"Yes, the Spaniard, not the Cyrano de Bergerac."
The flush died from the woman of mystery's cheek, and the stone mask settled upon it. She returned the chain, saying coldly it could not be intended for her, and that she knew nothing about it.
"The Cyrano," Ermengarde observed casually, as she turned from the door, "turned out to be the young Englishman of Monte Carlo, the same who was overheard offering money to the foreign Countess."
"Did he?" she replied, without interest. "Good night, dear Mrs. Allonby. You look tired."
Chapter IX
The Casino
Monte Carlo, justly reputed one of the loveliest spots on earth, is most magically beautiful perhaps when seen from the sea, or from the long, low, wooded headland of Cap Martin.
Thence, on her first visit one golden afternoon, Ermengarde enjoyed a most poetic vision of it, never forgotten and never surpassed. She had left her party, and was basking on a shore thick set with rich-fruited, wind-stunted myrtle and rosemary bushes, the odours of which mingled with pine scents and sweet, sharp sea-breath, while she listened to the soft boom of waves plunging in white, azure-shadowed foam on the rocks at the point, where the sea is more intensely blue than anywhere else and the foam whiter, yet always with that faint azure tinge in shadow.
From this point landwards an enchanting prospect spreads in long-drawn splendour from the gracefully sweeping outline of Bordighera, running far out to sea on the right, to that faint and fairy headland, whence rise the Provençal mountains, so bold in outline, in substance so dim and shadowy, beyond the abrupt crags of the Tête du Chien, which hold Monte Carlo as in a cup. Between these points the great Alpine amphitheatre sweeps grandly back in lofty, soaring outline, enclosing a rich and sunny Paradise of gorge and ridge and mountain spur, running in headland after headland, with tower-crested town, village, garden, and wood, into the clear dark sea. There, beyond the Italian frontier, sits Ventimiglia throned with many towers high above the waves, and there a white pyramidal mass of houses, based on the harbour arches on a sea-fronting steep and topped by a slender church-tower that dominates all for many a mile, is Mentone, regally beautiful. Here little Roccabruna shoulders itself into the sparkling blue, and in mountain recesses far behind it is many a hill village up to the very peaks. On that afternoon the battered Roman tower of Turbia showed clear on its craggy bluffs against the sky above Monte Carlo, but the ravine beneath and Monte Carlo itself were veiled in purply shadow, mystic, dim.
The song of the breakers was lulling; the air, spiced with myrtle and sea-scent, sweet and stimulating; the fullness of colour a joy nothing could blight. Old happy rambles between cliff and sea, as a child, a bride, a young mother, came to mind, all the beauty of many lovely sea places gathered up in, and falling short of, this, which still wanted the cream and salt of all, the loves and companionships of old, young days—a thought that drew tears, not wholly sad.