His ingenuity was unparalleled, and he was, moreover, a friend of her father's bitterest enemy. Therefore, what had she to hope from him?

The attack upon the Minister and his methods was only postponed in order to lure her and her father into a sense of security. What was to prevent the allegation being made after she had given herself to him in marriage? As she walked there in the evening light beneath the high dark pines she fully realised the insecurity of the position. In the end the man Borselli must triumph, and she, with her father, would be equally a victim.

What her father had told her of the incident in the Chamber that afternoon revealed the truth. Dubard had, by his clever scheming, succeeded in postponing the blow until after she had become his wife.

She knew well his intimate friendship with Angelo Borselli, and felt a.s.sured that it was in the interests of the Under-Secretary that he had opened that safe which His Excellency had believed to be closed so effectively to everyone.

"You will seek to retaliate, will you not?" she asked her father suddenly. "You will surely not allow Borselli another opportunity of conspiring against you! He should be removed from office upon some pretext or other."

Her father smiled at her words, and replied--

"It would be easy to retaliate, my dear, but it would be unwise."

"Why? If he remains in office, he may to-morrow, or on some occasion when you least expect it, level a blow that might crush you?"

"I know! I know!" he groaned. "I am not safe by any means. Until Vito discovers what has really occurred I must remain patiently inactive."

"But why not remove Borselli from office? You could surely do that! It is your duty to yourself to do so!"

"Ah! You do not know everything, Mary," answered her father very gravely. "To attempt his dismissal at the present moment would be a most injudicious course. By making charges against him I should also implicate myself. If I spoke a single word to his detriment, it would be suicidal. I should be seeking my own downfall."

"Then, to speak plainly, you are unable to dismiss him?" she said in a low, distinct voice, looking her father straight in the face with a glance of reproach. "You are entirely in that man's hands?"

His Excellency, grave and thoughtful again, nodded in the affirmative, sighed heavily, and then admitted--

"You know the truth, my dear. My secrets are, unfortunately, his?"

And she echoed his sigh with her white lips compressed. She foresaw, alas! that for her there was no hope of escape from that hideous compact she had been compelled to make. She had given herself as the price of her father's honour, the price of his very life, to a man whom she could neither trust nor love--a man who, when it suited his own interests, would break his bond without the slightest compunction, and allow the crushing blow to fall upon her house--a blow that must be fatal to her beloved father, who stood there so grave and thoughtful at her side.

She contemplated the future, but saw in it only a grey, limitless sea of blank despair.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

BILLY GRENFELL IS PHILOSOPHIC.

"Then we must break up the home, I suppose?"

"I suppose so, Billy, much as I regret it. But a fellow has to take advantage of the main chance in his life, you know, and this is mine?"

declared George Macbean, leaning back in his padded chair at the breakfast-table in their high-up old room in Fig Tree Court, Temple.

"I should think so! An appointment in the Italian Ministry of War at such a salary isn't an offer that comes to every man, and you'd be a fool if you didn't accept it. You must have some high official friend whom you've never told me about--eh?" And William Grenfell, barrister-at-law, known as "Billy" to his intimates, with whom Macbean shared chambers, took up his friend's letter and re-read it, asking, "What's the signature? These foreigners sign their names in such an abominable manner that n.o.body can ever read them."

"Angelo Borselli, the Under-Secretary. I met him in the summer, while I was staying with my uncle near Rugby."

"And he offers you a billet like this? By Jove, you're lucky!" And the big, burly, clean-shaven fellow of about thirty-five, one of the ever-increasing briefless brigade, rose and looked out across the quiet courtyard. "You'll throw over that pompous a.s.s Morgan-Mason, won't you?

I wonder how you stood the cad so long."

"Necessity, my dear fellow. It has been writing letters for Morgan-Mason or starve--I preferred the former," remarked Macbean, with a smile.

The old panelled sitting-room, with its well-filled bookcase, its pipe-rack, its threadbare carpet, and its greasy, leather-covered chairs, worn but comfortable, differed but little from any other chambers in that old-world colony of bachelors. Macbean and Grenfell had had diggings together and employed the same laundress for the past three years, the former spruce and smart, mixing with the West End world in which his employer moved, while the latter was a thorough-going Bohemian, eccentric in many ways, unsuccessful, yet nevertheless a man br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with cleverness. They had been fast friends ten years before, and when opportunity had offered to share chambers they had eagerly embraced it.

Billy never had a brief. He idled in the Courts with a dummy brief before him in order to impress the public, but his slender income was mostly derived from contributions to certain critical reviews, who took his "stuff" and paid him badly for it.

George Macbean, though he could so ill afford it, bore the major portion of the expenses of their small household, for he knew well the little reverses of fortune that had been Billy's, and what a good, generous fellow he really was at heart.

Through those three years they had lived together no wry word had ever arisen between them, but this letter which Macbean had received caused them both to ponder.

Grenfell was a man of even temper and full of good-humour. He bubbled over with high spirits, even in the face of actual adversity, while over at the Courts he was recognised as a wit of no mean order. But thought of the breaking up of their little home and their separation filled him with deepest regret.

Macbean realised all that his friend felt, and said simply--

"I'm very sorry to go, Billy. You know that. But what can I do? I must escape my present soul-killing drudgery. You don't know of half the insults I've had to swallow from Morgan-Mason because I happen to be the son of a gentleman."

"I know, old chap; I know well. Of course you must accept this appointment," said the other in a tone of quiet sadness. "I can shift for myself--or at least I hope so."

"To leave you is the only regret I have in leaving England, Billy,"

declared Macbean, taking his friend's hand and grasping it firmly.

But the big fellow, with his eyes fixed before him across the square, remained sad and silent.

The letter had come to George as a complete surprise, reviving within his mind pleasant memories of Orton, of the Minister Morini who had lived incognito, of Borselli, and of Mary most of all. He would, if he accepted, meet them again, and become on friendly terms with the most powerful men in Italy. The offer seemed almost too good to be real.

Had it been the first of April he would have suspected fooling. But he read the big official letter headed "Under-Secretary for War--Rome"

offering him the appointment, and saw that no fraud had been attempted.

Both men filled their pipes mechanically, lit them from the same match, as was their habit, and smoked in silence. Both were too full of regret for mere words. They understood each other, and neither was surprised at the other's heavy thought. Their friendship had been a very close and pleasant one, but in future their lives lay apart. Grenfell regarded it philosophically with a little smile, as was his wont whenever things went wrong with him, while Macbean pondered deeply as to what the future had in store for him.

Before his eyes rose a vision of a lithe and dainty figure in a white dress on the tennis-lawn at Orton, that woman who was so delightfully cosmopolitan, with the slight roll of the r's when she spoke that betrayed her foreign birth--the woman whom rumour had engaged to the young French count upon whom the honest village folk looked with considerable suspicion.

"You'll be glad to leave the service of that hog-merchant," Billy remarked at last, for want of something better to say, "and I congratulate you upon your escape from him. What you've told me in the past is sufficient to show that he only regards you as a kind of superior valet. Had I been you I should have kicked the fellow long ago."

"The pauper may not kick the millionaire, my dear old chap," said Macbean, smiling,--"or at least, if he does he kicks against the p.r.i.c.ks."

"I can't make out how some men get on," remarked Grenfell between the whiffs of his huge pipe. "Why, it seems only the other day that Morgan-Mason had a shop in the Brompton Road, and used to make big splashes with advertis.e.m.e.nts in the cheap papers. I remember my people used to buy their b.u.t.ter there. An editor I know used to laugh over the puff paragraphs he sent out about himself. He's made his money and become a great man all in ten years or so."

"My dear Billy, money makes money," remarked his friend, with a dry laugh. "Society worships wealth nowadays. Such men as Morgan-Mason have coa.r.s.ened and cheapened the very _entourage_ of Court and State.

Let the moneyed creature be ever so vulgar, so illiterate, so vicious, it matters naught. Money-bags are the sole credentials necessary to gain admission to the most exclusive of houses, the House, even to Buckingham Palace itself. Men like Morgan-Mason smile at the poverty of the peerage, and with their wealth buy up heritage, t.i.tle, and acceptance. The borrower is always servant to the lender, and hence our friend has many obsequious servants in what people call smart society."

"And more's the pity! Society must be rotten!" declared Billy emphatically. "I don't know what we're coming to nowadays. I should think that the post of secretary to such an arrant cad must be about the worst office a gentleman can hold. I'd rather earn half-crowns writing paragraphs for the evening papers myself."

"Yes," Macbean admitted, with a sigh, "I shall be very glad to leave his service. I only regret on your account."

"Oh, don't mind me. I'm a failure, dear boy, like lots of others!"

Grenfell declared. "There are dozens in the Temple like myself, chronically hard up and without prospect of success. I congratulate you with all my heart upon your stroke of good fortune. You've waited long enough for your chance, and it has now come to you just when you least expected it. Death and fortune always come unexpectedly: to all of us the former, and to a few of us the latter. But," he added, "this Italian politician--Bore-something--must have taken a violent fancy to you."

"On the contrary, I only met him once or twice," responded Macbean.

"That's what puzzles me. I don't see what object he has in offering me the appointment."

"I do. They want an English secretary who knows Italian well. You'll just fill the post. Foreign Governments make no mistakes in the men they choose, depend upon it. They don't put Jacks-in-office like we do.

Didn't you tell me once that you met the Italian Minister of War?

Perhaps he had a hand in your appointment."