The clever courier had made all his arrangements by telegraph: they spent a night at Genoa; drove round the city next morning; explored churches, palaces, and picture-galleries; and went on to Nice in the afternoon. They arrived at the great bustling station late in the evening, and were driven to one of the hotels on the Promenade des Anglais, where all preparations had been made for their reception: a glowing hearth in a spacious drawing-room opening on to a balcony, lamps and candles lighted, roses on all the tables, maid and man on the alert to receive travellers of distinction. So far as a place which is not home can put on an aspect of homeliness the hotel had succeeded; but Mildred looked round upon the white and gold walls, and the satin fauteuils, with an aching heart, remembering those old rooms at Enderby, and the familiar presence that had first made them dear to her, before the habit of years had made those inanimate things a part of her life.
She was at Nice; she had taken the slanderer’s advice, and had gone to the city by the sea, to try and trace out for herself the mystery of the past, to violate her husband’s secret, kept so long and so closely, only to rise up after years of happiness, like a murdered corpse exhumed from a forgotten grave.
She was here, on the scene of her husband’s first marriage, and for three or four days she walked and drove about the strange busy place aimlessly, hopelessly, no nearer the knowledge of that dark history than she had been at Enderby Manor. Not for worlds would she injure the man she loved. She wanted to know all; but the knowledge must be obtained in such a way as could not harm him. This necessitated diplomacy, which was foreign to her nature, and patience, in which womanly quality she excelled. She had learnt patience in her tender ministrations to a fretful invalid, during those sad slow years in which pretty Mrs. Fausset had faded into the grave. Yes, she had learnt to be patient, and to submit to sorrow. She knew how to wait.
The place, delightful as it was in the early spring weather, possessed no charms for her. Its gaiety and movement jarred upon her. The sunsets were as lovely here as at Pallanza, and her only pleasure was to watch that ever-varying splendour of declining day behind the long dark promontory of Antibes; or to see the morning dawn in a flush of colour above the white lighthouse yonder at the point of the peninsula of St. Jean. It was in the village of St. Jean that George Greswold had lived with his first wife—with Fay. The bright face, pale, yet brilliant, a face in which light took the place of colour; the eager eyes; the small sharp features and thin sarcastic lips, rose up before her with the thought of that union. He must have loved her. She was so bright, so interesting, so full of vivid fancies and changeful emotions. To this hour Mildred remembered her fascination, her power over a child’s heart.
Pamela was dull and out of spirits. Not all the Tauchnitz novels in Galignani’s shop could interest her. She pronounced Nice distinctly inferior to Brighton; declined even the distraction of the opera.
“Music would only make me miserable,” she exclaimed petulantly. “I wish I might never hear any again. That hateful band in the gardens tortures me every morning.”
This was not hopeful. Mildred was sorry for her, but too deeply absorbed by her own griefs to be altogether sympathetic.
“She will find some one else to admire before long,” she thought somewhat bitterly. “Girls who fall in love so easily are easily consoled.”
She had been at Nice more than a week, and had made no effort—yearning to know more—to know all—yet dreading every new revelation. She had to goad herself to action, to struggle against the weight of a great fear—the fear that she might find the slanderer’s accusations confirmed instead of being refuted.