The Lure of the Mask by Harold MacGrath (good books to read for 12 year olds TXT) 📖

a shelving house of gold. He sat down and began to count. Clink-clink! Clink-clink! What a pleasant sound it was, to be sure. It was sweeter than woman's laughter. And what symphony of Beethoven's could compare with this? Clink-clink! Three hundred and ninety, four hundred, four hundred and ten; clink-clink! And Hillard, turning restlessly on his pillow, heard this harsh music away into the small hours of the morning.

In the meantime the lamps in and about the Casino had been extinguished, and the marble house of the whirligig and the terraces lay in the pale light of the moon. Only the cafés remained open, and none but stragglers loitered there. The great rush of the night was done with, and the curious had gone away, richer or poorer, but never a whit the wiser. In the harbor the yachts stood out white and spectral, and afar the sea ruffled her night-caps. The tram for Nice shrieked down the incline toward the promontory, now a vast frowning shadow. At the foot of the road which winds up to the palaces the car was signaled, and two women boarded. Both were veiled and exhibited signs of recent agitation. They maintained a singular silence. At Villefranche they got out, and the car went on glowingly through the night. The women stopped before the gates of a villa and rang the porter's bell. Presently he came down the path and admitted them, grumbling. Once in the room above, the silence between the two women came to an end.

"Safe! I am so tired. What a night!" the elder of the two women sighed.

"What a night, truly! I should like to know what it has all been about. To run through dark streets and alleys, to hide for hours, as if I were a thief or a fugitive from justice, is neither to my taste nor to my liking."

"Kitty!" brokenly.

"I know! In a moment I shall be on my knees to you, but first I must speak out my mind. Why did you lose your head? Why did you not stand perfectly still when you saw that we were followed from the Casino? He would not have dared to molest us in the open. No, you had to run!"

"He would have entered the car with us, he would have known where we were going, he would have had the patience to wait till he saw beneath our veils. I know that man!" with a hopeless anger.

"It was your flight. It told him plainly that you recognized him."

"I was afraid, Kitty. It was instinct which caused me to fly, blindly."

"And there you left me, standing like a fool, wondering whether to run or not." Kitty was angry for half a dozen reasons. "And why should you run from any man?"

La Signorina did not reply, preferring to hold her tongue, lest it overthrow her. She unwound the thick veil and unpinned her hat. Her hands trembled, and in her eyes and about her mouth there was the weariness of ages. Yet, not all this weariness, not all these transitory lines of pain, took away one jot of her beauty.

"Kitty," she began sadly, "in this world no one trusts us wholly. We must know why, why; loyalty must have reasons, chivalry must have facts. You have vowed your love and loyalty a hundred times, and still, when a great crisis confronts me, you question, you grow angry, you complain, because my reasons are unknown to you. Because I am lonely, because I feel the need of even your half-hearted loyalty, I shall tell you why, why. Do you know what terror is? No. Well, it was blind terror which made me run. I counted not the consequences; my one thought was of instant flight. I shall tell you why I am lonely, why the world, bright to you, is dark. I am proud, but I shall bend my pride." With a quick movement she lifted her head high and her eyes burned into Kitty's very heart. "I am-"

"Stop! No, no! I forbid you!" Kitty put her hands over her ears. She might gain the secret, but she knew that she would lose the heart of the woman it concerned. "I am wrong, wrong. I have promised to follow you loyally, without question. I will keep that promise. I am only angry because you would not let me speak to Mr. Hillard. And when he called me by name, it was doubly hard. Had I not seen your hand waving from the doorway, I should have spoken. Who this Italian is I do not care. It is sufficient that you fear him. And I myself harbor no kind feelings toward him," rubbing her bruised wrist. "And if he comes down one side of the street I shall take to the other, to say nothing of dodging round the nearest corner. But he is very handsome," Kitty added thoughtfully.

"Are vipers handsome?"

"He is strong, too."

"Strong and cruel as a tiger. How I hate him! But thank you, Kitty, thank you. Sooner or later, if we stay together, I must tell you. The confidence will do me good. Look into my eyes." Kitty approached, and La Signorina drew her close. "Look in them. They will tell you that I have neither conspired nor plotted, save for my own happiness; that I have wrought harm to no one. But on my side they will tell you that I have been terribly wronged. And all I wish is to be left alone, alone. It was cruel of me to forbid you to speak to Mr. Hillard. But I do not want him tangled up in this miserable, hopeless labyrinth. I wish him to recollect me pleasantly, as a whimsical being who came into his life one night and vanished out of it in two hours."

"But supposing the memory cuts deeply?" ventured Kitty. "Men fall in love with less excuse than this."

"He does not even know what I look like; he knows absolutely nothing except the sound of my voice."

"It is all a blind man needs-a voice."

"Nonsense!" La Signorina opened the window to air the room. She lingered, musing. "You are very good to me, Kitty."

"I can't help being good to you, you strange, lovely woman! For your sake as well as for mine, I hope my letter from home will be in Venice when we arrive. Now I am going to write a letter."

La Signorina still lingered by the window.

* * * * *

Merrihew was pocketing currency in exchange for his gold, when Hillard passed an opened letter to him. It was early in the morning; the sky was as yellow as brass; patches of dew still dampened the sidewalks, and the air was still with the promise of heat in the later day. Merrihew stuffed the last bill into his wallet and gave his attention to the letter. He was not long indifferent, for the letter was from no less a person than Kitty. It was, however, addressed to Hillard.

My dear Mr. Hillard-Do not seek us. It will be useless. This
sounds terribly ungrateful, but it must be so. If Mr. Merrihew is
with you, and I suspect he is, tell him that some day I will
explain away the mystery. At present I know no more than you do.
But this please make plain to him: If he insists upon searching for
me, he will only double my unhappiness.

Kitty Killigrew.

Merrihew soberly tucked the letter away. "I knew it," he said simply. "She is in some trouble or other, some tangle, and fears to drag us into it. Who left a letter here this morning?" he asked of the concierge.

"A small boy from Villefranche."

"Just my luck," said Merrihew, his hands speaking eloquently. "I said that it would be of no use to hunt in the smaller towns. Well, we had better take the luggage back to the rooms."

"Why?" asked Hillard.

"I am going to Villefranche."

"You will be wasting time. After what happened last night, I am certain that they will be gone. Let us not change our plans, and let us respect theirs, hard as it may seem to you."

"But you?"

"Oh, don't bother about me. I have relegated my little romance to the garret of no-account things, at least for the present," said Hillard, with an enigmatical smile. He sought his watch. "Make up your mind at once; we have only twenty minutes."

"Oh, divine afflatus! And you lay down the chase so readily as this?" Merrihew was scornfully indignant.

"I would travel the breadth of the continent were I sure of meeting this woman. But she has become a will-o'-the-wisp, and I am too old and like comfort too well to pursue impossibilities."

"But why did she leave you that mask?" demanded Merrihew. "She must have meant something by that."

"True, but for the life of me I can't figure out what, unless she wished to leave with me the last page of the adventure."

"But I don't like the idea of leaving Kitty this way, without a final effort to rescue her from the clutches of this fascinating adventuress. For you must admit that she is naught else."

"I admit nothing, my boy, save that the keenness of the chase is gone." Hillard balanced his watch idly. "As for Kitty, she's a worldly little woman, and can take good care of herself. She is not likely to blunder into any serious conspiracy. Her letter should be sufficient."

"But it isn't. A woman's 'don't' often means 'do.' If Kitty really expects me to search for her and I do not, she will never believe in me again."

"Perhaps your knowledge of women is more extensive than mine," said Hillard, without the least irony.

But this flattery did not appeal to Merrihew. "Bosh! There's something you haven't told me about that makes you so indifferent."

This was a shrewd guess, but Hillard had his reasons for not letting his friend see how close he had shot. "A lady? Grace of Mary, that is droll!" He could not cast this out of his thought. He floated between this phrase and Mrs. Sandford's frank defense of her girlhood friend. Perhaps he was lacking in some particle of chivalry; perhaps he was not in love at all. And of what use to offer faith to one who refused it?

"Time flies," he warned. "Which is it to be?"

"We'll go on to Venice. It would be folly for me to continue the hunt alone. And if you went with me, your half-heartedness would be a damper. We'll go on to Venice."

"Have you any cigars left?" smiling.

"I have thrown away the boxes and filled my pockets."

"That's better. But the Italians are not so severe as the French. We shan't have any trouble recrossing into Italy. All aboard, then."

Merrihew solemnly directed the porter to paste the scarlet labels on his cases. He was beginning to take a certain blasé pride in his luggage. Already it had the appearance of having traveled widely. It would look well on week-end trips at home.

At seven that evening they stepped