Her first step was a very simple one, easy enough from a social point of view. Among old Lady Castle-Connell’s intimate friends had been a certain Irish chieftain called The O’Labacolly. The O’Labacolly’s daughter had been one of the reigning beauties of Dublin Castle, had appeared for three seasons in London with considerable éclat, and in due course had married a Scotch peer, who was lord of an extensive territory in the Highlands, strictly entailed, and of a more profitable estate in the neighbourhood of Glasgow at his own disposal. Lord Lochinvar had been laid at rest in the sepulchre of his forebears, and Lady Lochinvar was a rich widow, still handsome, and still young enough to enjoy all the pleasures of society. She had no children of her own, but she had a favourite nephew, whom she had adopted, and who acted as her escort in her travels, which were extensive, and as her steward in the management of the Glasgow property, which had been settled upon her at her marriage. The Highland territory had gone with the title to a distant cousin of Lady Lochinvar’s husband.
Mildred remembered that Castellani had spoken of meeting Mr. Ransome and his wife at Lady Lochinvar’s palace at Nice. Her first step, therefore, was to make herself known to Lady Lochinvar, who had wintered in this fair white city ever since she came there as a young widow twenty years ago, and had bought for herself a fantastic villa, built early in the century by an Italian prince, on the crest of a hill commanding the harbour.
With this view she wrote to Lady Lochinvar, recalling the old friendship between The O’Labacolly and Lady Castle-Connell, and introducing herself on the strength of that friendship. Lady Lochinvar responded with Hibernian warmth. She called at the Hôtel Westminster that afternoon, and not finding Mrs. Greswold at home, left a note inviting her to lunch at the Palais Montano next day.
Mildred promptly accepted the invitation. She was anxious to be alone with Lady Lochinvar, and there seemed a better chance of a tête-à tête at the lady’s house than at the hotel, where it would have been difficult to exclude Pamela. She drove to that fair hill on the eastward side of the city, turning her back upon the quaint old Italian town, with its narrow streets of tall white houses with red roofs, and its Cathedral dome embedded in the midst, the red and yellow tiles glistening in the sunlight. The two small horses toiled slowly up the height with the great lumbering landau, carrying Mildred nearer and nearer to the bright blue sky and the snow-line glittering on the edge of the distant hills. They went past villas and flower-gardens, hedges of yellow roses and hedges of coral-hued geranium, cactus and agave, palms and orange-trees, shining majolica tubs and white marble balustrades, statues and fountains, oriel windows and Italian cupolas, turrets and towers of every order; while the sapphire sea dropped lower and lower beneath the chalky winding road, as the jutting promontory that shelters Villefranche from the east came nearer and nearer above the blue.
The Italian prince who built the Palais Montano had aspired after Oriental rather than classic beauty. His house was long and low, with two ranges of Moorish windows, and a dome at each end. There was an open loggia on the first floor, with a balustrade of white and coloured marble; there was a gallery above the spacious tesselated hall, screened by carved sandal-wood lattices, behind which the beauties of a harem might be supposed to watch the entrances and exits below. The house was fantastic, but fascinating. The garden was the growth of more than half a century, and was supremely beautiful.
Lady Lochinvar received the stranger with a cordiality which would have set Mildred thoroughly at her ease under happier circumstances. As it was, she was too completely engrossed by the object of her visit to feel any of that shyness which a person of retiring disposition might experience on such an occasion. She was grave and preoccupied, and it was with an effort that she responded to Lady Lochinvar’s allusions to the past.
“Your mother and I were girls together,” said the Dowager, “at dear old Castle-Connell. My father’s place was within a drive of the Castle, but away from the river, and one of my first pleasant memories is of your grandfather’s gardens and the broad, bright Shannon. What a river! When I look at our stony torrent-beds here, and remember that glorious Shannon!”
“Yet you like Nice better than county Limerick?”
“Of course I do, my dear Mrs. Greswold. Ireland is a delicious country—to remember. I saw a good deal of your mother in London before his lordship’s death, but after I became a widow, I went very little into English society. I had found English people so narrow-minded. I only endured them for Lochinvar’s sake; and after his death I became a rover. I have an apartment in the Champs Elysées and a pied-à-terre in Rome; and now and then, when I want to drink a draught of commonplace, when I want to know what the hard-headed, practical British intellect is making of the world in general, I give myself a fortnight at Claridge’s. A fortnight is always enough. So, you see, I have had no opportunity of looking up old friends.”
“I never remember seeing you in Upper Parchment Street,” said Mildred.