Sekhet. Irene Miller
Kenyon smiled inwardly at the life she thus proposed for herself. If he knew aught of the world, the sons of Adam would see to it soon enough that this particular daughter of Eve did not spend her days simply and solely divided between banging the keys of a typewriter and daubing sticky colours on a canvas. It was merely his luck that he happened to be first in the field.
To Evarne he appeared kindliness itself. Certainly she could and she should study Art; and this brought him round to a suggestion that he hoped would give her pleasure. He possessed a delightful villa in balmy Naples, where Mrs. Kenyon was now staying to escape the rigours of the English winter. Evarne must come out and stop awhile with his wife. On the journey through Italy, she should behold all its Art treasures. That alone, he assured her, would form a splendid foundation for her later artistic training.
Despite her sorrows, Evarne's face lit up with a sudden brilliant light of happiness at this altogether delightful prospect, both for the near and distant future. Her brightened expression thanked her guardian more ardently than did her softly-spoken words, and so it was settled.
CHAPTER III
A RICH CASKET FOR A RARE JEWEL
Despite the heavy heart with which Evarne bade farewell to her home, the weeks occupied by the protracted journey to Naples became a period in which the light-heartedness of youth gradually conquered sorrow. It was so crowded with interest, novelty, fresh sights and experiences, that every week seemed as a month, and her former monotonous existence faded rapidly into the background. She seemed a different being, living in a strange, new world. It was a world in which Leo had never had a place, so that its progress was in no ways affected by his absence. Evarne mourned her father sincerely; shed many tears for him in the silence of the night; and sometimes felt pangs of compunction that novelty and interest should have such powers of overcoming grief. But despite her reluctance to accept their aid, these great forces continued their healing work.
Amid its other charms and novelties, this new life was one totally devoid of the necessity of considering ways and means. The girl's natural tastes were far from simple, and the luxury in which Morris lived and travelled soon seemed not only congenial, but proper and customary.
At Paris, where they stayed some time, she first discovered the subtle delight that lies in the possession of dainty clothes. Her guardian gave her carte blanche at both costumiers and milliners, but, through diffidence, she took little advantage of this generosity. Realising this, he visited one of the leading ateliers, and gave orders direct to madame herself to lavishly stock Evarne's wardrobe.
Thus the girl found herself clad in garments totally different to any she had ever seen—let alone possessed. She reluctantly consented to try to endure corsets, but very soon gave up the attempt in despair. But madame, far from discouraged, exerted her ingenuity to array the girl's lithe yet well-developed young form to the best advantage without any such fictitious aid, and she succeeded even beyond her expectations.
Never before had Evarne realised the latent possibilities of her own figure. She took unconcealed delight in beholding her reflection in the mirror, and positively revelled in her silk linings, silk petticoats, silk stockings, and other hitherto undreamed-of silken luxuries.
Venice was visited, then Ravenna, Florence, Pisa and Rome. Day after day Morris was untiring in the thought and care he took for his new toy. Evarne, apparently, looked upon his utmost and constant attention as merely part of the accepted routine of the journey, and noted it with the quiet indifference of a spoilt beauty. Yet there was no suggestion of coquetry or affectation about the girl. Her mind, as well as her person, was developing on calm, stately and dignified lines.
She was, in her turn, almost as quietly affectionate and attentive to him as she would have been to her father, but the vainest of men could not have persuaded himself that she made the least effort—open or covert—to at all unduly ingratiate herself into his regard. "Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love," sings the wise poet, but Morris had been taught so early and so often how many women are over-eager to be "kind" to a wealthy man, that Evarne's simple ways were attractive by reason of their very novelty. It served as a sauce piquante, and before Naples was reached he felt more genuine love for this sweet child than he had deemed that well-worn article—his heart—would ever again have the good luck to experience.
It was not until they were actually in the train bound for Naples that he broke to her the information that the looked-for introduction to Mrs. Kenyon must be postponed for the present.
"A letter from my wife reached me just before we left Rome," he explained. "She is very nervous, and fears Vesuvius is working up for another eruption. She often thinks that—pure fancy, of course! Anyway she has gone on to Taormina, in Sicily. She will return to Naples when she can muster courage."
"How much she travels about," remarked the unsuspecting Evarne.
"Doesn't she!" agreed Morris with a grim little smile, thinking of the invalid to whom the daily journey from bedroom to boudoir was an arduous undertaking.
Then, noting a troubled expression on Evarne's face as she gazed out of the window at the fast-flying landscape, he asked, with a tiny hint of sadness in his voice—
"Am I such dull company for a bright little girl that you look thus solemn at the prospect of a few more tête-à-tête meals?"
He took her hand as he spoke. Evarne had long ago got to the point of finding it pleasant to feel her slender fingers enclosed in his strong magnetic clasp. She smiled a little and shook her head slightly in response to his question, but the fingers he held moved restlessly, as if they half-sought to free themselves.
Evarne's mental upbringing and education had been as unusual and unconventional—to say the least of it—as had been her physical training. She learnt the Greek and English alphabets almost simultaneously, and while other damsels of her years were skimming through novelettes, she had been poring over the eternal and inspiring works of the writers of antiquity. Which form of exclusive mental diet created, on the whole, the most impracticable, the most false, the most mischievous ideas when considered in reference to the stern realities of modern life, it is difficult to say. Infinitely more than the average girl of her age did Evarne know of the possible sins of humanity, of the grim tragedies of history; infinitely less of that perhaps more useful field of knowledge—the restrictions, petty malignity, wickedness, and cruelly quick suspicions of modern society.
Nevertheless, an instinct told her that there was a vast difference between travelling under the escort of her guardian to join his wife, and in staying with him at his villa without that lady.
"Do you not think Mrs. Kenyon expects us to go on to her at Sicily?" she suggested in a hesitating voice, divided between her fear of appearing to presume and dictate, and her instinctive shrinking from this new programme.
Morris read the trouble in the girl's mind, and promptly answered in the one and only manner that was calculated to set her thoroughly at ease again.
"When you are comfortably fixed up at Naples I will go on to Taormina and bring back the truant. As to you, my dear, forgive my plain speaking, but it is time you seriously started to study for your future profession. There are excellent Art masters at Naples, and you can draw in the museum there, but in Sicily there is nothing of all this."
As he had foreseen, this business-like view of the proceeding reconciled her to it as nothing else would have done, and it was with a light heart and a smiling face that she first set foot over the threshold of "Mon Bijou."
Morris himself conducted his little guest to the rooms that had been prepared for her occupation. The villa was situated on the heights overlooking the bay, and Evarne, stepping out on to the verandah, stood enthralled by the beauty around. She gazed over the broad expanse of purple sea sparsely dotted with small sails, white and brown—at the island of Capri, haunted by the memory of dark mysteries—at