“Miss Vale, I hope you did not conceive an aversion for me the day you fainted so tragically at my feet,” said Percy Seabright.
He had found Italy alone on the wide porch fronting the sea, a few days after her recovery. A chilly east wind blew from the beach, in spite of the warm sunshine, and she wore a picturesque dark-red cloak about the shoulders of her white serge yachting-dress with its smart gilt anchors. She had promised to join the yacht-club in a charming excursion that day. His voice was very kind and solicitous, and she answered frankly:
“Oh, no, no, Mr. Seabright. On the contrary, I was prepared to like you very much, for Mr. Murray had been telling me that you were my father’s dearest friend.”
Instantly a peculiar change came over his face. He had been smiling, but the smile faded into sadness and gloom on the lips and in the eyes, and his dark cheek seemed to grow livid with silent emotion.
“Oh, forgive me!” cried the girl impulsively, and her heart warmed toward him. “You loved him, and it grieves you still to remember his sad fate.”
“Yes, I loved him,” Percy Seabright answered huskily, “and as Mr. Murray has told you, I was Ronald’s dearest friend. Will you be my friend, too--for his sake?”
He held out to her a graceful white hand, and after a moment’s embarrassed pause, Italy placed hers in it, meeting a warm, strong pressure that she permitted but did not return. Some strange emotion thrilled her at the touch, she hardly knew whether it was pleasure or repulsion.
“Will you promise to be my friend?” he repeated, in an eager, impulsive way, with a winning smile.
“I--hope--I--will,” she answered, a little deliberately; “I scarcely know you yet, you know, and I am not used to choosing friends so quickly. Mama always told me it was rash to do so--that one might be mistaken, and that friends should be tried and proved--but still, you were my father’s friend. He loved you, trusted you.”
“And why not you?” he exclaimed, with a persuasive glance of his bright dark eyes that somehow won her to reply:
“I will.”
He thanked her fervently, and then she continued:
“I am so glad to have a single true friend--one who knows the past, one who might help me.”
“Tell me what I can do for you. I am ready and willing”--eagerly.
The surf beat loud and sharply on the beach, the wind rose and whistled around the corners of the house and through the stately fir-trees with a soughing murmur. If she had listened to them, they would have sounded eerily, warningly, in her ears, but she heard only that low-toned, persuasive voice, saw only the dazzling dark eyes bent with an intense gaze upon her own, inviting her confidence. She looked up at him with big, solemn eyes.
“I will confide in you,” she said impetuously. “I will tell you the dream, the aim, the purpose of my life. It is to clear the memory of my mother from the stain that rests upon it, to find and to punish my father’s murderer.”
The girl’s low voice was tragic in its intensity. No wonder it impressed him, no wonder he suddenly grew ghastly pale and grave.
“You are mad!” he uttered hoarsely.
“No, no; do not say it,” she breathed imploringly. “Listen--my mother was innocent--she swore it to me before she--before I lost her. She believed that the clue to the murderer would be found in some of the secrets of my father’s diary. You remember how eagerly she sought for the diary after his terrible death? Well, it was never, never found, you know, and she believed that it was carried off or destroyed by the murderer. Oh, I would give the world to find that missing book! Help me to seek it, help me to find it, my friend!” cried Italy, in rising agitation.
Emmett Harlow came up to them before Percy Seabright could reply to her words.
“Miss Vale, we are going to start now. Are you ready?” he asked.
Something of surprise in the clear blue eyes of the young man struck Italy with sudden embarrassment, and she rose quickly.
“Yes; I am quite ready,” she said, and moved away by his side, to join the house-party who were waiting. Mr. Murray with Alys Audenreid, Ralph Allen with his sweetheart, Alexie, and Mrs. Dunn alone, expecting to have Percy Seabright for her escort.
As Italy came up with Emmett she flashed a look of furious anger at the girl from her peculiar eyes that could change rapidly from the soft blue of love to the greenish fires of jealousy and hate.
Italy started as she met that baleful look. She remembered suddenly what Emmett Harlow had once told her about Mrs. Dunn’s love for Percy Seabright.
A cold chill of terror crept along the girl’s veins. She knew that Mrs. Dunn was a woman to be feared, and she comprehended that the compact of friendship just made between herself and Mrs. Dunn’s lover would expose her to the former’s jealous wrath.
When the party were all upon the yacht and she was floating in graceful majesty upon the blue waves, Emmett Harlow found a seat for himself and Italy a little apart from the rest. Then looking tenderly into her serious face, he said:
“Mrs. Dunn was watching you at a little distance while you carried on your little flirtation with her lover.”
“Flirtation!” cried Italy, with a resentful toss of her pretty head.
“It looked like it,” he replied pointedly, although with a smile. “He clasped your hand, and you looked into each other’s eyes with absorbing interest.”
“So you were watching, too!” the girl exclaimed, provoked.
“I was with the others. Pardon me,” Emmett answered, in a quiet tone, but with a look of pain.
She saw the pained look and her anger melted quickly. Emmett Harlow had one of those rare natures that always inspire kindly thoughts. No one could be angry with him long.
“It was not a flirtation, Mr. Harlow,” she said gently. “Mr. Seabright was only asking me to be his friend. He was my dead father’s friend, you know, and he wished also to be mine.”
“And you promised him?” asked Emmett Harlow gravely.
“How could I refuse his offered friendship--I who have so few friends?” she exclaimed pathetically.
“You have one friend, Miss Vale, who would lay down his life for you!” exclaimed the young man fervidly, and Italy, with a blush and start, realized that she had a lover--a lover, that desire of every young girl’s heart. But when he went on in tender, fervent words to tell her of his love and his hopes, she begged him to desist.
“I will be your friend always, but I shall never love nor marry. I have no time for such trivial things. I have a greater mission in life,” she replied, almost loftily.
The rejected lover stared at her in profound surprise.
“A greater mission,” he murmured. “Not--not--woman’s rights, I hope.”
“N-not exactly,” Italy answered vaguely, and at this moment she became aware that Mr. Murray and Alys Audenreid were observing her rather closely. She could fancy without hearing a word that Alys was saying something spiteful. What she was saying was this:
“Mr. Murray, your little protégée is a dreadful flirt.”
“How can you say so?” he cried, but yet he was not blind.
“Only look at her now how she is leading poor Emmett Harlow on,” continued the pretty blonde; “and just before we started she was making love with her eyes to Mr. Seabright. She even gave him her hand to hold. I could see that Aunt Ione was furious. You know, he tries her sorely with his flirtations. I do believe that his promise to marry her is all moonshine.”
“Why don’t she give him his congé, then? He has postponed the wedding twice, I know, and the old women say, don’t they, Alys, that postponed weddings are unlucky?” he rejoined carelessly, trying to attend to her and yet lose no glimpse of the pretty by-play over yonder, the eager face of Emmett, the downcast one of the girl.
“Emmett is rich and well-born. Would he marry poor Italy, with the brand of her mother’s disgrace hanging darkly over her young life?” he mused.
At that moment Emmett was saying to the young girl:
“You will think me jealous and envious now, perhaps, and yet I must tell you that I am sorry you have promised your friendship to Mr. Seabright. I do not like that man. He is different from what he seems--cold at heart and deceitful.”
“I thought every one liked him!” she cried.
“Every one but me,” he answered frankly; “I am the only one to find a fault in him. And yet his faults are patent to all if they would only realize the fact.”
“Tell me of one single blemish!” the girl cried, half-offended.
“Very well. He is not sincere. He makes game of the friend he professes to love. He is witty, and they all become targets for his wit. Poor Mrs. Dunn, sitting so happily by his side there, she would never speak to him again if she knew how he talks her over to his friends.”
Italy was looking and listening in wonder. Could these facts be true?
“He has carried on a flirtation with her for years, and yet she is so blind she will not see that he is only trifling,” continued Emmett. “Yet he has made fun of her from the first time he met her till now. You see that beautiful diamond ring on his little finger? He has told dozens of people that Mrs. Dunn begged him for it the first time he ever called on her, and he said he told her the first ready lie that leaped to his lips, that the ring belonged to his brother. He says she is rapacious, that she lives above her means, and cares for nothing but show and pleasure. Oh, he has said so many things of her that I would hate to repeat, but I call it mean, don’t you? to ridicule a woman, her house, her relations, and everything about her, and still pretend to be her friend, even her lover?”
“It is wicked, shameful,” she exclaimed warmly. “How can any one be so deceitful? I am sorry for Mrs. Dunn.”
“As to that, she is as mean a woman as he is a man, and if they ever do get married they will be fairly matched. To tell you the truth, I dislike them both, so let’s drop the subject and talk of something pleasanter, for to-morrow I am going to leave Winthrop,” replied the young man, with as indifferent an air as he could assume, for the pain of his rejection, although so gently spoken, still hurt bitterly.
“Going away!” she cried.
“Yes; back to Boston, and I shall probably sail for Europe next week,” sighed the rejected lover sadly.
“Oh, I am so sorry, for I shall miss you very much. You have been so good to me.”
“Then perhaps you will relent”--pleadingly--“you will let me try again to win your love. Oh, Italy, think how lonely you are, how alone in the world, and surrounded by people some of whom dislike you, while the others only tolerate you. But I--I worship you, my darling, and I would be so happy if you would only let me marry you and take you away to a happier home.”
Profoundly moved as she was by his words, she still shook her head.
“I cannot marry you,” she said simply but conclusively.
“Then, dear, I shall go away, as I said, and not trouble you with my love, but when I am far away will you think of me sometimes, Italy, and--if you should ever need me or want me--send for me, for if you will not have me for your husband, I can still be your friend,” said the young man earnestly and sadly.
Before Italy could answer in the grateful words her heart prompted, Ralph Allen called to them across the deck:
“Why are you two over there looking so glum? Do come over here and listen to the funny joke Alexie is telling me.”
“Let us hear it, too,” exclaimed Percy Seabright. “Come, Ione,” and he led her rather unwillingly to join the gay group, for Mr. Murray and Alys also came with several more of the excursion-party--all friends, and quite at home with each other. Mrs. Dunn did not like to place herself in close contrast to young girls, for she was thirty-five, though she claimed to be ten years younger, and her figure, which was short and dumpy, did not look well in yachting-costume. She wore an immense red hat which served to increase the squat effect of her plump form in its showy costume of garnet and gold.
She was in an ill-concealed temper, and it did not improve it to see her betrothed place himself close to Italy’s side, where she stood leaning against the deck-rail, looking down with sad, somber eyes into the deep-blue water. Emmett Harlow was on the other side of her, and his expression of profound melancholy told the story of his disappointment without words.
“Go on with your story, Alexie,” exclaimed Ralph Allen, who was in a very happy mood to-day, and no wonder. A favorite of Fortune from his birth, betrothed to a sweet and lovely girl, and afloat on the daintiest yacht in Winthrop harbor, upon billowy blue waters, under sunny blue skies, with gay companions, how could he be aught but happy?
Pretty Alexie laughed and blushed.
“I’m not sure anybody will be interested in it, but, as I was saying----” she began, when she was interrupted by Percy Seabright.
“Oh, come quick, everybody, and see this great fish!” he exclaimed eagerly, and every one crowded over to the side of the deck, laughing and hustling each other in their haste.
Italy Vale, close to his side, leaned forward with the rest, craning her graceful neck eagerly to catch a sight of the wonder.
How did it happen? Did she lean too far over? Did she lose her balance? All in a moment, Italy’s light form flashed over the rail, and she was struggling, sinking, in the deep-blue sea.
