"I hope you'll be happy," he remarked in a hard voice. "I always thought you would marry Solaro--poor devil! Do you remember him?"

"Remember!" she echoed. "Yes; I recollect everything. You may well say `poor devil.' He has been convicted of being a traitor--of selling army secrets to France."

"I know--I know," answered her companion quickly. "We had all the papers concerning the charges through the Emba.s.sy, and I am aware of all the facts. My own idea is that he's innocent, yet how can it be proved?

He was betrayed by some heartless woman in Bologna, it seems. She made all sorts of charges against him."

"She lied!" cried Mary quickly. "He is innocent. I know he is, and some day I hope to be able to prove it."

"Ah, I wish I could help you!" was his fervent declaration. "He was my friend, you know. Perhaps the real truth may be known some day, but until then we can only wait, and he must bear his unjust punishment."

"But it is a crying scandal that he should have been degraded when he is innocent!" declared the daughter of the Minister of War.

"Your father, no doubt, ordered the most searching inquiry. It is strange that, if he is really innocent, his innocence has not been proved."

"You are quite right," she said. "That very fact is always puzzling me."

"There may be some reason why he has been consigned to prison," remarked the diplomatist, thoughtfully twisting his champagne-gla.s.s by the stem, "some reason of State, of which we are ignorant."

"But my father would never willingly be party to such an injustice."

"Probably not; but what seems possible is that Solaro is held in prison by some power greater than your father's--the power of your father's enemies."

She thought deeply over those strange words of his. It almost seemed as though he were actually in possession of the truth, and yet feared to reveal it to her!

Presently they rose again, and returned to where the cotillon had commenced. She did not take part in it, because her heart was too full for such frivolities. The young diplomatist had left her at a seat, when almost immediately her father's enemy, Angelo Borselli, approached, and bowed low over her hand.

She knew well how he had endeavoured to ruin and disgrace her father, and how he intended to hold the office of Minister himself; yet, owing to the instructions His Excellency had given her, she treated him with that clever diplomacy which is innate in woman. In common with her father, she never allowed him to discern that she entertained the slightest antipathy towards him, and treated him with calm dignity as she had always done.

Borselli, in ignorance that the Minister was aware of all the ramifications of his shrewd scheming, still affected the same friendship for Morini and his family, and affected it with a marvellous verisimilitude of truth. One of the cleverest political schemers in Europe, he was unrivalled even by Vito Ricci, who in the past had performed marvels of political duplicity. Yet Mary's tact was a match for him.

Only three days ago she and her father had dined at his big new mansion in the Via Salaria, and neither man had betrayed any antagonism towards the other. It is often so in this modern world of ours. Men who inwardly hate each other are outwardly the best of friends. Neither Morini nor Mary had any trust in him, however, for both knew too well that he intended by some clever _coup_ one day to deal the blow and triumph as usurper. Yet both, while wary and silent, masked their true feelings of suspicion beneath the cloak of indifference and friendliness.

Having taken a seat beside her, he began to gossip pleasantly, while his dark eyes were darting quick glances everywhere, when suddenly he asked--

"Is not Jules here? I thought he was commanded here to-night."

"No. To the next ball. He is in Paris," she said simply, without desire to discuss the man to whom she had engaged herself.

"And you do not regret his absence--eh?" remarked the Sicilian in a low voice, bringing his sallow, sinister face nearer to hers.

"I do not understand you," she exclaimed, drawing herself up with some hauteur. "What is your insinuation?"

"Nothing," was his low response. "You need not be offended, for I do not mean it in that sense. I merely notice how you are enjoying yourself this evening during his absence, and the conclusion is but natural." And his face relaxed into a smile.

"Well," she declared, as across her fair face fell a shadow of quick annoyance, "I consider, general, your remark entirely uncalled for."

And she rose stiffly to leave him.

But he only smiled again, a strange, crafty smile, that rendered his thin, sallow face the more forbidding, as he answered in a low voice, speaking almost into her ear, and fixing his eyes on hers--

"I may surely be forgiven as an old friend if I approach the truth in confidence, signora. You have accepted that man's offer of marriage, but you have done so under direct compulsion. You desire to escape from your compact. You see I am aware of the whole truth. Well, there is one way by which you may escape. But recollect that what I tell you is in the strictest secrecy and confidence from your father--from everyone.

I speak as your friend. There is a way by which you can avoid making this loveless alliance which is naturally distasteful to you--a way by which, if you choose to adopt it, you may save yourself!"

She faced the man, her brown eyes meeting his in speechless surprise and wonder at his enigmatical words.

What could he mean?

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

IN WHICH A DOUBLE GAME IS PLAYED.

"I do not quite follow you, general," faltered Mary after a brief pause, regarding him with a puzzled air.

"Then let us find a quiet corner where we can be alone, and I will explain," said Borselli, rising and offering the girl his arm. Both were well acquainted with all the ramifications of the splendid state apartments, the ante-chambers, the winter garden, and the corridors, therefore he led her through the Throne Room to a small apartment at the rear of the Hall of the Princess, an elegant little room hung with pale green silk and the gilt furniture of which bore embroidered on the backs of the chairs the royal crown with the black eagle and white cross of Savoy.

So cleverly did Angelo Borselli conceal his schemes and his hatreds that through years he had deceived so shrewd and far-seeing a man as his chief Morini. His insinuating address and rather handsome exterior rendered him, if not welcome in Roman society, at least tolerated, more especially as through him recommendations could be made to Morini, whose word was law on every point concerning the army of Italy. A certain degree of suspicion and some feeling of awe attended him, though it was rather in his absence than his presence, for his ready wit and fluent conversation were not calculated to inspire other than agreeable thoughts.

It was only as he cast himself into a chair at her side, hesitating how to put the matter before her, that in the glance of his dark, sparkling, deeply set eyes might have been detected a sinister motive and a searching and eager expression at variance with the frank and joyous manner of a moment before.

That glance betrayed the depth of the man's cunning.

"You have no love for Dubard," he remarked slowly. "I have watched, and I have seen it plainly. Yet you are engaged to him because he has compelled you to accept him as your husband. He holds a certain power over you--when he orders you dare not disobey! Am I not correct?" he asked, looking straight into her brown, wide-open eyes.

She nodded in the affirmative, and a slight sigh escaped her. She was suspicious of him, but did not recognise the trend of his argument.

"Then let us advance a step further," he said, in the same quiet, serious manner. "It is but natural you desire to escape from him. He is repugnant to you; perhaps you loathe him, and yet you wear a mask of pretended happiness! Surely you cannot take up life beside a husband whom you secretly despise! You are a woman who desires to love and be loved, a woman who should marry a man worthy your reverence and self-sacrifice," he added, in a voice which seemed to her full of a genuine solicitude for her future.

His att.i.tude was full of mystery. The sudden interest which he--her father's bitterest enemy--betrayed on her behalf was inexplicable.

"Well," she faltered at last, "and if I really desire to break off my engagement with the count? What course do you suggest?"

"You must break your engagement, signorina," he exclaimed quickly. "For several weeks I have desired to speak plainly and frankly to you, but I feared that certain distorted facts having perhaps come to your ears, you might treat me as your enemy rather than your friend. But to-night, finding you alone, I resolved to speak, and, if possible, to save you from sacrificing yourself to a man so unworthy of you."

"But I always thought he was your friend!" she exclaimed in surprise, looking straight at the man before her and toying with her big feathered fan.

"We are friends. We have been guests together under your father's roof in England, you will remember," he admitted. "Yet I entertain too much respect for your father and his family to stand by and see you become the victim of such a man as Jules Dubard."

"You are his friend, and yet you speak evil of him behind his back!" she remarked.

"No, I do not speak evil in the least. You misunderstand my motive. It is in the interests of your own well-being and future happiness. We must not allow that man to force you into an odious union. He is clever, but you must outwit him. Your duty to yourself is to do so."

"But how can I?" she asked, with a desperation in her voice that came involuntarily, but which revealed to Borselli her eagerness to escape from the web which Dubard had weaved about her.

The future of that beautiful girl, the most admired of all that brilliant throng at court, was the future of Italy. Angelo Borselli knew it, and recognised what an important part that handsome daughter of the Minister was destined to play.

"There is one way--only one way," he answered, bending towards her, speaking confidentially, and keeping his deep-set eyes fixed upon hers.

"The man Dubard has very cleverly succeeded in forcing you to accept him as husband. But you must escape from your present peril by revealing the truth."

"The truth of what?"