The Lady Paramount | Page 3

free and independent. What's the good of being free and
independent," she largely argued, "if you can't do the things you want
to? I 'm going to Craford to realise the aspiration of a lifetime. I 'm
going to find out my cousin, and make his acquaintance, and see what
he 's like. And then--well, if he 's nice, who knows what may happen? I
planned it ever so long ago," she proclaimed, with an ingenuousness
that was almost brazen, "and made all my preparations. Then I sat
down and waited for the day when I should be free and independent."
Her eyes melted again, deprecating his censure, beseeching his
indulgence, yet still, with a little glint of raillery, defying him to do his
worst.
His hand sawed the air, his foot tapped the ground.
"Free and independent, free and independent," he fumed, in derision.
"Fine words, fine words. And you made all your preparations
beforehand, in secrecy; and you 're not sly? Misericordia di Dio!"
He groaned impotently; he shook his bony old fist at the stars in the
firmament.
"Perhaps you will admit," he questioned loftily, "that there are

decencies to be observed even by the free and independent? It is not
decent for you to travel alone. If you mean a single word of what you
say, why are n't you accompanied by the Baronessa?"
"The Baronessa fatigues me," Susanna answered gently. "And I
exasperate her and try her patience cruelly. She 's always putting
spokes in my wheel, and I 'm always saying and doing things she
disapproves of. Ah, if she only suspected the half of the things I don't
say or do, but think and feel!"
She nodded with profound significance.
"We belong," she pointed out, "to discrepant generations. I 'm so
intensely modern, and she 's so irredeemably eighteen-sixty. I 've only
waited for this blessed day of liberty to cut adrift from the Baronessa.
And the pleasure will be mutual, I promise you. She will enjoy a peace
and a calm that she has n't known for ages. Ouf! I feel like Europe after
the downfall of Napoleon."
She gave her shoulders a little shake of satisfaction.
"The Baronessa," she said, and I 'm afraid there was laughter in her
tone, "is a prisoner for the night on Isola Nobile." I 'm afraid she
tittered. "I gave orders that the launch was to start off the moment she
put her foot aboard it, and on no account was it to turn back, and on no
account was any boat to leave the island till to-morrow morning. I
expect she 'll be rather annoyed--and puzzled. But--cosa vuole? It's all
in the day's work."
Then her voice modulated, and became confidential and exultant.
"I 'm going to have such a delicious plunge. See--to-night I have put on
pearls, and diamonds, and rings, that the Baronessa would never let me
wear. And I 've got a whole bagful of books, to read in the
train--Anatole France, and Shakespeare, and Gyp, and Pierre Loti, and
Molière, and Max Beerbohm, and everybody: all the books the
Baronessa would have died a thousand deaths rather than let me look at.
That's the nuisance of being a woman of position--you 're brought up

never to read anything except the Lives of the Saints and the fashion
papers. I 've had to do all my really important reading by stealth, like a
thief in the night. Ah," she sighed, "if I were only a man, like you! But
as for observing the decencies," she continued briskly, "you need have
no fear. I 'm going to the land of all lands where (if report speaks true)
one has most opportunities of observing them--I 'm going to England,
and I 'll observe them with both eyes. And I 'm not travelling alone."
She spurned the imputation. "There are Rosina and Serafino; and at the
end of my journey I shall have Miss Sandus. You remember that nice
Miss Sandus?" she asked, smiling up at him. "She is my
fellow-conspirator. We arranged it all before she went away last
autumn. I 'm to go to her house in London, and she will go with me to
Craford. She 's frantically interested about my cousin. She thinks it's
the most thrilling and romantic story she has ever heard. And she
thoroughly sympathises with my desire to make friends with him, and
to offer him some sort of reparation."
The Commendatore was pacing nervously backwards and forwards,
being, I suppose, too punctilious an old-school Latin stickler for
etiquette to interrupt.
But now, "Curse her for a meddlesome Englishwoman," he spluttered
violently. "To encourage a young girl like you in such midsummer folly.
A young girl?--a young hoyden, a young tom-boy. What? You will
travel from here to