Venetian Masque

When she spoke again, it was on a little note of subdued fierceness to deplore that it did not lie in her power at the same time to avenge him.

'I have no doubt whom you have to thank for a wound that was meant to be mortal. I suspected it at the time. We have had evidence since. One of the men you wounded was the leader of that band. And Vendramin was kept indoors by a wound for ten days after that affair.'

'That is very interesting,' said Marc-Antoine.

'Interesting?' she had echoed. 'It would be interesting if I could bring that murderer to account. At first, I thought myself responsible. Perhaps I am in part. But only in part. He seems to have had cause for jealousy on another score.' She paused. She had come to stand beside him. She fussed with the pillows that supported him. 'Madonna Isotta Pizzamano's interest in you showed me that. It seems our destiny to be rivals, she and I.'

She said it lightly, and laughed as she said it, as if to cover with an air of jesting an admission of the boldness of which she was conscious.

He did not answer her. That mention of Isotta brought his thoughts sharply and painfully to the hopelessness of the situation as it now stood, a situation that for him meant defeat on every side.

For a time the Vicomtesse was content furtively to watch his absorption. Then she broke in upon it.

'I compassionated the lady who was to marry Vendramin even before I suspected that there were such grounds for my pity. What must I do now?' She paused to come and place a hand upon his shoulder. 'If you love Mademoiselle Isotta, why do you suffer Vendramin to marry her?'

He studied his hands for a time, looking so wasted, so white and translucent. Then he raised his glance and found her eyes upon him very intently.

'If you will tell me how I am to prevent it, you will answer a question to which I can find no answer.'

Her glance fell away from his, her hand from his shoulder. It was as if his reply had rebuffed her. She moved away a little, and fetched a sigh. 'I see,' she said. 'It is as I supposed.' And then, as if suddenly conscious that she had betrayed herself, she swung to him again, and spoke with a vehemence that brought a flush to her cheek. 'But don't think that I begrudge her this. So far am I from begrudging her, that there is nothing I would not do to help you to her. That is how I love you, Marc.'

'My dear!' he cried, and impulsively extended one of those wasted hands.

She held it while she answered him. 'I take no shame in confessing something that you must already know, something to which what you have now told me shows me that there can be no return. Nor need you look so troubled, my dear; for it is something that leaves me no regrets.'

Gently he pressed the hand he held. Whilst inevitably and deeply touched by this declaration from one who had given such generous proof of her devotion, he was yet conscious of its oddness in a woman who by adoption bore his name, a woman who announced herself his widow.

The only words he could find seemed trivial and banal.

'Dear Anne, I shall ever hold very gratefully and tenderly the memory of my great debt to you.'

'I ask no more. If you do that, you will repay me.' Again she hesitated. 'Hereafter you may hear things about me . . . unflattering things. Something you may already know, or, at least, suspect. Will you try to remember that whatever else I may have been, with you I have always been genuine and sincere?'

'It is the only thing concerning you that I could ever hold in my thoughts,' he promised her.

'Then I am content.' But there was no contentment in her blue eyes. They were sad to the point of tears. 'I am leaving you today, Marc. There is no longer any excuse for my remaining. Philibert can do all that is necessary now. But you will come and see me sometimes, as before, at the Casa Gazzola? And remember that if you can discover any way in which I can help you to your heart's desire, you have only to command me.'

Her voice had choked on the last words. When they were spoken, she stopped abruptly, impulsively to kiss his cheek. Then she fled from the room almost before he had realized it.

He sat on where she had left him, gloomily pensive, his mind filled with an odd tenderness for this woman whom at any moment he might have accounted it his duty to denounce. Of all that he had done in these months of wasted endeavour here in Venice, his having spared this pseudo-Vicomtesse was the only thing in the thought of which he could now take satisfaction.