The old woman glanced down pitifully at the tiny face nestling with closed eyes in its lace cap, from which a single saucy lock of black hair peeped.
"If she would only look at you, my little prince… just once. Then she could never bear to send you away. But come along then. Let's go and see him… He'll love you with all the love he has to give. He will love you for two."
Leaving Rebecca, aided by a waiting woman to finish doing what was needful for the young mother and set the room to rights, she wrapped the baby in a shawl of soft white wool and tiptoed from the bedchamber. She was halfway through the boudoir when Jolival burst in with Jason hard on his heels.
"The baby!" cried the vicomte. "He has arrived? We've only just heard… Oh, God! You've got him there?"
Poor Jolival was beside himself with excitement. The anguish of the past hours had given way all at once to such a joy as he would never have believed possible. He wanted to laugh and sing, to dance and drink and do a thousand foolish things. Like the prince himself, he had thrust the facts of the baby's conception behind him, and in his love for Marianne he saw the baby only as her son, the son of one who was like a daughter to him. Suddenly he was discovering the marvelous thrill of being a grandfather.
Donna Lavinia parted the shawl with a careful finger to show them the little red face sleeping peacefully, the tiny fists clutching fast to the new life that had just been given to him. Jolival felt the tears prick at his eyelids.
"Oh, my God, he is so like her! Or rather, so like his grandfather."
He had gazed too often at the portrait of the Marquis d'Asselnat not to be struck instantly by the resemblance, even though the child was not yet two hours old. By a merciful dispensation of Providence, the baby had no trait of his real father. The imprint of his mother was too strong to leave room for any other influence, and Jolival thought that it was as well that the little boy should be much more an Asselnat than a Sant'Anna. Nor did he think that Prince Corrado would be at all displeased by the resemblance.
"He's a beautiful boy!" Jason exclaimed, with a warmth in his smile that found its way straight to the housekeeper's reluctant heart. "The most beautiful I ever saw, that I will swear. What does his mother say?"
"She could not help but think him beautiful, could she?" Arcadius said quickly, with a note of pleading in his voice.
Donna Lavinia clasped the baby tighter to her breast and looked at the American with the tears welling up again in her stricken eyes.
"Alas, sir, she would not even look at the poor little angel. She told me to take him away with as much loathing as if he were a monster."
There was a brief silence. The two men looked at one another but it was Jolival's eyes that fell.
"I was afraid of that," he said huskily. "Ever since she first knew she was with child, Marianne has fiercely rejected the idea of the baby."
Jason said nothing. He stood lost in thought, a crease between his brows and another at the corner of his mouth. But when Donna Lavinia, after wrapping the baby again, made as if to go on her way, he checked her.
"Where are you taking the child?"
She hesitated, bowing her head in an effort to hide the color that had flooded into her face.
"I thought—that is, it will be proper to show him to the master of the house."
It may have been the unnatural stiffness in her voice, but Jolival was suddenly aware of an undercurrent he could not define. Neither of the actors in the little scene had stirred but Donna Lavinia seemed to be held rooted to the spot under Jason's searching glance, and her breath was coming in little short, quick gasps, like an animal scenting danger.
Then the American drew back a step to let her pass, bowing politely from the waist.
"Of course," he said gravely. "You are perfectly right, Donna Lavinia. It is a delicate attention that does you as much credit as the child."
When Marianne awakened from the beneficent sleep that had engulfed body and mind, the curtains in her room were drawn and the lamps were shedding a warm golden radiance, for it was already evening. The tiled stove was purring like a big cat and Donna Lavinia was coming toward the bed carrying a tray with something steaming on it. It might have been some slight sound which had woken her, or hunger stimulated by the savory smell of supper, because she felt no wish to leave the quiet haven of sleep. The longing for it still pervaded every fiber of her body.
She opened her eyes all the same and stretched luxuriously like a contented cat, with the sheer physical enjoyment of rediscovered freedom of movement after long months of hampering constraint.
Goodness, what a joy it was to feel oneself again after all this time, when her body had seemed to belong not to her but to an increasingly alien burden! Even the memory of the hours of agony she had endured in this very bed was fading fast, swept away on the tide of time into the thick mists of oblivion.
She shook aside a heavy lock of hair which was tickling her cheek and smiled at the housekeeper.
"Donna Lavinia, I'm hungry. What time is it?"
"Nearly nine o'clock, my lady. You have slept for almost twelve hours. Are you feeling better?"
"Much better. A few more hours' sleep and I shall be quite myself again."
Meanwhile, Lavinia had been busy helping her young mistress to sit up amid a nest of pillows and was bathing her face with a cloth moistened with a fragrant lotion of verbena. That done, she laid the black lacquered tray on her knees.
"What have you brought me?" Marianne asked, finding her interest in food abruptly revived.
"Vegetable soup, roast chicken and fruit stewed in honey, with a glass of Chianti. The doctor says a little wine can do you no harm."
Everything disappeared very speedily, and the modest meal seemed to Marianne the most delicious thing in the world. She was savoring each small physical pleasure of recovery with such intensity that she had no time as yet for the moral dilemmas which would intrude themselves all too soon.
She swallowed the last drop of wine with a sigh of satisfaction and sank back among her pillows, ready to slip back into the sleep which at that moment seemed the most desirable state of being. But then something stirred beyond the curtain which hung over the door. A hand put it aside, revealing the tall figure of Prince Corrado, and all Marianne's sense of well-being was gone in an instant.
He was the last person she wanted to see just then. In spite of the white turban, set with a turquoise stone, which swathed his proud head, she thought he looked a sinister figure in his black caftan, unadorned save for the broad dagger thrust through the silken sash. He was the personification of the dark shadow on her life, the evil genius that dogged her steps. Or was it the symbol of a troubled conscience which would not leave its owner altogether at peace?
Watching him as he came toward her, he struck her as more than ever like a black panther.
He crossed the big room silently with his easy stride until he reached the foot of the bed. Donna Lavinia had dropped a curtsy and vanished, taking with her the empty tray.
For a moment the two partners in this unlikely marriage stared at one another without speaking, and once again Marianne began to feel uneasy. This man had a strange capacity of making her always feel in some indefinable way in the wrong.
Not knowing what to say, she sought for something neither stupid nor clumsy and then, remembering that she had just presented him with what must surely give him pleasure, she decided to smile and make the effort.
"Are you pleased?"
He nodded but his dark face remained unsmiling. And when he spoke it was in the low, measured tones that she remembered hearing for the first time from the other side of a mirror, a voice that seemed burdened with all the sorrows of the world.