when I was to have called for you at the
'Travelers,' and you waited for me, and I did not come? Yes, I know that
you do. Well, I did come, really, but as I sat in the carriage waiting,
I took up the _Morning Post_ and I read an advertisement there, signed
by the manager of the Continental Hotel. It was inquiring for any friend
or relative of Count Leonardo di Marioni, who was lying there
dangerously ill and alone. Geoffrey, of course I ought to have waited
for you, but I am impulsive sometimes, and I was then. I thought that if
I could see him alone for the first time, that I might win his
forgiveness, and so I drove there at once. They showed me into his room;
he was sitting over the fire, a miserable, shrunken little figure,
wasted to a shadow. Ah, how my heart ached to see him. Geoffrey, I knelt
by his side; I spoke to him as tenderly as I could to one of my own
children; and then he turned a white corpse-like face upon me, and spoke
words which God grant I may some day forget. I do not believe that human
lips have ever framed such hideous curses. How I got down to the
carriage, I do not know. You are not angry with me, Geoffrey?"

"Angry? why no, love," he answered tenderly. "You did it for the best.
What a vindictive little beggar."

"Geoffrey, I can't help thinking that some day, if he recovers, he will
try to do you or me a mischief."

Lord St. Maurice laughed outright.

"We are not in Sicily," he answered lightly.

"What could he do to either of us? Am I not big enough to protect
myself, and take care of you? I tell you what, Adrienne, why shouldn't I
go and see him when I am in London next week?"

"You!" She shuddered and clasped him tightly. "Geoffrey, promise me at
once that you will not go near him," she begged. "Promise me!"

"On one condition."

"What is it?"

"That you will give up troubling about this nonsense."

"I will try," she promised.

"That's right. Now put on your hat, and come for a run on the cliff. I
can't have you looking so pale."

He walked to the door with her and opened it, kissing her forehead as
she passed through. She looked up at him fondly, and the quiet pleasure
which glowed for a moment in her cheeks and shone in her eyes made her
look once more like a girl of twenty. A woman's greatest happiness had
been hers. In middle age her husband was still her lover.

"Forgive me for being silly," she whispered. "I can't help it. Our life
has been so happy that I cannot bea