“You’re so-good to me. Of course I don’t want to leave here. Anyway, how could you? You’ve got the estate to run. You’re making headway at last.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t really matter. You come first.”
“I might go away-by myself-just for a little.”
“No, we’ll go together. I want you to feel looked after, someone beside you-always.”
“You think I need a keeper?” She began to laugh. It was slightly uncontrolled laughter. She stopped suddenly, hand to her mouth.
“I want you to feel-always-that I’m there,” said Wilding.
“Oh, I do feel it-I do.”
“We’ll go to Italy. Or to England, if you like. Perhaps you’re home-sick for England.”
“No,” she said. “We won’t go anywhere. We’ll stay here. It would be the same wherever we went. Always the same.”
She slumped a little in her chair. Her eyes stared sombrely ahead of her. Then suddenly she looked up over her shoulder, up into Wilding’s puzzled, worried face.
“Dear Richard,” she said. “You are so wonderful to me. So patient always.”
He said softly: “So long as you understand that to me nothing matters but you.”
“I know that-oh, I do know it.”
He went on:
“I hoped that you would be happy here, but I do realise that there’s very little-distraction.”
“There’s Dr. Knox,” she said.
Her head turned swiftly towards the guest, and a sudden gay, impish smile flashed at him. He thought: ‘What a gay, what an enchanting creature she could be-has been.’
She went on: “And as for the island and the villa, it’s an earthly paradise. You said so once, and I believed you, and it’s true. It is an earthly paradise.”
“Ah!”
“But I can’t quite take it. Don’t you think, Dr. Knox”-the slight staccato tempo returned-“that one has to be rather a strong character to stand up to paradise? Like those old Primitives, the blessed sitting in a row under the trees, wearing crowns-I always thought the crowns looked so heavy-casting down their golden crowns before the glassy sea-that’s a hymn, isn’t it? Perhaps God let them cast down the crowns because of the weight. It’s heavy to wear a crown all the time. One can have too much of everything, can’t one? I think-” She got up, stumbled a little. “I think, perhaps, I’ll go back to bed. I think you’re right, Richard, perhaps I am feverish. But crowns are heavy. Being here is like a dream come true, only I’m not in the dream any more. I ought to be somewhere else, but I don’t know where. If only-”
She crumpled very suddenly, and Llewellyn, who had been waiting for it, caught her in time, relinquishing her a moment later to Wilding.
“Better get her back to her bed,” he advised crisply.
“Yes, yes. And then I’ll telephone to the doctor.”
“She’ll sleep it off,” said Llewellyn.
Richard Wilding looked at him doubtfully.
Llewellyn said: “Let me help you.”
The two men carried the unconscious girl through the door by which she had entered the room. A short way along a corridor brought them to the open door of a bedroom. They laid her gently on the big carved wooden bed, with its hangings of rich dark brocade. Wilding went out into the corridor and called: “Maria-Maria.”
Llewellyn looked swiftly round the room.
He went through a curtained alcove into a bathroom, looked into the glass-panelled cupboard there, then came back to the bedroom.
Wilding was calling again: “Maria,” impatiently.
Llewellyn moved over to the dressing-table.
A moment or two later Wilding came into the room, followed by a short, dark woman. The latter moved quickly across the room to the bed and uttered an exclamation as she bent over the recumbent girl.
Wilding said curtly:
“See to your mistress. I will ring up the doctor.”
“It is not necessary, se?or. I know what to do. By tomorrow morning she will be herself again.”
Wilding, shaking his head, left the room reluctantly.
Llewellyn followed him, but paused in the doorway.
He said: “Where does she keep it?”
The woman looked at him; her eyelids flickered.
Then, almost involuntarily, her gaze shifted to the wall behind his head. He turned. A small picture hung there, a landscape in the manner of Corot. Llewellyn raised it from its nail. Behind it was a small wall safe of the old-fashioned type, where women used to keep their jewels, but which would hold little protection against a modern cracksman. The key was in the lock. Llewellyn pulled it gently open and glanced inside. He nodded and closed it again. His eyes met those of Maria in perfect comprehension.