Cecilia led the way to the little sofa in the corner farthest from the boudoir. It was there that Guido had asked her to be his wife, and it was there that she had waited for him a few hours ago to tell him that she could not marry him. She took her accustomed place, but Lamberti drew forward a light chair and sat down facing her. He felt that he got an advantage by the position, and that to a small extent it placed him outside of her personal atmosphere. At such a moment he could not afford to neglect the least circ.u.mstance which might help him. As for what he should say, he had thought of many speeches while he was in the street, but he did not remember any of them now, nor even that he had seemed to hear himself speaking them.

"Why did you write that letter?" he asked, after a moment's pause.

Cecilia looked up quickly, surprised by the direct question, and then gazed into his face in silence. She had confessed to herself that she loved him, but she had not known how much, nor what it would mean to sit so near him and hear him asking the question that had only one answer.

His eyes were steady and brave, when she looked at them, but not so hard as she had expected. In earlier days she had always felt that they could command her and even send her to sleep if he chose, but she did not feel that now. The question had been asked suddenly and directly, but not harshly. She did not answer it.

"Did Guido show you my letter?" she asked in a low voice.

But she was sure of the reply before it came.

"No. He told me that you broke off your engagement with him very suddenly. I suppose you have done so because you think you do not care for him enough to marry him, but he did not tell me so. Is that it?"

Cecilia nodded quickly, folded her hands nervously upon her knees, and looked across the room.

"Yes," she said. "That is it. I do not love him."

"Yet you like him very much," Lamberti answered. "I have often seen you together, and I am sure you do."

"I am very fond of him. If I had not been foolish, he might always have been my best friend."

"I do not think you were foolish. You could hardly do better than marry your best friend, I think. He is mine, and I know what his friendship is worth. You will find out, as I have, that if he is sometimes indolent and slow to make up his mind, he never changes afterwards. You may be separated from him for a year or two, but you will find him always the same when you meet him again, always gentle, always true, always the most honourable of men."

"He is that, and more," Cecilia said softly. "I like everything about him."

"And he loves you," Lamberti continued. "He loves you as men do not often love the women they marry, and as you, with your fortune, may never be loved again."

"I know it. I feel it. It makes it all the harder."

"But you thought you loved him, I am sure. You would not have accepted him otherwise."

"Yes. Thank you for believing that much of me," Cecilia answered humbly.

"I thought I loved him."

"You sent for him this morning, because you had suddenly persuaded yourself that you had made a great mistake. When you heard that he could not come, you wrote the letter, and when it was written you sent it off as fast as you could, for fear that you would not send it at all. Is that true?"

"Yes. That is just what happened. How did you know?"

"Listen to me, please, for d'Este's sake. If you had not felt that you were perhaps making another mistake, should you have been in such a hurry to send the letter?"

Cecilia hesitated an instant.

"It was a hard thing to do. That is why I made haste to get it over. I knew it would hurt him, but I thought it was wrong to deceive him for even a few hours, after I had understood myself."

"It would have been kinder to wait until you could see him, and break it gently to him. He was ill when he got your letter, and it made him worse."

"How is he?" Cecilia asked quietly, a little ashamed of not having enquired already. "It is nothing very serious, is it? Only a little influenza, he said."

"He is not dangerously ill, but he had a good deal of fever this afternoon. You will not see him for a week, I fancy. That is the reason why I am here. I want you to postpone your decision, at least until he is well and you have talked with him."

"But I have decided already. I shall take all the blame. I will tell my friends that it is all my fault."

"Is that the only answer you can give me for him?"

"Yes. What can I say? I do not love him. I never shall."

"What if something happens?"

"What?"

"Suppose that I go to him to-morrow morning, and tell him what you say, and that when I have left him there alone with his servant, as I must in the course of the day, he locks the door, and in a fit of despair puts a bullet through his head? What then?"

Cecilia leaned forward, wide-eyed and frightened.

"You do not really believe that he would kill himself?" she cried in a low voice.

"I think it is more than likely," Lamberti answered quietly enough.

"D'Este is the most good-hearted, charitable, honourable fellow in the world, but he believes in nothing beyond death. We differ about those questions, and never talk about them; but he has often spoken of killing himself when he has been depressed. I remember that we had an argument about it on the very afternoon when we both first met you."

"Was he so unhappy then?" Cecilia asked with nervous interest.

"Perhaps. At all events I know that he has a bad habit of keeping a loaded revolver in the drawer of the table by his bed, in case he should have a fancy to go out of the world, and it is very well known that people who talk of suicide, and think of it a great deal, often end in that way. When I left him this afternoon I gave him some hope that you might at least prolong the engagement for a few months, and give yourself a chance to grow more fond of him. If I have to tell him that you flatly refuse, I am really afraid that it may be the end of him."

Cecilia leaned back in the sofa and closed her eyes, confronted by the awful doubt that Lamberti might be right. He was certainly in earnest, for he was not the man to say such a thing merely for the sake of frightening her. She could not reason any more.

"Please, please do not say that!" she said piteously, but scarcely above her breath.

"What else can I say? It is quite true. You must have some very strong reason for refusing to reconsider your decision, since your refusal may cost as much as that."

"But men do not kill themselves for love in real life!"

"I am sorry to say they do," Lamberti answered. "A fellow-officer of mine shot himself on board the ship I was last with for exactly the same reason. He left a letter so that there should be no suspicion that he had done it to escape from any dishonour."

"How awful!"

"I repeat that you must have a very strong reason indeed for not waiting a couple of months. In that time you may learn to like Guido better--or he may learn to love you less."

"He may change," Cecilia said, not resenting the rather rough speech; "I never shall."

Lamberti fixed his eyes on her.

"There is only one reason that could make you so sure about yourself,"

he said. "If I thought you were like most women, I would tell you that you were heartless, faithless, and cruel, as well as capricious, and that you were risking a man's life and soul for a scruple of conscience, or, worse than that, for a pa.s.sing fancy."

"Oh, please do not say such things of me!" She spoke in great distress.

"I do not. I know that you are honest and true, and are trying to do right, but that you have made a mistake which you can mend if you will.

Take my advice. There is only one possible reason to account for what you have done. You think that you love some other man better than d'Este."

Cecilia started and stared at him.