“Ah!” she cried aloud. “You, Nino, who have treated me with this suspicion and contempt—you who have brought me here among your people and deserted me—can never know how much I have sacrificed for your sake. Nor can you ever know how fondly I love you. Why have I acted with all this secrecy must for ever remain a mystery. You have left me,” she added in a hoarse, strained voice, half inaudible on account of her sobs—“you have left me now; but some day when I am free—when I can show you things in their true light—you will regret that to-night you have broken a woman’s heart.” And she bent forward and gave way to a flood of hot, passionate tears.
Fully half an hour she sat plunged in a deep melancholy, but at last she rose and crossed the room unsteadily. Her fair brow bore a look of determination, her face was hard set, and in her tear-stained eyes was an expression of strength of will.
“Yes,” she murmured, “I’ll risk all. My life cannot be rendered more hopeless, more wretched, than it now is in this atmosphere of doubt and suspicion.” Then she bathed her face in eau-de-Cologne, sniffed her smelling-salts, rubbed her cheeks with a towel to take away their ghastly pallor, and assuming her travelling coat, with its wide fur collar and cuffs, which, being long, hid her dress, she put on her hat and went out.
She went up to one of the porters in the hall hastily, and said—
“Prendetimi una vettura.”
The man looked at her in surprise, unable to understand her. She pointed outside to where several hansoms were passing.
“Oh! a cab you want, miss!” he cried, the fact suddenly dawning upon him; and as he touched the electric bell which calls cabs from the rank, she handed him the slip of paper she had that morning received.
The porter read it, descended the steps with her, handed her into the cab, and, having shouted the address to the man, she was driven rapidly away to St. James’s Street, where she ascended to the second floor, and found upon a door a brass plate bearing Captain Tristram’s name.
She rang the bell, and in response the smart, soldier-servant Smayle appeared, and looked at her in surprise.
“The Signor Capitano Tristram?” she inquired.