Vera had no yearning for the gaieties of the hotel drawing-room, or the conjuror's entertainment; but she had a feeling of hopeless loneliness, which even her favourite books could not overcome. If she had been free to roam about the olive woods, to climb the hills, and get nearer the blue sky, she might have been almost happy; but Grannie was exacting, and Vera had never more than an hour's freedom at a time. The hills, and the rustic shrines that shone dazzling white against the soft blue heaven, were impossible for her. Exploration or adventure was out of the question. She might sit in the garden where the pepper trees and palms were dust-laden and shabby; or she might pace the promenade, where Grannie and Martha Lidcott, Grannie's maid, could see her from the salon windows on the second floor.
On the promenade she was safe and needed no chaperon. The hardiest and most audacious of prowling cads would not have dared to follow or address her under the glare of all those hotel windows, and within sound of shrill female voices and flying tennis balls. On the promenade she had all the hotel for her chaperon. Grannie asked her the same questions every evening when she came in to dress for the seven o'clock dinner. Had she enjoyed her walk? and was it not a delicious evening? And then Grannie would tell her what a privilege it was to be young, and able to walk, instead of being a helpless invalid in a Bath chair.
Vera wondered sometimes whether the privilege of youth, with the long blank vista of years lying in front of it, were an unmixed blessing.
CHAPTER II
It was the middle of February, and all the little gardens that lay like a fringe along the edge of the olive woods had become one vivid pink with peach blossoms, while the dull grey earth under the peach trees was spread with the purple and red of anemones. San Marco was looking its loveliest, blue sea and blue sky, cypresses rising up, like dark green obelisks, among the grey olives, and even the hotel garden was made beautiful by roses that hung in garlands from tree to tree, and daffodils that made a golden belt round the dusty grass.
Vera went to the dining-room alone at the luncheon hour on this heavenly morning, a loneliness to which she was now accustomed, as Grannie's delicate and scanty meal was now served to her habitually in her salon. Fortified by Dr. Wilmot, who was an authority at the "Anglais," Lady Felicia had interviewed the landlord, and had insisted upon this amenity without extra charge.
The hotel seemed in a strange commotion as Vera went downstairs. Chambermaids with brooms and dusters were running up and down the corridor on the first floor. Doors that were usually shut were all wide open to the soft spring breezes. Furniture was being carried from one room to another, and other furniture, that looked new, was being brought upstairs from the hall. Carpets and curtains were being shaken in the garden at the back of the hotel, and dust was being blown in through the open window on the landing.
Vera wondered, but had not to wonder long; for at the luncheon table everybody was talking about the upheaval, and its cause, and a torrent of rambling chatter, in which widows and spinsters were almost shrill with excitement, gradually resolved itself into these plain facts.
An Italian financier, Signor Mario Provana, the richest man in Rome, and one of the richest men in London, which, of course, meant a great deal more, was bringing his daughter to the hotel, a daughter in delicate health, sent by her doctors to the most eligible spot along the Western Ligura.