“And Rome will lose you!” he exclaimed in regret. “At the Countess Bardi’s last night they were discussing it, and everyone expressed sorrow that you should leave them.”
She sighed deeply, and in her eyes he thought he detected the light of tears.
“For many things I shall really not be sorry to leave Rome,” she answered blankly. “Only I wish I were going to live in dear old England. I have no love for Paris, and the artificiality of the Riviera I detest. It is the plague-spot of Europe. What people can really see in it beyond the attraction of gambling I never can understand. The very atmosphere is hateful to anyone with a spark of self-respect.”
They were leaning on the old grey stonework, their faces turned to the darkening valley where wound the Tiber, the centre of the civilisation of all the ages, the great misty void wherein the lights were already beginning to twinkle.
Furtively he glanced at her countenance, and saw upon her white brow a look of deep, resigned despair. He loved her—this beautiful woman who was to sacrifice herself to the man who he knew had entrapped her, and yet whom he dare not denounce for fear of incriminating himself. He, who worshipped her—who loved her in truth and in silence as no man had ever loved a woman—was compelled to stand by and witness the tragedy! Night after night, when he thought of it as he paced his room, he clenched his hands in sheer despair and cried to himself in agony.
Dubard was to be her husband—Jules Dubard, the man who, knowing of his presence in Rome, feared to return to claim her as his wife!
“You are very silent, Miss Mary!” he managed to say at last, watching her pale, beautiful face set away towards the dark valley.
“I was thinking,” she answered, turning slowly, facing him, and looking straight into his eyes.
“Of what?”
“Shall I tell you frankly?”