The great wrong had been
done. Vanno could not forgive his brother's injustice. The two would be
separated in heart and life while Marie lived. All this through Marie's
sin and cowardice in covering it. Yet even those she had injured could
not urge her on to death.
Suddenly, just as the motor slowed down near the Monaco frontier, Peter
cried out, "There's Mrs. Winter, walking!"
She touched an electric bell, and the chauffeur stopped his car.
Rose was taking her morning exercise. She looked up, smiling at sight of
Peter and Vanno getting out of the automobile to meet her.
"Where's Mary?" she asked, then checked herself quickly. She saw by the
two faces that something was wrong. "Mary's not ill, I hope?" she
amended her question.
Peter left the explanation to Vanno. It concerned his family, and how
much he might choose to tell she did not know.
"There's been a misunderstanding," he said. "I came back this morning to
find Mary gone. I'm afraid my brother and sister-in-law were not kind to
her, and nothing can ever be the same between us again because of that.
But the one important thing is to find Mary. She has--thrown me over, in
a letter, and it does not tell me where she is. Do you think she can be
in Monte Carlo?"
"No, I don't," Rose replied with her usual promptness. "What a shame I
was out when she called the other night. Perhaps she would have confided
in me. Now I see why she took her jewellery. Maybe she needed money. If
we'd been at home, we'd have made her stay with us.
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