"With pleasure, Princess."

"That's charming! After the opera we'll have supper at the Grand Hotel.

Good-day!" said the Princess, and then in a low voice at the door, "I

leave you to your delightful duties, my dear. You are not looking so

well, though. Must be the scirocco. My poor dear husband used to suffer

from it shockingly. Adieu!"

Roma was less confused but just as nervous when she settled to her work

afresh.

"I've been thinking all night long of the story you told me yesterday,"

she said. "No, that way, please--eyes as before--thank you! About your

old friend, I mean. He was a good man--I don't doubt that--but he made

everybody suffer. Not only his father and mother, but his wife also. Has

anybody a right to sacrifice his flesh and blood to a work for the

world?"

"When a man has taken up a mission for humanity his kindred must

reconcile themselves to that," said Rossi.

"Yes, but a child, one who cannot be consulted. Your friend's daughter,

for example. She was to lose everything--her father himself at last. How

could he love her? I suppose you would say he did love her."

"Love her? He lived for her. She was everything on earth to him, except

the one thing to which he had dedicated his life."

A half-smile parted her lovely lips.

"When her mother was gone he was like a miser who had been robbed of all

his jewels but one, and the love of father, mother, and wife seemed to

gather itself up in the child."

The lovely lips had a doubtful curve.

"How bright she was, too! I can see her still in the dingy London house

with her violet eyes and coal-black hair and happy ways--a gleam of the

sun from our sunny Italy."

She looked at him. His face was calm and solemn. Did he really know her

after all? She felt her cheeks flush and tingle.

"And yet he left her behind to come to Italy on a hopeless errand," she

said.

"He did."

"How could he know what would happen?"

"He couldn't, and that troubled him most of all. He lived in constant

fear of being taken away from his daughter before her little mind was

stamped with the sense of how much he loved her. Delicious selfishness!

Yet it was not altogether selfish. The world was uncharitable and cruel,

and in the rough chance of life it might even happen that she would be

led to believe that because her father gave her away, and left her, he

did not love her."




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024