Sitting a little forward, her hands locked on the knee of her white gown, her blue eyes extraordinarily vivid in her softly-coloured face, she began her tale; and both men listened to her with rapt attention as her deep voice rang through the quiet room.
"It seems that years ago when Tochatti was a girl, living in a village close to Naples, she was betrothed to a handsome young Sicilian, a fisherman from Palermo. The story, as Tochatti told it, is a long and rather involved affair; but it is sufficient to say that there was another girl enamoured of Tochatti's lover; and matters were complicated still further by the fact that this girl was engaged to someone else. Well, Luigi, Tochatti's sweetheart, had evidently encouraged the second girl behind Tochatti's back; and when Tochatti found out she was so inflamed with rage and jealousy that, overhearing of an appointment between Bella and Luigi, she wrote a note in a handwriting roughly resembling that of Bella to the latter's sweetheart, a certain José, bidding him meet her at the same time and place as that arranged by the other two. Well, José went, expecting to meet his beloved—and found her in Luigi's arms. Tragedy followed, of course. José first tore the girl away and then stabbed her to the heart, afterwards turning on Luigi. They struggled—on the edge of the cliff; and Luigi proving the stronger, José was hurled over the edge into the sea below."
"A tragedy indeed," commented Major Carstairs as the speaker paused. "What was the next act? Did Luigi and Tochatti become reconciled and walk off arm-in-arm?"
"No." Chloe's voice sank a little. "It seems that when Tochatti, horror-struck by the result of her interference, rushed on to the scene, Luigi turned upon her, guessing somehow that she was responsible, and taxed her with having lured José to the spot that night. She owned up to it, and instead of imploring forgiveness appeared to glory in her treachery, whereupon Luigi, throwing the fatal letter into her face, burst into a torrent of rage, telling her he had never cared for her, that Bella was the only girl he had ever loved, and finished up by stabbing himself before her eyes rather than endure a life from which his adored one had vanished for ever."
"I say! What a tale—quite a Shakespearean ending, stage fairly littered with corpses," struck in Major Carstairs. "I wonder Tochatti didn't put the finishing touch by stabbing herself as well!"
"She did think of it, I believe," owned Chloe, "but the sound of quarrelling had brought other people on the scene, and Tochatti was of course arrested and the whole story investigated with more or less thoroughness. Being a pretty common story, however—for the Sicilians are a hot-blooded race—it was quite easy for the authorities to reconstruct the scene; and since Tochatti was innocent of any actual crime she was eventually released; only to fall ill with some affection of the brain which finally landed her in an asylum."
"An asylum!" Anstice whistled. "Yet one would have hesitated to call her insane——"
"Yes, now, but you must remember this is very many years ago. She recovered at length, and the only reminiscence of the tragedy was a marked aversion to using pen or pencil. She seemed to think that having wrought so much harm by her one attempt at letter-writing she would be wiser to avoid such things in future."
"Pity she didn't keep her resolve," commented Major Carstairs dryly; and Chloe nodded.
"Yes. We should all have been spared a good deal of trouble. Well, as you know, she entered my mother's service during her honeymoon in Italy, and was my nurse as a child. Now I come to the second half of the story. Tochatti chose to adore me from my early youth"—she smiled faintly—"and she always bore a grudge against anyone who did not fall down and worship me too. And this peculiar attitude of hers has a bearing on the affair of the letters. When Mrs. Ogden chose to quarrel with me, or at least evince a decided coldness, Tochatti's ready hatred flared up; and after the unlucky day when Mrs. Ogden cut me dead before half the county at a Flower Show, she determined to show the woman she could not be allowed to insult me with impunity."