In any case, whether she became mine or not, I loved her with my whole heart; and to know that I could love again, in spite of all the torture of the past, was in itself both comfort and delight.
Chapter Twenty.
Walter Wyman Rejoins me.
That night I slept little, my mind being full of thoughts of the evening’s adventure. Before my eyes I had constantly that pale, tragic face, just as, previously, visions of the countenance of the woman I had seen in the prior’s dim study in Florence seemed ever before me. Was it by intuition that I knew that these two women were destined to influence my life to a far greater degree than any woman had done before? I think it must have been; for while I loved the one, I held the other in a constant, indefinable terror. Why, I know not until this day—not even now that I am sitting here calmly chronicling all that occurred to me in those wild days of ardent love, reckless adventure, and impenetrable mystery.
At noon Walter Wyman unexpectedly walked into my room with a cheery greeting, and, throwing himself down upon the couch in the window that looked over the sea, exclaimed, “Well, old chap, what does this extraordinary book contain, after all?”
I took the transcript from the place where I had hidden it, and, seating myself on the edge of the table, read it through to him.
“Oh, hang it!” he exclaimed excitedly, when I had finished, “then we may, if we are persevering and careful, actually discover this great treasure!”
“Exactly,” I answered. “My suggestion is that we lose no time in making preliminary observations at the two spots mentioned by the man who hid it from his enemies.”