'Would you like some?' he offered. 'It's the best cordial I know, and you probably need it more than I do.'

Marianne shook her head.

'Forgive me for inflicting all this on you, Arcadius, but I had to tell you everything. You don't know how badly I needed to!'

'I think I do. Anyone who had been through what you have suffered would feel the need to get some of it off their chest, at least. And you know that my chief function on earth is to serve you. As for forgiveness – my dear child, what have I to forgive you for? You could not have given me a greater proof of your confidence than this tissue of horrors. What we have to decide is what to do next. This villain and his accomplices are all dead, you say?'

'Yes. Killed. I don't know who by.'

'Personally I am inclined to think that executed would be a better word. As for who was the executioner…'

'Some prowler, perhaps. The palace is full of treasures.'

Jolival shook his head doubtfully.

'No. There are those rusty chains you found on the steward's body. That suggests vengeance as a motive, or some kind of rough justice! Damiani must have had enemies. Perhaps one of them learned of your plight and set you free… remember that you found the clothes that had been taken from you lying ready to hand! It's certainly a most peculiar story, don't you think?'

But Marianne had already lost interest in her captor of yesterday. Now that she had made a clean breast of it all to her friend, her next preoccupation was with her love, and her thoughts turned irresistibly to the man she had come to meet and with whom she still meant to make her life.

'But Jason?' she asked desperately. 'Should I tell him all this? You are very fond of me, and yet even you found it difficult to accept my story, didn't you? I'm afraid—'

'Afraid that Beaufort, who loves you, will find it even more difficult? But, Marianne, what else can you do? How are you going to explain your disappearance during the past weeks except by telling the truth, however painful?'

Marianne sprang up from her cushions with a cry and running to Jolival took both his hands in hers.

'No, for pity's sake, Arcadius, don't ask that of me. Don't ask me to tell him those shameful things. It would make him loathe me… he might even hold me in disgust…'

'Why should he? Was it your fault? Did you go to the villain of your own free will? You have been abused, Marianne, first in your kindness and simplicity and secondly as a helpless woman, not to mention the base means employed: drugs and violence!'

'I know. I know all that but I know Jason, too. He can be jealous… violent. He has already had much to forgive me. Remember what it must have done to his strict moral principles to find himself in love with Napoleon's mistress. Then remember that after that I was obliged to literally sell myself to a total stranger in order to preserve my honour. And now you want me to tell him… to try and explain…? Oh, no, my dear friend! I can't. Don't ask me to do that! It's just impossible.'

'Be sensible, Marianne. You said yourself that Jason loves you enough to overlook a good deal.'

'Not that! Oh, he wouldn't blame me, of course. He'd… understand, or try to look as though he understood to spare me pain. But I should lose him. There would always be that frightful picture between us, and if I kept anything back from him, he would imagine it! I should die of grief. You don't want me to die, do you, Arcadius? You wouldn't like that…'

She was trembling like a leaf in the grip of a panic fear resulting partly from the terrors of the past days and partly from despair and the tormenting dread of losing her only love.

Arcadius put his arm round her, led her very gently to a chair and made her sit down. Clasping her suddenly ice-cold hands in his, he knelt beside her.

'Not only do I not want you to die, my child, I very much want you to be happy. Of course, it's natural for you to be frightened at the idea of telling the man you love a thing like this, but what can you tell him?'

'I don't know. That the Prince kidnapped me… locked me up somewhere… and I escaped. I'll think of something… and you'll think too, won't you, Arcadius? You're so clever… so intelligent…'

'And supposing something comes of the affair? What will you say then?'

'Nothing will come of it. I won't let it! To begin with, there's no reason to think that monster's efforts were successful, and if they were…'

'Well?'

'I'd get rid of it, if I have to risk my life to do it. I'd do anything to be free of that rotten fruit, and I will, if I ever find out that it's true! But Jason must never, never know! I told you: I'd rather die! You must promise me you'll not tell him, even on pledge of secrecy. You must swear to it. If you won't, I shall go mad!'

She was in such a state that Jolival saw it was impossible to reason with her. Her eyes were burning with fever and exhaustion and there was a shrill note in her voice that revealed nerves strained almost to breaking point, ready to snap at any moment.

'I promise, my dear, and now, for heaven's sake, calm yourself. You need rest and sleep… to help you recover. You are quite safe with me. No one can harm you and I'll do all I can to help you to forget this time as quickly as possible. Gracchus and Agathe are here with me, you know. And now I'll call your maid and she shall put you to bed and take care of you and no one, I promise you, is going to ask you any more questions…'

Jolival's voice flowed on in a gentle, reassuring murmur, soft and soothing as velvet, and it acted like oil on troubled waters.

Little by little, Marianne relaxed, and when, a minute later, Agathe and Gracchus burst into the room with cries of joy, they found her weeping softly in Jolival's arms.

But these, too, were healing tears.

CHAPTER FIVE

Dreams to Reality

Late on the following afternoon, Marianne lay on a sofa pulled up to the open window and watched two ships come sailing through the Lido Channel. The first and larger of the two was flying the American colours from her peak but it did not need the stars on her flag to tell the watcher it was Jason's ship.

She had known from the confused and contradictory state of her own feelings, even when the tall, square-rigged brig was no more than a white dot against the sky.

The sun which all day long had blazed down on Venice was sinking in a welter of molten gold behind the church of the Redeemer. A breath of cooler air drifted through the window, bringing with it the sound of seabirds crying, and Marianne sniffed appreciatively, enjoying the fragile peace of these last moments of solitude, and wondering a little that she should be doing so when the thing she was waiting for was the arrival of the man she loved.

In a few minutes, he would come. She pictured his entrance, his first look, his first words and trembled with mingled joy and apprehension: apprehension that she might not be able to sustain the role she had decreed for herself, that she might not be sufficiently natural.

Waking that morning, after practically sleeping the clock round twice, she had felt much better, her mind easier and her body relaxed by her sleep which, thanks to Jolival, had been surrounded by more luxury than might have been expected.

Instead of putting up at one of the inns, Jolival had taken rooms in a private house on his arrival in Venice. In Florence he had been recommended to the house of a Signor Giuseppe Dal Niel, a polite, good-natured and cheerfully-disposed individual who, at the fall of the Republic, had rented the upper floors of the splendid old palace built for the doge Giovanni Dandolq, the man who had given Venice her coinage and had been responsible for striking the first golden ducats.

Dal Niel was a widely-travelled man and consequently deplored the poverty of contemporary inns and hostelries. He had the notion of taking in paying guests and surrounding them with a degree of comfort, even luxury, hitherto quite unknown. It was his dream to get possession of the whole of the mansion and turn it into the greatest hotel of all time, but in order to do so he needed the ground floor, and this, so far, he had failed to acquire, since the present owner, the old Countess Mocenigo, was violently set against any such commercial undertaking.[1]

He made up for it by taking in only hand-picked visitors in whom he took as much interest as if they had been his personal guests. Twice a day he would attend them in person, or send his daughter Alfonsina to make sure that they had everything they required. Naturally he could not do enough for the Princess Sant'Anna, in spite of her somewhat unconventional arrival, clad in a soaking wet gown, in the arms of an officer of dragoons, and he had given strict orders to his staff that no noise be allowed to disturb her rest.

As a result of his care, Marianne had succeeded, in a single day, in erasing the marks of her imprisonment, and she now presented a fresh and blooming countenance to the sun. If it had not been for the evil memories which still persisted, she would have felt gloriously well.

As soon as the Witch's lines became clear beyond a doubt, Jolival had gone down to the harbour to tell Jason of Marianne's arrival and explain what had happened to her, or that version of it which had been concocted between them. Agreeing that the simplest was always the best, this was what they had decided upon together: Marianne had been carried off by her husband's orders and kept prisoner under strong guard in a house whose whereabouts she did not know, where she remained in total ignorance of the fate in store for her, a fate which her injured husband seemed in no hurry to reveal. All she knew was that she was to be put on board ship for some unknown destination. One night, however, when her guards were unusually lax, she had succeeded in escaping and making her way to Venice where Jolival had found her.