The Lady Paramount | Page 5

a hazardous little smile.
"What!" thundered the Commendatore. "You would dare to take my
name as a cloak for your escapades? I forbid it. Understand. I
peremptorily forbid it."
He stamped his foot, he nodded his outraged head, menacingly.
But Susanna was indeed incorrigible.
"Dear me," she grieved; "I hoped you would be touched by the
compliment. How strange men are. Never mind, though," she said, with
gay resignation. "I 'll call myself something else. Let's think. . . .
Would--would Torrebianca do?" Her eyes sought counsel from his
face.
Torrebianca, I need n't remind those who are familiar with Sampaolo, is
the name of a mountain, a bare, white, tower-like peak of rock, that
rises in the middle of the island, the apex of the ridge separating the
coast of Vallanza from the coast of Orca.
"Madame Torrebianca? La Nobil Donna Susanna Torrebianca?" She
tried the name on her tongue. "Yes, for an impromptu, Torrebianca is
n't bad. It's picturesque, and high-sounding, and yet not--not
invraisemblable. You don't think it invraisemblable? So here 's luck to
that bold adventuress, that knightess-errant, the widow Torrebianca."
She raised her fluffy white fan, as if it were a goblet from which to
quaff the toast, and flourished it aloft.
The poor old Commendatore was mumbling helpless imprecations in
his moustache. One caught the word "atrocious" several times repeated.

"And now," said Susanna brightly, "kiss me on both cheeks, and give
me your benediction."
She moved towards him, and held up her face.
But he drew away.
"My child," he began, impressively, "I have no means to constrain you,
and I know by experience that when you have made up that perverse
little mind of yours, one might as well attempt to reason with a Hebrew
Jew. Therefore I can only beg, I can only implore. I implore you not to
do this fantastic, this incredible, this unheard-of thing. I will go on my
knees to you. I will entreat you, not for my sake, but for your own sake,
for the sake of your dead father and mother, to put this ruinous vagary
from you, to abandon this preposterous journey, and to stay quietly
here in Sampaolo. Then, if you must open up the past, if you must get
into communication with your distant cousin, I 'll help you to find some
other, some sane and decorous method of doing so."
Still once again Susanna's eyes melted, but there was no mockery in
them now.
"You are kind and patient," she said, with feeling; "and I hate to be a
brute. Yet what is there to do? I can't alter my resolution. And I can't
bear to refuse you when you talk to me like that. So--you must forgive
me if I take a brusque way of escaping the dilemma."
She ran to the edge of the quay, and sprang lightly into her boat.
"Avanti--avanti," she cried to the rowers, who instantly pushed the boat
free, and bent upon their oars.
Then she waved her disfranchised guardian a kiss.
"Addio, Commendatore. I 'll write to you from Venice."

II

It was gay June weather, in a deep green English park: a park in the
south of England, near the sea, where parks are deepest and greenest,
and June weather, when it is n't grave, is gaiest. Blackbirds were
dropping their liquid notes, thrushes were singing, hidden in the trees.
Here and there, in spaces enclosed by hurdles, sheep browsed or
drowsed, still faintly a-blush from recent shearing. The may was in
bloom, the tardy may, and the laburnum. The sun shone ardently, and
the air was quick with the fragrant responses of the earth.
A hundred yards up the avenue, Anthony Craford stopped his fly, a
shabby victoria, piled with the manifold leather belongings of a
traveller, and dismounted.
"I 'll walk the rest of the way," he said to the flyman, giving him his
fare. "Drive on to the house. The servants will take charge of the
luggage."
"Yes, sir," answered the flyman, briskly, and flicked his horse: whereat,
displaying a mettle one was by no means prepared for, the horse dashed
suddenly off in a great clattering gallop, and the ancient vehicle behind
him followed with a succession of alarming leaps and lurches.
"See," declaimed a voice, in a sort of whimsical recitative,
"See how the young cabs bound, As to the tabor's sound,--"
a full-bodied baritone, warm and suave, that broke, at the end, into a
note or two of laughter.
Anthony turned.
On the greensward, a few paces distant, stood a man in white flannels:
rather a fat man, to avow the worst at once, but, for the rest, distinctly a
pleasant-looking; with a smiling, round, pink face, smooth-shaven, and
a noticeable pair of big and bright blue eyes.