The first thing she woke to was Allegra's letter and Kane's question, "Do you know what this document contains? Can you witness its truth?"
And then answered Nancy Cornish, "Of course I can! I saw her come out in Christina's cloak. They kept me waiting in the motor outside while she shot Mr. Ingham."
CHAPTER VII
THE SHADOW'S FACE: BEING ALSO THE FULL STORY OF THE SHADOW'S FLIGHT
The whole of Allegra's document was never made public. Before it was read even by those concerned they heard from Nancy how, when she had run from the window of the boathouse, it was Allegra who had reappeared there, she whose red hair Gumama had glimpsed through the smoke and she whom Alieni had found courage to shoot. Afterwards they got from Denny the story of his venture: how he had guessed that, on leaving the Tombs, he would, in his own person, be kept a prisoner by his Italian hosts till he was got out of the country; and how he had therefore persuaded Filippi Alieni to change places with him—Filippi to be carried to Allegra and he to receive at the meeting of the Camorra a message that would take him to Nicola, to the hiding of the Arm of Justice and to Nancy Cornish. What must forever sicken Denny to think of was that hour in the boathouse when Nancy might have yielded and taken the laudanum that Mrs. Pascoe had finally secured, before he could get to her. Nancy's eyes were upon him, regarding him fixedly and strangely. With the vividness of his remembrance he broke off to question her. "How, at such a time, among such dangers, did you dare to throw it away?"
"Why, I had to! No matter what! I had to live till the last minute. The letter was gone. I was your life. I was the only one who knew!"
He dropped his face into her lap with a strange laugh. By and by, they turned to the story of Allegra.
That great donkey of a Ten Euyck wishes me to write this. He says it is for his protection, but I know well enough what it is for. It is a net to catch a peacock—to whom he is welcome. He will never bray about me—this is two-edged; it would avenge me. It is a pity none will ever read it, for it is a good story and I should like every one to know about me. Then, too, sometimes, I almost think that when I am far away and sheltered with my friends, I will send word of it to high places for his sake. For I shall be always in torment if they kill him. That is, if by then there shall be no Nancy Cornish. To send him, free, to the arms of another woman—no, that would be a little too much!
I am a remarkable girl. It has taken to crush me the same as to crush Napoleon—bad luck. My bad luck began when I was born, with the two colors of my eyes. Thus a mark was put upon me, keeping me always in holes and corners unless I would be known, and making most men, who love me by nature, growing in time to weary of my face. If it had not been for the blue eye and the brown, my mother would never have noticed, among the children in the park, the American baby with the fair down upon its head who, when she came to look at it, was made with a shaped face like mine, and who also had a brown eye and a blue. She would never have made friends with the nurse and learned how the child was named Allegra Hope, and how the rich Americans had been married but four months before it was born, and were to wait in Italy till it could be brought home a year younger than it was. This the nurse had picked up, not being supposed to speak much English. And then came the telegram to come home, somebody was dying. And at the same time the nurse was sick, and there was no one with whom to leave the child. And then the nurse brings forth her friend who has always showed so fond of the child, and there is rejoicing because she is American, and the English doctor says she is healthy and the child is left with her. It is treated well; it grows; it grows more and more like me, who am but one year the older, so that all laugh to see us, and I am more like that other mother than my own, showing in what class it would have been just I should be born. And the old creature in America does not die, but hangs and hangs, and money is always sent for the baby, and by and by when it is three years old it catches the fever and it dies. And the English doctor is to write to the parents, but he does not write—he does an injury to one of the great clan of the Camorra and he writes no more. And I grow every day more beautiful, more strong, more strange to have sprung out of the mud, and the money keeps coming and coming; but that the dead one was fair in the head, and I am red like the sun, there is no great difference from what she might have been, and that she is dead and buried and the money spent and spent on me, is never told. But they there in America, thinking to be gone but a month at most, never said there was a daughter, so they know not how, now, one is to be produced.