When the count had sat with him that evening making his request, he recollected the strange story Mary had told him regarding the secret examination of his papers. It was curious--so curious and so utterly devoid of motive that he could see no reason in it. Yet if that Frenchman had really discovered certain things concealed behind that green-painted steel door, it was to his interest that he should become his son-in-law and so preserve the secret.

Yes, he was anxious to see his daughter married to that man to whom he had taken such a personal liking, yet he affected to leave the decision entirely in her own hands.

She spoke at last in a hard, tuneless voice, as though her youth and life were slowly dying just as surely as the day was fading.

"If it is your wish, father, that I should become his wife, you may give him an affirmative answer. But--"

And she suddenly burst into a torrent of hot tears.

"Ah no! no!" her father cried, touching her pale cheek tenderly. "No.

Do not give way, dear. I have no desire that you should marry this man if you yourself do not really love him. Perhaps your mother has been mistaken, but by various signs and looks that both of us noticed in Rome and in England, we believed that you entertained for him a warm affection."

"I know that my marriage would please you," she said. "Mother gave me to understand that two months ago, therefore,"--and she paused as though she could not utter the words which were to decide her fate--"therefore I am willing to accept him."

"Ah, Mary!" he exclaimed quickly, his face brightening, for her decision aroused hope within him. "I need not tell you what happiness your words bring to me. I confess to you that I have hoped that you would give your consent, for I would rather see you the wife of the count, with wealth and position, than married to any other man I know. He loves you--of that I am convinced. Has he never told you so?"

She did not answer for a few moments. She was reflecting upon that scene in the little salon in Rome when he had revealed himself to her in his true colours.

"Yes," she answered at last in that same hard, colourless voice. "He told me so once."

He attributed her blank, despairing look to the natural emotion of the moment. It was the great crisis of her young life, for she was deciding her future. He was in ignorance of how already she had made the compact with Dubard--of how she had decided to sacrifice herself in order to save him.

Her father, in ignorance of the truth of how n.o.bly she was acting, went on to a.n.a.lyse the young Frenchman's good qualities and relate to her all that he had learnt regarding him.

"His youth has been no better and no worse than that of any young man brought up in Paris," he said, "yet from the information I have gathered it seems that he has sown his wild oats long ago, and for the past couple of years he has given up racing and gambling and all such vices of youth, and has become a perfect model of what a young man should be.

Men who know him in Paris speak highly of him as a man of real grit--a man with a future before him. You do not think, Mary," he went on, "that I should have welcomed him as a guest at my table if I were not sure that he was a man worthy the name of friend?"

"Ah!" she sighed, "you have, my dear father, sometimes been disappointed in your friendships, I fear. Angelo Borselli, for instance, has been your friend through many years."

"Angelo!" he exclaimed impatiently. "Yes, yes, I know. But I am speaking of Jules--of the man you have consented to marry."

A slight hardness showed at the corners of her mouth at mention of the man who had so cleverly entrapped her. She knew that escape was impossible. He could place her father in a position of triumph over his enemies, and in return claimed herself. Ah! if she could only speak the truth; if she could only take her father into her confidence, and show him the reason she so readily gave her consent to a union that was odious to her! Yet she knew that if she gave him the slightest suspicion of her self-sacrifice he would withhold his consent, and the result would be dire disaster.

She knew her father's brave, unflinching n.o.bility of character. Rather than he would allow her to marry a man whom she hated and mistrusted, he would face ruin--even death.

And for that reason she, pale and silent, gazing into the rising mists, accepted the man who had made her father's honour the price of her own life.

"Tell the count," she said, in a voice broken by emotion, "tell him that I am ready to be his wife."

And her father, gladdened at what he, in his ignorance, believed to be a wise decision, bent to her and pressed his lips to her cheek with fatherly affection, in a vain endeavour to kiss her tears away.

They were not tears of emotion, but of a sweet and tender woman's blank despair.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

TELLS THE TRUTH.

On the following afternoon, in consequence of a telegram, the Minister of War drove into Florence, and met Vito Ricci at the club.

He seldom took the train to Florence because, on account of his position, the obsequious officials treated him with so much ceremony.

He was a modest man, who at heart hated all bowing officialdom, much preferring to drive through the rich vineyards of the Arno valley to being received at the station by all the officials and having the ordinary traffic stopped on his arrival.

The Florence Club, an inst.i.tution run upon English lines, is one of the most exclusive in Europe. It occupies the whole of a huge flat in the new Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele, handsomely appointed, with fine s.p.a.cious rooms overlooking the busy centre of Florentine life. Its members are mostly men of the highest social standing in Italy, together with a select few of rich English and Americans, to whom membership gives the hall-mark of rank in that complex cosmopolitan world. In winter and spring its rooms are well-filled and its bridge-tables are well patronised, but in summer and autumn, when all Florence is away in the mountains or at the sea, it is deserted and handed over to the care of a couple of waiters, who scarcely see a member from one week's end to the other.

The Deputy Ricci had telegraphed that he had no time to come up to San Donato, as he could only spend three hours in Florence; therefore the club was the most convenient place where they could meet and consult undisturbed. The urgency of Ricci's message had aroused the other's apprehensions that something was amiss.

"Ah!" cried the deputy in relief as the Minister entered the small card-room where he stood impatiently awaiting him. "I began to fear that my telegram had not reached you." And the pair having shaken hands, Ricci went to the door and locked it.

Then when they crossed to the window, which gave a view of the wide-open piazza with its colossal statue in the centre, Ricci said--

"I left Rome this morning at nine, and I return by the express at six.

I came here purposely to see you."

"Has something occurred?" asked His Excellency quickly, glancing at the dark face of the Piedmontese lawyer who sat in the Chamber of Deputies and made politics his living.

"Yes," was Ricci's answer in a low half-whisper. "You recollect our conversation when we met last--about the impending crisis?"

"Yes. You promised, for certain considerations, to turn the political tide in my favour."

"I have tried to do so, but have failed," said the other in a deep, serious voice.

"Failed?" gasped the Minister as, in an instant, all the light died out of his face.

"The Opposition is too strong," he explained. "Borselli has so completely won over the Socialists that he can cause them to dance to any tune he pleases."

Camillo Morini's face was blanched. Ruin was before him--ruin, utter and complete. He had trusted in Vito, feeling confidence in that adventurer's ingenuity and influence. More than once this adventurer had cleverly turned the tide of popular thought, for certain journals were always open to write what the popular deputy for Asti dictated, and of course received substantial bribes for so doing. Yet at this most crucial moment he had failed!

"I made you the payment on condition that you were successful in rendering me the service," remarked His Excellency hoa.r.s.ely.

"I know, I know," was the other's response. "I have brought back the money to repay you." And he took from his leather wallet a banker's draft, which he handed to the Minister.

The tall, thin, refined-looking man stood motionless, his eyes fixed for a moment upon the slip of paper thus offered back to him. He recognised that the efforts of his secret agent, whose services had so often been invaluable, were of no avail, that his doom was sealed.

"No. Keep it, Vito," he said hoa.r.s.ely, with a dry, hollow laugh, that sarcasm born of desperation. "You have earned it--keep it."

The other raised his shoulders in regret, and then, with a word of thanks, replaced the draft in his pocket.

There was a long silence. A company of _bersaglieri_, those well-set-up men with their round hats and c.o.c.k's plumes, were crossing the piazza, marching to the fanfare of trumpets, and behind them came a company of the Misericordia, that mediaeval confraternity disguised in their long black gowns with slits for their eyes, pa.s.sing with their ambulance on an errand of mercy.

Morini gazed upon that weird, tragic procession hurrying across the square, and within him there arose grave and morbid reflections. He had worked for Italy, had given his whole soul to the reform of the army and the perfecting of the defences of the nation he had loved so well. It was more the fault of the system than his own that he had been guilty of dishonesty. The other members of the Cabinet were equally guilty of misappropriating the national funds. They were, indeed, compelled to do so in order to keep up their position, to maintain and pay the secret agents they employed, and to bribe the men of influence from seeking to expose their thefts.

Surely poor strangled Italy under the regime of his lamented Majesty King Umberto was in very evil case!

"I have trusted in you, Vito," the Minister said simply, when he again found tongue, for the ugly truth had utterly staggered him.

"And I have done my best, your Excellency," was the other's reply. "In the Camera and out of it, I have worked unceasingly in order to try and win you back into favour, but Borselli is far too strong. He has influential friends, who believe they will obtain appointments and money if he is in office as Minister of War. Hence they are working by every means to place him in power."

"And to cause my downfall and ruin!" murmured the unhappy man, staring blankly down at the piazza, still dazzlingly white in the hot sun-glare.