Marie Belloc Lowndes

“ What would have been more easy than for her to snub Count Beppo? He remembered how she had snubbed dear old Hercules Popeau on their long journey from Paris, when the Frenchman, presuming on his age, had been perhaps a thought too familiar in his manner; and yet she allowed this—this bold brute to say what he liked to her!
“When I am at La Solitude,” went on Beppo in a low tone, “I shall be a good boy, and never come down to Monte Carlo! We will go up each morning to the golf club and have a round. In the afternoons I will take you drives among the mountains. ”

“ I regard her as being in real danger of having her life wrecked by a number of cruel, selfish, and unscrupulous people, who care for her as much as I do for that piece of paper on the floor! I refer, of course, to the Count and Countess Polda; also, incidentally, to the Marchesa Pescobaldi, who, in this affair, is proving once again that even a heartless woman may be a sublimely unselfish lover. ”

“ There is nothing more the matter than there has been for a very long time,” was the cryptic answer.
At a quarter to eight M. Popeau called for Lily, and during the rapid drive down into Monte Carlo he observed suddenly:
“The Countess does not look like herself to-night. I wonder what has happened to so excite and please her? Have you any idea of the reason?”
He asked the question in a very peculiar tone, and Lily, surprised, answered: “Beppo is staying on in Monte Carlo. He may even come to La Solitude for a few days. That is quite enough to account for Aunt Cosy's good humour.” ”

“ The Marchese exclaimed in his careful English: “It is a spring under the earth. Never dry here!”
Once they were safely across the marshy place, Beppo began driving along what was little more than a path cut through a big olive grove, which brought them, far sooner than Lily expected, to the front door of La Solitude.
“There is no short cut around here that I do not know,” the young man said, as he helped her down; and almost at the same moment the Marchesa called out: “I cannot do myself the pleasure of coming in to see the Countess, for a friend is coming to tea. ”

“ He saw that his words made the young Scotsman wince.
“It is a great mistake when one is thinking of things as serious as is this thing, to avoid looking at the truth. Beppo Polda, I repeat, is a charmer. And, unfortunately, he likes and admires Mis Lily. I go farther, I say that she is Beppo Polda's ideal of what a man's wife should be. But does that mean that he would be kind or faithful to her after the first few weeks of married life if temptation came his way?” ”

“ When he gazed with burning eyes into her face, the while paying her outrageous compliments, she felt shy, and very ill at ease. At such moments he seemed to be trying an experiment—trying, that is, to rouse in her a feeling her whole being denied him the right to exact. ”

“ Though the Scotch, as I have found out many a time during the late war, think themselves in every way superior to the English (I do not say that they are, or that they are not, but that is their conviction) , still you and she are bound by a common language. Implore her, above all, to do nothing in a hurry. Do not let Beppo Polda go back to Rome engaged to be married to Lily Fairfield.”
The matter-of-fact words made the young man feel sick with apprehension, anger, and jealousy. Why, Popeau spoke as if the matter was already almost settled! ”