CHAPTER XXV.

AS IN A DREAM.

“There is no place like Florence,” said Lady Despard, in her soft, languorous voice. “One gets tired of London, and Paris, and Venice! I always fancy, when I’m there, that I’m living somewhere in Regent’s Park, near the canal, you know; and, as for the country in England, you either get burned up by the heat or drowned by the rain. But Florence”--she paused, and sighed contentedly--“oh, it’s always delicious!”

She was lying in a hammock, swung between two laburnums, on the lawn in front of the Villa Rimini, and she addressed Doris, who sat on the ground, with an open book in her lap, but with her eyes fixed dreamily on the exquisite view, which stretched out in an endless vista of grassy plains, and violet-tinted hills, over which the full moon was shedding its silvery light.

The soft evening breeze came to the two women, laden with flowers, as with an offering; there were flowers everywhere; in the long beds, starring the velvety lawns; on the banks, which ran along the limits of the garden; in huge jardinieres, on the terraces and balconies; on the plains, which lay like embroidered cloths beneath them, and over the hills, to which they lent color and perfume.

It was a land of fairies, a land of beauty, in which every breath of wind that blew carried with it the memory of music and song, of laughter and joyfulness. In a word, it was Florence in the height of her loveliness, crowned as a bride for her bridegroom the summer, and rejoicing in her splendor.

The Villa Rimini, with its numerous windows twinkling with the recently-lit candles, was one of the most beautiful of the many palatial residences in the “City of Flowers.” It had been a home of one of the ancient princes, and when Lady Despard had first seen, fancied and bought it, was nearly in ruins; but, with the immense wealth at her command, she had restored it, if not to quite its ancient splendor, at least to a semblance which came very near the original reality.

Marble corridors, vast saloons, with rare hangings and costly frescoes, statues which the Louvre would gladly have bidden for, antique fountains and priceless mosaics were all here as in the days when the princely owners were, indeed, a name and a power in the land.

And here she and Doris had been living a dreamy existence, a period of lotus-eating, for nearly a month.

There was the usual colony of English in Florence, of which the Villa Rimini was, by right of its splendor and the rank and wealth of Lady Despard, the center.

Her hospitality was limitless, and the Salon of the Princes, as the vast reception-room was called, was every afternoon the scene of a gathering which almost resembled a royal levee; while the widely-extending grounds were open to those fortunate individuals who had procured an introduction to the wealthy owner.

To the Villa Rimini came also the Florentine nobility; tall, grave-looking Italians, with their high-bred voices and polished manners, men whom Doris always pictured as wearing the silken hose and brocaded tunics of their forefathers in the old Florentine days, when men wore shoes almost as pointed as the swords which were always ready to leap from their scabbards with--or without--the slightest provocation.

Amidst these surroundings, Lady Despard held what might, with little exaggeration, be termed a court; but it might be said, to her credit, the admiration, the adoration she received did not turn her head, probably because she recognized the obvious fact that she shared her throne with the quiet-looking, soft-voiced girl who had come to her as a companion, and whom she had grown to regard and love as a friend.

Once, when the reception was over and the two women were alone, as they were this evening, she looked at Doris, laughingly, and said:

“Well, dear, tired of all the adulation and worship, or are you looking forward to to-morrow’s repetition? Seriously, my dear, I am beginning to be a little jealous; more than half the pretty speeches this afternoon were addressed to Miss Marlowe, and your bouquets were quite as numerous as mine. Beware of vanity, Doris!”

And Doris had looked up at her with the quiet smile, beneath which always lay an undercurrent of sadness, and shook her head, as she replied:

“The danger is all on your side, Lady Despard. You are the sun, I am merely the shadow. Some day some one will pluck the sun from its place, and the shadow will be desolate!”

But Lady Despard had laughed placidly.

“No, thank you, dear! I’ve been married once, and, as the boy said of the prickly pear, ‘No more for me, thank you!’ But yours is another case altogether, and I confess that I tremble every day lest you should come and tell me, with that mouselike little smile of yours, that one of these men is going to take you from me! Ah! what a pity it would be!--for we are so happy, you and I, dear! If girls could only know when they are well off! But they never do. It’s only when they have resigned their liberty and given all their heart for about a quarter of some selfish man’s that they discover what a fraud matrimony is!”

And Doris had made no reply beyond the quiet, “mouselike smile,” and a little sigh, which was too low to reach her companion’s ear.

Not Lady Despard alone, but many another of the frequenters of the Villa Rimini, have wondered that this beautiful English girl should be so irresponsive to the admiration and attentions lavished upon her. Men of rank and position, for whom the matrons of society angled unceasingly, paid court to her, needing but a smile or word of encouragement to lay their titles at her feet; but the smile nor the word were never extended to them. As the Princess of Carthage, clad in the mystic veil, moved, like an unapproachable spirit, among the suitors at her father’s court, so Doris Marlowe lived, surrounded by a barrier of reserve which, vague and intangible as it was, served to keep the most ardent at arm’s length.

The past alone was to her reality; the present seemed like a dream; and often she sat beside Lady Despard, surrounded by a crowd of people laughing and talking, the voices died upon her ears, and she heard only the murmur of the brook in Barton meadows, mingling with the voice of the man who had won her heart and tossed it aside, shattered and broken forever.

Often she wondered whether he had married the Lady Grace--whose name, when first she had heard it on his lips, had sounded like a knell in her ears.

If stone walls do not a prison make, a crowd cannot destroy solitude, and Doris, in the midst of the brilliant throng which made the Villa Rimini its center, lived in a mental and spiritual solitude, on the threshold of which only two persons ever trod. One was Lady Despard, whom she loved, the other was--Percy Levant. She would have treated him as coldly as she did all the others, but it was impossible. He made it impossible by never giving her a chance of repulsing him. Since the evening he had come to Chester Gardens for the first time he had never paid her a single compliment, and from his lips alone she never received a single “pretty” speech.

Although he slept at the inn, he had a luxurious suite of apartments in the villa, and they met at almost every meal, and frequently during the day, but his manner to Doris was one of studious courtesy toned by a reserve which matched her own.

By the rest he was regarded as the most charming of men. The women secretly--some of them openly--adored him for his good looks, which were remarkable even in that land of handsome faces, and for the exquisite voice, which was always at their service. The men voted him a “good fellow,” and were warm in his praises. The reception from which he was absent always seemed lacking in its accustomed brightness, and no dance or outdoor excursion was complete without Mr. Percy Levant.

Perhaps the air of mystery which surrounded him increased the interest he awakened. Nobody knew anything about him, except that he was in Florence to study music, and, in some vague, unexplained way, to collect materials for a magnificent and unique music-room which Lady Despard intended building in one of her houses, and at some unfixed time in the dim future.

Of himself, and his own affairs and past history, he was as silent as Doris was of hers; and people who were at first inclined to be curious accepted his want of a past and were content to take him for what he was--a light-hearted waif floating like a bubble on the surface of society.

To the superficial frequenters of the Villa Rimini he did not seem to have a care and scarcely an object in life, excepting it were to play and sing at all times and seasons, whenever Lady Despard requested him.

But Doris was something more than a superficial observer, and often when, in the early morning or in the delicious gloaming, she was wandering dreamily through the flower-scented grounds, she would come across him pacing moodily beneath the trees, or lying on a bank, with his head resting on his hands, and his handsome face darkened by an expression which would have startled his many friends who thought they knew him quite intimately.

At such times he would spring up, dispelling his moodiness instantly, and resume his usual manner; but the impression he had made remained with Doris.

And, having seen him off his guard, as it were, she found herself, at odd times, thinking of him. He seemed as alone in the midst of the pleasure-seeking crowd as herself. From thinking of him in an indifferent, casual kind of way, she grew, all unconsciously, to entertain a vague sort of sympathy for him, which she would never have been capable of if he had lavished compliments upon her, as the rest