The Lure of the Mask | Page 5

my heart! And
innocent! She sang like the nightingale. She was always happy. Up
with the dawn, to sleep with the stars. We were alone, she and I. The
sheep supported me and she sold her roses and dried lavender. It was
all so beautiful ... till he came. Ah, had he loved her! But a plaything, a
pastime! The signore never had a daughter. What is she now? A
nameless thing in the streets!" Giovanni raised his arms tragically; the
hoots clattered to the floor. "Seven years! It is a long time for one of
my blood to wait."
"Enough!" cried Hillard; but there was a hardness in his throat at the
sight of the old man's tears. Where was the proud and stately man, the
black-bearded shepherd in faded blue linen, in picturesque garters, with
his reed-like pipe, that he, Hillard, had known in his boyhood days?
Surely not here. Giovanni had known the great wrong, but Hillard
could not in conscience's name foster the spirit which demanded an eye
for an eye. So he said: "I can give you only my sympathy for your loss,
but I abhor the spirit of revenge which can not find satisfaction in
anything save murder."
Giovanni once more picked up the boots. "I shall leave the signore in
the spring."
"As you please," said Hillard gently.
Giovanni bowed gravely and made off with his boots. Hillard remained

staring thoughtfully at the many-colored squares in the rug under his
feet. It would be lonesome with Giovanni gone. The old man had
evidently made up his mind.... But the Woman with the Voice, would
she see the notice in the paper? And if she did, would she reply to it?
What a foundation for a romance!... Bah! He prepared for bed.
To those who reckon earthly treasures as the only thing worth having,
John Hillard was a fortunate young man. That he was without kith or
kin was considered by many as an additional piece of good fortune.
Born in Sorrento, in one of the charming villas which sweep down to
the very brow of the cliffs, educated in Rome up to his fifteenth year;
taken at that age from the dreamy, drifting land and thrust into the
noisy, bustling life which was his inheritance; fatherless and motherless
at twenty; a college youth who was for ever mixing his Italian with his
English and being laughed at; hating tumult and loving quiet;
warm-hearted and impulsive, yet meeting only habitual reserve from
his compatriots whichever way he turned; it is not to be wondered at
that he preferred the land of his birth to that of his blood.
All this might indicate an artistic temperament, the ability to do petty
things grandly; but Hillard had escaped this. He loved his Raphaels, his
Titians, his Veroneses, his Rubenses, without any desire to make
indifferent copies of them; he admired his Dante, his Petrarch, his
Goldoni, without the wish to imitate them. He was full of sentiment
without being sentimental, a poet who thought but never indited verses.
His father's blood was in his veins, that is to say, the salt of restraint;
thus, his fortune grew and multiplied. The strongest and reddest
corpuscle had been the gift of his mother. She had left him the legacy
of loving all beautiful things in moderation, the legacy of gentleness, of
charity, of strong loves and frank hatreds, of humor, of living out in the
open, of dreaming great things and accomplishing none of them.
The old house in which he lived was not in the fashionable quarter of
the town; but that did not matter. Nor did it vary externally from any of
its unpretentious neighbors. Inside, however, there were treasures
priceless and unique. There was no woman in the household; he might
smoke in any room he pleased. A cook, a butler, and a valet were the

sum-total of his retinue. In appearance he resembled many another
clean-cut, clean-living American gentleman.
Giovanni sought his own room at the end of the hall, squatted on a low
stool and solemnly began the business of blacking his master's boots.
He was still as lean and tall as a Lombardy poplar, this handsome old
Roman. His hair was white; there was now no black beard on his face,
which was as brown and creased as Spanish levant; and some of the
fullness was gone from his chest and arms; but for all that he carried his
fifty-odd years lightly. He worked swiftly to-night, but his mind was
far away from his task.
There was a pitiful story, commonplace enough. A daughter, a
loose-living officer, a knife flung from a dark alley, and sudden flight
to the south. Hillard had found him wandering through the streets of
Naples, hiding from the carabinieri