her as tangible things. In that solitude peopled by imagination, she had forgotten the hurt vanity, the bitter disappointment, that had clothed her last interview with him; and remembered only that, seeing fit to reprove her, he had dared to do so—that, seeing the brink upon which she had stood, he had put out his hand to draw her back.