"And Rome will lose you!" he exclaimed in regret. "At the Countess Bardi's last night they were discussing it, and everyone expressed sorrow that you should leave them."

She sighed deeply, and in her eyes he thought he detected the light of tears.

"For many things I shall really not be sorry to leave Rome," she answered blankly. "Only I wish I were going to live in dear old England. I have no love for Paris, and the artificiality of the Riviera I detest. It is the plague-spot of Europe. What people can really see in it beyond the attraction of gambling I never can understand. The very atmosphere is hateful to anyone with a spark of self-respect."

They were leaning on the old grey stonework, their faces turned to the darkening valley where wound the Tiber, the centre of the civilisation of all the ages, the great misty void wherein the lights were already beginning to twinkle.

Furtively he glanced at her countenance, and saw upon her white brow a look of deep, resigned despair. He loved her--this beautiful woman who was to sacrifice herself to the man who he knew had entrapped her, and yet whom he dare not denounce for fear of incriminating himself. He, who worshipped her--who loved her in truth and in silence as no man had ever loved a woman--was compelled to stand by and witness the tragedy!

Night after night, when he thought of it as he paced his room, he clenched his hands in sheer despair and cried to himself in agony.

Dubard was to be her husband--Jules Dubard, the man who, knowing of his presence in Rome, feared to return to claim her as his wife!

"You are very silent, Miss Mary!" he managed to say at last, watching her pale, beautiful face set away towards the dark valley.

"I was thinking," she answered, turning slowly, facing him, and looking straight into his eyes.

"Of what?"

"Shall I tell you frankly?"

"Certainly," he said, smiling. "You are always frank with me, are you not?"

"Well, I was thinking of a man who was once my friend--a man whom I believe you have cause to remember," she replied in a meaning tone--"a man named Felice Solaro!"

"Felice Solaro!" he gasped, quickly starting back, his cheeks blanching as he repeated the name. "If Felice Solaro is a friend of yours, Miss Mary, then he has probably told you the truth--the ghastly truth?" he cried hoa.r.s.ely, as his face fell. "He has revealed to you the mystery concerning General Sazarac! Tell me--tell me what allegation has he made against me?"

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN.

AT ORTON COURT AGAIN.

George Macbean stood at the window of the rector's little study at Thornby, gazing out across the level lawn.

Outside, the typical old-fashioned English garden, bright in the June sunlight, was a wealth of flowers, while the old house itself was embowered in honeysuckle and roses. Beyond the tall box-hedge stood the ancient church-tower, square and covered with ivy, round which the rooks were lazily circling against the blue and cloudless sky. Through the open diamond-paned window came the fragrant perfume of the flowers, with a breath of that open English air that was to him refreshing after the dust and turmoil of the Eternal City.

"Getting tired of being a cosmopolitan--eh?" laughed the big, good-humoured man, turning to him. "I thought you would."

"No. I'm not altogether tired," he answered. "But a change is beneficial to us all, you know. I suppose my wire surprised you?"

"Yes, and no. Of course I heard three weeks ago that the Morinis were returning to Orton for the wedding, and I naturally expected you to put in an appearance. What a lucky dog you are to have got such an appointment! And yet you grumble at your bread and cheese. Look at me!

Two sermons, Sunday school, religious instruction, mothers' meeting, coal club--same thing each week, year in, year out--and can't afford to do the swagger and keep a curate! I never get a change, except now and then a day with the hounds or a dinner from some charitably disposed person. But what about the marriage? We all thought it was to be in Italy. He's French and she's Italian, so to be married in England they must have had no end of formalities."

"Mary is a Protestant, remember--and a Cabinet Minister can do anything--so they are to be married in Orton church," he added in a strange tone, his eyes turned towards the sunlit lawn, over which old Hayes, the groom-gardener, was running the machine.

"I ought to have called to congratulate her, but as you know I only returned last night from doing duty over at Eye. I ought to drive over after tea. Is the count there?"

"No. When we left Rome I came straight to London on some urgent private business of His Excellency's, and they remained a week in Paris, where Dubard was--to complete the trousseau, I suppose."

"It is one of Mary's whims to be married by special licence by the Canon at Orton, I've heard. Is that so?" asked Sinclair.

The young man nodded. He had no desire to discuss the tragedy, for he knew well that the marriage was a loveless one, and although his own affection had been unspoken, he was beside himself with grief and despair. He, who knew the truth, yet dare not utter one single word to save her!

For ten days he had been in London, staying at his old chambers with Billy Grenfell, and transacting business at the Italian Consulate-General connected with the formalities of the marriage, formalities which were expedited because his employer was Minister of War. Paragraphs had crept into the press, the ladies' papers had published Mary's portrait, and the marriage, because it was to take place in a village church, was called a "romantic" one.

George Macbean smiled bitterly when he recollected how much more of tragedy than romance there was in it. He adored her; for months her face had been the very sun of his existence, and in those recent weeks they had become so closely a.s.sociated that even her mother had looked somewhat askance at the secretary's attentions, to which she had seemed in no way averse. A bond of sincerest sympathy had drawn them together.

She was in no way given to flirtation; not even her bitterest enemies, those jealous women who were always ready to create scandal and invent untruths about her, could charge her with that. No. She had accepted George's warm, platonic friendship in the spirit it was given, at the same time ever struggling to stifle down that strange and startling allegation which Felice Solaro had made against him.

The very world seemed united against her, for even in George Macbean, the man whom she had believed to be the ideal of honesty and uprightness, she dared not put her absolute trust.

"The Court is full of visitors," George remarked a few minutes later, "so I thought I'd come here and stay. I can drive over there every day.

Next week we go back to Rome again for another month, and then his Excellency returns on leave to England."

"You're cultivating quite an official air, my dear boy," exclaimed the rector, refilling his pipe and glad to change the subject of conversation. "Your letters to me headed `Ministry of War--First Division' are most imposing doc.u.ments. I'd like to have a trot round Rome with you. I've never been farther than Boulogne-- seven-and-sixpence worth of sea-sickness from Folkestone--and I don't think much of foreign parts, if that's a specimen of them."

Macbean smiled at his uncle's bluff remarks, and then fell to giving him some description of the Minister's palace in Rome, and of his position in the society of the Eternal City.

After early tea Hayes brought round the trap, and the two men drove over to Orton Court, where, on entering, there were signs everywhere for the coming event, which, now that it was known who Camillo Morini really was, created much excitement throughout the countryside. The decision that the marriage should take place in England had been quite a sudden one--but, curiously enough, it had been at Dubard's own instigation.

George had gathered that fact, and it held him mystified. The bridegroom had some hidden reason in making that suggestion.

The instant the rector saw Mary he recognised what a change had taken place in her. Within himself he asked whether it was due to the secret that his nephew had confessed to him. Standing in the long, old-fashioned drawing-room, with its big bowls of roses, he apologised for not calling earlier, and congratulated her; whereupon she responded in a quiet, inert voice--

"It is very kind of you, Mr Sinclair--very kind indeed. I don't know if you've had a card, it has all been done in such a rush, but you will come on Thursday, won't you?"

He accepted with pleasure, and glancing at his nephew, saw that the young man's face told its own sad tale.

"Has not the count arrived?" asked Macbean of her.

"No. I had a wire this morning. He leaves Paris to-night, so he'll be here after luncheon to-morrow."

Leaving Sinclair with Mary, George went along to the study, where he found the Minister busy with some important despatches which had just arrived by special messenger from the Italian Emba.s.sy in London, therefore he was compelled to seat himself at the table opposite and a.s.sist his chief.

So long did the correspondence take that the rector and his nephew were invited to remain to dine informally, George being placed, to his great delight, next the unhappy woman whom he so dearly loved. It was the last time he would dine with her, he told himself during the meal, and through his brain crowded memories of those happy hours spent at her side amid the brilliant glitter of the salons in Rome when, although hundreds were around him, he had only eyes for her, and her alone. And he, by that relentless fate that held him silent, was compelled to stand by and watch her n.o.ble self-sacrifice!

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT.

"SILENCE FOR SILENCE!"

On the following night, as eleven o'clock slowly chimed from the pointed steeple of Orton church, George Macbean was walking along the narrow path that led from the highroad to Rugby first across the wide cornfields and then through the small dark wood until he reached the river bank. Here he halted at a low stile which barred the path, and waited.

Before him ran the river grey and placid beneath the clouded moon, behind him the pitch darkness of the covert where hounds were always certain of finding a fox or two in the course of the season. The cry of a night bird, the rustling of a rat among the rushes, and the distant howl of a dog up at the village were the only sounds that broke the quiet. Not a breath of wind ruffled the surface of the deep stream, not a leaf was stirred until of a sudden there came the sound of footsteps, and the dark figure of a man loomed up against the misty grey.

"Eh bien?" inquired the man in French as he approached; for the new-comer was none other than Jules Dubard. He was staying at an hotel in Rugby, and they had met that afternoon under Morini's roof, greatly to the Frenchman's surprise. But he had managed to conceal his chagrin, to greet the secretary so that none should suspect the truth, and now, at Macbean's suggestion, had come forth to meet him alone.

The pair were once again face to face.

"And well?" George asked, speaking in the same language the Frenchman had used. "It is I who should demand the reason of your presence here, m'sieur."

"Ah, my dear friend," replied the other, "this is a meeting very fortunate for me, for it enables me to say something which I have long wanted to say."