"I mean that she is suffering, day after day, without relief."

"You must be wrong," replied Armstrong, decisively. "She was a little hurt over something I said to her night before last, and I mean to straighten that out; but if there was anything beyond that, I should surely have known of it."

"You are the last one she would speak to about it," Uncle Peabody said, gravely.

"Why are you so mysterious? Perhaps you are referring to my work at the library. Has Helen been talking to you about that?" Armstrong demanded, suspiciously.

"Helen has said nothing to me, and does not even know that I have noticed anything," said Uncle Peabody, emphatically.

"Which shows you how little there is to your fears," retorted Armstrong, relieved.

"I have no wish to prove anything, Jack," continued Uncle Peabody. "The fact remains, whatever the cause, that Helen is fast getting herself into a condition where she will be an easy victim for this accursed Italian malarial fever. I sound the warning note; I can do no more."

Armstrong was unconvinced. "I never looked upon you as an alarmist before," he replied, glancing at his watch. "I am late for my work this morning, but when I return I will question Helen carefully and arrive at the root of the difficulty."

"I hope you succeed," replied Uncle Peabody, feelingly.

Helen came down-stairs in the afternoon and found the villa deserted.

Instinctively she sought the garden, walking out upon the terrace, where she leaned against one of the ancient pillars, her gaze extending to the familiar view of the river and the city beyond. She thought of the dramas which had been enacted within the walls of the weather-stained palaces whose roofs identified their location. These had been more spectacular, and had won their place in history, but she questioned whether they could have been more tragical than the one she was now pa.s.sing through. Surely it was as easy, she told herself, to meet intrigue and opposition, as to be confronted with the necessity of decreeing one's own sentence and then carrying it into execution.

"Oh, Jack!--my husband!" her heart again cried out in its pain. "Why did you come into my life, since I never belonged in yours, only to give me a taste of what might have been!"

Her reveries were interrupted by Annetta's announcement that the Contessa Morelli was at the door, in her motor-car. Glad of any diversion, Helen hastened to welcome her, and returned with her to the garden.

"I am so glad to find you in," the contessa remarked, with evident sincerity, as they seated themselves in the shade. "In the first place, I really wanted to see you, and, in the second, my dear Morelli is in his most aggravating mood to-day, and we should have come to blows if I had not run away."

"How unfortunate that your husband suffers so!" Helen replied, sympathetically.

"It certainly is unfortunate for me."

"And for him, too, I imagine," insisted Helen, smiling.

The contessa was unwilling to yield the point. "I claim all the sympathy," she said, with finality. "When a man has had sixty years of fun in getting the gout, he has no right to complain."

"Sixty years--" began Helen, in surprise.

"Yes, my dear," replied the contessa, complacently. "I belong to the second crop. He was a widower with a t.i.tle and position, and I had money; but I must admit that we were both moderately disappointed.

However, marriage is always a disappointment, and I consider myself fortunate that things are no worse."

Helen felt the color come to her face as the contessa's words recalled her own sorrow, which for the moment she had forgotten. The freedom with which her guest spoke of her personal affairs repelled her, yet there was a subtle attraction which Helen could not help feeling.

"You are very pessimistic on the subject of marriage," she ventured.

"Not at all," the contessa insisted, calmly. "Husbands are selfish brutes, all of them; but they are absolutely necessary to give one respectability. Perhaps your husband is an exception, but I doubt it.

Where is he now?"

"He is at the library," Helen faltered, resenting the contessa's question, but forced to an answer by the suddenness with which it was put.

"At the library?" repeated the contessa, interrogatively. "That is where he was on the afternoon of the Londi reception. Is he there all the time?"

"A good deal of the time," admitted Helen. "He is engaged upon an important literary work."

"In which he takes a great interest and you none at all. There you have it--selfishness, the chief attribute of man!"

"It does look like it," Helen answered, concluding that she had better move in the line of the least resistance. "But in this particular case I am very much interested in my husband's work, even though I am unable to enter into it."

"That is not interest," corrected the contessa--"it is sacrifice; and that is woman's chief attribute."

"I see you are determined to include my husband in your general category."

"I must, because he is a man. But my reason for doing this is to convince you that it is the thing to be expected. Unless you learn that lesson early in your married life, my dear, you will be miserably unhappy. I am certain that the old Persian proverb, 'Blessed is he who expecteth nothing, for he shall not be disappointed,' was written by a woman--and a married woman at that."

Helen's duties at the tea-table aided her to preserve her composure, but the contessa's matter-of-fact expressions were not rea.s.suring in the present crisis she was pa.s.sing through. She felt herself in no position to combat her theories, yet not to do so seemed a tacit admission of all which she strove to conceal.

"I could not live with a man such as you describe," she said, quietly.

"Oh yes, you could!" The contessa laughed at Helen's innocence and inexperience. "That is the way we all feel when we are first married; but we soon get over it--unless there is another woman in the case; then it is different."

"What do we do in that case?" asked Helen, looking up at her guest with a smile. "You may as well prepare me for any emergency."

"In that case," the contessa replied, seriously, resting her elbow upon the little table and returning Helen's glance--"in that case we try to arouse our husband's jealousy; but we must do it discreetly, as they are not so long-suffering as we."

"Why not leave one's husband?"

"You dear, simple little bride!" cried the contessa, indulgently--"and let him have a clear field? What an original idea! But how our conversation has run on!" The contessa rose and held out her hand graciously. "I really must be going now; but I wish you and Mr.

Armstrong would take tea with me--say day after to-morrow. I want to see this exceptional husband of yours, and if my dear Morelli is not too impossible I will show him off to you."

"I doubt if Mr. Armstrong will feel that he can spare the time away from his book--" began Helen.

"In that case, then, come alone. Perhaps we can have all the better visit by ourselves. I shall expect you. Good-bye!"

Before Helen could make any further remonstrance the contessa had vanished through the hall-door, and a moment later the car could be heard moving out of the court-yard. She again leaned against her favorite pillar, trying to comprehend this new phase of life. Uncle Peabody found her standing there a few moments later when he returned from the city. Helen pulled herself together when she saw him coming, even though she made no attempt to change her position. Mr. Cartwright longed to comfort her, but something in the girl's face told him that the time had not yet come. So he took his place beside her, and, pa.s.sing his arm about her waist, gently drew her toward him. Helen accepted the caress with the smile which she had learned to use to conceal the ruffled surface of her heart.

"The Contessa Morelli has just been here," she observed.

"Ah! Did you find her entertaining?"

"Yes; I think that just expresses it."

"And--worldly?"

Helen laughed. "She is certainly worldly. Yet there is something beneath it all which attracts me."

"She is a splendid example of a woman who takes the world as she finds it," Uncle Peabody continued, seriously. "Most women consider their husbands as material for idealizing. Then they rub their Aladdin's lamp, set a train of wishing in operation, and expect their selected material to live up to the ideals. When the material proves unworthy, they lose faith in everything instead of letting their experience educate their ideals. The contessa has risen above this."

"Yet, I judge, her husband has given her plenty of opportunity to lose her faith," Helen added.