New life had been created within him, new hope, new aspirations. A moment before he had looked upon that tiny tube with its fatal tabloids as the only means by which he could escape his enemies, but now he laughed to himself as he placed it in a drawer of the writing-table—laughed at his own cowardice.
He never dreamed that he had been saved by Mary’s self-sacrifice. The incident, as related by Ricci over the telephone, was curious and mysterious. The letter handed to the man who had risen to denounce him had evidently contained something which prevented him making the charges, but what it was he could not imagine.
To him the whole affair was a complete mystery, which he left to Vito Ricci to unravel and report.
When his wife and the girls returned, they found him idling on the terrace beneath the pretty arbour from which spread that glorious view of the Arno valley up to Florence. He was a changed man from an hour before—that hour when he had come face to face with ruin and death. By the mysterious turn which events had taken a new life had suddenly opened to him. The blow they intended to aim at him had apparently been abandoned, even though all preparations had been made. The reason was an utter enigma.
He laughed merrily with Mary and the English girls as they came along the terrace where he was sitting idly smoking a cigar, inquiring where they had been and how they had found the lady they had visited.
All three began to chatter, as was their wont, while Her Excellency, fatigued after the drive, entered the house to rest before dinner. She, however, did not fail to notice her husband’s unusual good-humour, for of late he had been thoughtful and depressed, silent and moody when in her presence, and apparently full of serious state affairs.
The instant Mary saw her father’s countenance she read the truth. She had left the villa well knowing—through Dubard, who had sent her word in secret—that the blow was to be dealt that afternoon. She knew all that her father was suffering, and she feared the worst, even though she had made that compact with the man she suspected and despised. She had dreaded to return lest some hideous tragedy should have occurred, and all the time she was absent she had reproached herself that she had not remained at his side to support and encourage him in face of the threatened peril.
But the danger was over. He had no doubt received word over the telephone, for he was his own old self again, and began chaffing Violet Walters, the blue-eyed daughter of the London barrister, regarding a young lieutenant of the bersaglieri, an aristocrat of Florence, who had dined with them on the previous evening, and towards whom she had been very much attracted.
“It is really too bad!” declared the English girl, blushing to her eyes. “You declare that I’m in love with every good-looking man, and I’m sure I’m not.”
“We Italians always find English girls very charming,” His Excellency said, smiling. “That is why I married an Englishwoman myself,” whereat the two Fry girls, pale-faced and insipid, tittered to themselves.