“You always speak so strangely and so dismally,” he said. “You will never tell me anything of the reason you are so irrevocably bound to Zertho. In the old days at Stratfield you always took me into your confidence.”
“Yes, yes,” she answered, quickly. “I would tell you everything if I could—but I dare not. You would hate me.”
“Hate you. Why?”
“You could no longer grasp my hand or kiss my lips,” she faltered. “No, you must not, you shall not know, for I could not bear that you of all men should spurn me, leave me, and remember me only with loathing. I could not bear it. I would rather kill myself.”
She was trembling, her breast rose and fell with the exertion of the steep ascent, and her face was blanched and haggard. Her attitude, whenever he referred to Zertho, always mystified and puzzled him. Had she not spoken vaguely of some strange crime?
Yet he loved her with all the strength of his being, and the sight of her terrible anxiety and dread pained him beyond measure. He was ready and willing to do anything to assist and liberate her from the mysterious thraldom, nevertheless she preserved a silence dogged and complete. He strove to discern a way out of the complicated situation, but could discover none.
“Have you ever been to the Villa Fortunée before?” he asked presently, after a long and painful silence, when they had crossed the sunny square before the Prince’s palace, and were strolling along the road which skirted the rock with the small blue bay to their left and the white houses of Monte Carlo gleaming beyond.
“No,” she answered. “I had no idea Mariette, ‘The Golden Hand,’ lived here. She used always to live at the little bijou villa in the Rue Cotta at Nice.”
“The Golden Hand!” he exclaimed, laughing. “Why do you call her that?”
“It is the name she has earned at the tables because of her extraordinary good fortune,” Liane answered. “Her winnings at trente-et-quarante are said to have been greater perhaps than any other player during the past few years.”