Usk walked away from the Villa Bougainvillea with bent head and compressed lips, and crossing the Avénue de la Gare, took the direction of the Cornice Road. Félicia had befooled him once more. It was arranged that he should come to the Villa at a certain time in the afternoon, as he had done each day since their reconciliation, more with the object of asserting his rights than because he felt any special pleasure in Félicia’s society. To-day, as he approached the house, he had caught a distant glimpse of a motor-car dashing off in the opposite direction, and it was hardly with surprise that he heard the servant say that madame and mademoiselle were not at home. There was a meaning look in the man’s eyes, and for a moment Usk thought of asking him where the ladies were. But he rejected with disgust the idea of bribing a servant to spy upon Félicia, and moreover, there in the drive were the marks of the wheels of the automobile, conclusive evidence. Conscious that the man was watching his face with malicious interest, he remarked merely that he would look in again later, and walked slowly down the steps with head erect. But when he was out of sight of the door, he gave up the pretence, and his pace quickened insensibly. He must walk on and on until he was away from every one, and could think over this last treachery and all that it implied. Crowded streets and close-set houses, villas in gardens, desolate building-land with straggling beginnings of avenues and terraces here and there—they were all passed at last, and he was breasting the slope of the mountain. Past the Observatory, up a farther ascent, and he came upon a quiet spot enough, though four roads met there. He left the road and plunged into the wilderness of low scented bushes, hating the perfume they gave out as he crashed through them. Mounting a hillock, he found a spot bare of bushes, and flung himself on the turf, invisible to any one passing along the road. For a time he could only lie there writhing in impotent passion, digging his feet into the ground, and tearing up handfuls of grass and tiny flowers and flinging them away. The instinct of destruction was strong upon him. He loathed the beauties round him and the beauty outspread in front—the long slopes clad in every shade of green, grey-green of olives, light-green of carob, dark-green of orange and lemon-trees, bright-green of pistachio, stretching down to the almost painful blue of the sea, from which the eye sought relief gladly in the white of the town opposite and the grey of the castle crowning the hill above the harbour. It gave him no pleasure, even when the breeze ruffled the olives suddenly into silver, and revealed gleams of gold among the orange-groves. He hated the whole prospect for its very beauty. It was like Félicia, beautiful, changeful, cruel.
After a time the keenness of the pain which possessed him became a little dulled, and he found himself resolving upon his future course. To depart at once from Nice, leaving a scathing letter of farewell for Félicia, was the plan which suggested itself first, but it was obviously incomplete. He had realised now that he had nothing to hope for from her in the way either of justice or tenderness, and it would be a mistake to allow her to declare that he had gone away in a fit of jealousy without giving her a chance of explaining matters. No, he must see her again, distasteful as the thought was. She would try, no doubt, to entangle him again in her sophistries, to wind him round with that net of cajolery into which he had walked with his eyes open, but this time it would be in vain. Never in his life had he felt so miserable, so degraded, as during the past week, when Félicia had been everything that was tender and affectionate. He had deteriorated morally since he had condoned her faithlessness for the sake of her beauty and her fascinations, but he was not the man to regard such deterioration with equanimity. He would free himself from the toils and turn his back upon Félicia for ever, returning to England wiser, if poorer, robbed, as it seemed, of one whole side of his life. He had no doubt as to his own course, but he must make it clear to Félicia that he was leaving her finally—must place the issues before her so plainly that she could not evade them or wriggle out of her responsibility.
How this was to be done was the question. The moral agony through which he had passed seemed to have blunted his mental powers. His reasonings ended abruptly, as though he had come suddenly to a blank wall or fallen from a height; and though he struggled with himself, he could not arrive at any decision. He was still lying on the turf, utterly spent, his hands gripping the clods he had torn up, when a voice behind him said, “Lord Usk!”
He turned angrily and sprang to his feet, enraged that any one should have observed him in this dark hour. Behind him stood a tall lady very elaborately dressed in black. Her face, with its strongly marked features and dark eyes, was handsome, though worn, and her abundant black hair was still without a thread of grey. Usk knew her well. She was the Princess Dowager of Dardania, who had shown a good deal of interest in his sister Philippa and himself two years since at Ludwigsbad.
“I must apologise for intruding upon you,” said the Princess, as he stood speechless, “but I saw you from my windows—with a telescope,”—she pointed to a house just discernible among the trees on one of the upper slopes,—“and I ventured to follow you. Perhaps you would not mind coming a little lower down the hill? There is a spot where we can be quite sheltered from observation, and I should not like the dear young friend for whose sake I am here to know what I had done.”
Usk obeyed in silence. Speech seemed to have forsaken him, and he could only follow the Princess, and sit down on the turf opposite her, as her gesture invited him to do.
“We need not beat about the bush,” she said. “You, like me, have a particular interest just now in King Michael of Thracia,—I because his fickleness is breaking the heart of the dear girl who is my one comfort, you because he has chosen for the time being to set his affections upon your fiancée.”
Usk bowed, and opened his lips to speak, but the Princess held up her hand.
“Wait, if you please. I sympathise with you sincerely, but chiefly for reasons with which you are not at present acquainted. Bad as his conduct is, Michael is not wholly to blame. He is inspired by others, who have taken advantage of his weakness of character to serve their own ends. Don’t interrupt me,” as Usk, who began to see whither this was tending, raised his head again, “but listen. The whole affair is the work of your uncle, Count Mortimer. I don’t say that he is working for his own aggrandisement in any vulgar sense, but with his incurable instinct of intrigue, he has seen how to reap advantage from Michael’s inconstancy.”
“Before you go any further, madame,” said Usk firmly, “I may as well tell you that nothing you can say will make me doubt my uncle’s good faith.”