She grew to like her employment in the quiet, mediæval-looking room. Her employer, a gentle, sad-eyed elderly man with an invalid daughter, treated her with the utmost kindness; and if it had not been that every fibre in her being cried out incessantly for Owen, she might in time have been content.
Her first friends, the Moodys, had settled her in rooms with an old servant of their own who had married a little Italian bookseller, and were unremitting in their kindness to her; but Toni desired only to be alone in her leisure hours and refused many of the invitations which Mrs. Moody sent her from time to time.
So the days passed, quietly and tranquilly enough; and though to Toni it seemed that all the joy, all the happiness had fled from life, that the "sweet things" had lost their sweetness, the sunshine its glory, the flowers their perfume, she was not ungrateful for the peace which had come to her so unexpectedly.
Of her husband, of Greenriver, she never dared to think. She guessed, drearily, that Owen would feel bound, in humanity, to institute a search for his missing wife; but by a fortunate chance she had been able to cover her tracks and disappear effectually; and as the weeks glided by, and discovery was apparently as far off as ever, she began to feel, with a miserable certainty, that in time her husband would relinquish the search, and settle down to forget the frivolous, uneducated girl who had not known how to appreciate the honour he had done her in making her his wife.
To-day, this glorious spring day when the violet-scented air held a hint of summer's warmth in its breath, Toni was making holiday.
Her employer was from home, called to London by the hint of a wonderful book sale to be held there the following week; and Toni's time was her own for nearly eight days.
She had started early that morning on a pilgrimage to the little village where, long ago, she had passed the first happy years of her life; and had arrived, before noon, to find, as she had half-expected, that none of her old friends remained to give her welcome.
Old Fiammetta was dead, as was, of course, the kindly Padre who had befriended Roger Gibbs when the young widower had decided to stay on, with his little daughter, in the home which his Antonia had made so joyous. A few of the children with whom she had played lived here still, but they had grown into sturdy, swarthy young men and women who had long since forgotten the dark-eyed child whose Italian had been as fluent as their own; and though she wandered disconsolately through the straggling little village, she met with no single glance of recognition.
She did not know that some months previously urgent inquiries had been made at the tiny post-office as to whether a young lady had arrived in the village unexpectedly. It had struck Owen as possible that, in her madness, Toni might have returned to her childhood's home; but although, had she not met Luisa, Toni would probably have done so, that chance meeting at the station had turned her feet into another path, and naturally no one here knew anything of her whereabouts.
She had intended spending the whole of her holiday in the village; but the absence of any welcome depressed her sensitive spirit, and she decided to return to Naples in the evening and spend the days of her freedom in exploring more thoroughly the fascinating streets and byways of the picturesque and romantic town.