The Passport

by Richard Bagot

Monsieur d'Antin, moreover, had certainly played the opening moves of his game very well, and a more experienced person than Bianca might have been deceived by them. He had extracted her confidence by impressing upon Bianca that he, and he alone, could by degrees overcome the objections that his sister entertained to an alliance with the Rossano family. He had explained to her how these objections came in reality much more from the Abbé Roux than from the princess, and that the latter would infallibly relent if the abbé's good-will could be secured. It had been Monsieur d'Antin, too, who had warned Bianca that her step-mother had decided, always by the Abbé Roux's advice, absolutely to ignore, at any rate for the present, the fact of her having met Silvio and allowed him to propose to her. He had carefully impressed upon her that any attempt on her part to overcome the princess's objections, any allusion, indeed, to the subject, would only result in failure; and that Bianca's best plan, in her own and her lover's interests, would be to maintain an absolute silence, except, of course, to himself. No questions, he told her, would be asked her by her step-mother, and no lectures on her conduct given to her. Therefore, there would be no need for her to give her confidence in a quarter where it was not demanded, and where the giving of it could only prejudice her cause. And everything had happened as Monsieur d'Antin had foretold. The princess had not made the slightest allusion to her step-daughter regarding the meeting in the grounds of the Villa Acorari, and, save for the sense of being continually guarded and watched, Bianca could not truthfully say to herself that her life at Montefiano differed in any particular degree from the life she had been accustomed from childhood to lead.

At first, when Bianca had finally decided to yield to her uncle's suggestions and confide in him, she had more than once asked him to assist her in sending or in receiving some communication from Silvio. But Monsieur d'Antin had always declared this to be impossible. He had explained plausibly enough that if his sister and the Abbé Roux were once to suspect him of such a course, all the influence he might be able to use with them in order to overcome their objections would be hopelessly destroyed. Moreover, his sister would certainly ask him to leave Montefiano, and then Bianca would be left without her only friend and sympathizer.

And so long as Monsieur d'Antin, counselling patience, had himself been patient, matters had progressed fairly well for the furtherance of the object he and the Abbé Roux had in view. Bianca was, if not easy in her mind, at least satisfied that there was no other course open to her but to keep silence and wait for her uncle's influence to do its work.

But Monsieur d'Antin had not had patience. The success attending his first efforts to gain Bianca's confidence had been his undoing. The constant companionship of the young girl, whose very youth and inexperience had kindled afresh his well-worn passions, had brought about its almost inevitable psychological result. Monsieur d'Antin began to lose his head, and to be unable, or at any rate unwilling, to place the restraint upon himself that a younger man would probably have done. He believed that Bianca would certainly in the end be compelled by force of circumstances to see that a marriage with Silvio Rossano was impossible for the heiress of the Acorari. It was true that she might come to realize this, and yet make up her mind to marry some other young man who might present himself—some flaccid, Roman youth with empty pockets, but the possessor of a spurious title which would render him, in the eyes of the little, but strangely snobbish Roman world, an eligible husband for Donna Bianca Acorari. But Baron d'Antin felt comfortably convinced that even should this contingency arise, he still held in his hand the trump-card which would win him the game. If such a young man were to present himself—well, a few words spoken in a few Roman drawing-rooms, a hint or two dropped at the clubs of what had recently occurred at the Villa Acorari, a suggestion that the Princess Montefiano was anxious to marry her step-daughter in order to prevent her making a mésalliance in a quarter in which she had already compromised herself—and the young man's family would at once break off negotiations.

But there had come a day when Monsieur d'Antin, in the course of a walk with Bianca in the parco at Montefiano, had allowed his passion momentarily to get the better of him, and in that moment Bianca had understood all. She had entertained no suspicions since that instant—only the certainty that she was the object of Monsieur d'Antin's desires. Indignation rather than fear, or even aversion, had been her first sensation—indignation at the cowardice of this elderly hypocrite who had tricked her into giving him her confidence. Monsieur d'Antin probably never knew how near he had been to receiving a blow in the face from Bianca's clinched fist, as, with a few scathing words of anger and disgust, she had left him and almost run back to the terrace, where Princess Montefiano was sitting reading in the shade under the castle.

Nor had this episode been all that had occurred during the last few days to confirm Bianca Acorari's suspicions and make her doubly uneasy in her mind.

It so happened that, while wandering through some of the disused apartments of the castle, in the wing opposite to that occupied by the princess and herself, she had overheard a portion of a conversation between domestics, certainly not intended for her ears. Her attention was arrested by the mention of her own name in a loud and rather excited female voice; and approaching nearer to the room whence the voices proceeded, she saw her own maid, Bettina, and a girl whom she recognized as the fattore Fontana's daughter, engaged in mending some linen. They were also, apparently, occupied in a discussion of which she herself was the object, and the agent's daughter appeared to be taking her part with some vigor.

"It was a shame," Bianca heard the girl exclaim, "that the principessina should be forced to marry an old man like the baron, when there was a bel giovanotto who loved her and whom she loved. For her part, if she were the Principessina Bianca she would box the baron's ears—uno, due—so! and marry the lad she loved. What was the use of being a princess if one could not do as one chose?"

Then had followed some words in a lower tone from Bettina, the sense of which Bianca could not catch, but which appeared to have the effect of still further arousing Concetta Fontana's indignation.

"Ah, the poor girl!" Bianca heard her reply. "They shut her up here in this dreary place, and they will keep her here until she lets that old he-goat have his own way. And the priest is at the bottom of it—oh, certainly, the priest is at the bottom of it! It is useless to tell me. I have heard him and the Signor Barone talking together—and I know. If one could ever approach the principessina to get a word with her, I would warn her that it is a trap they are laying for her—just as though she were a bird, the poor child!"