HONEYMOON HATE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21505, 31 May 1933, Page 19

HONEYMOON HATE

By MRS. C. N. WILLIAMSON

SYNOPSIS: The etory opens with the arrival at Venice of Gail Grant, a beautiful but spoilt and ill-mannered American heiress, who calls at Cavaroni's Tourist Agency to demand a guide with very special qualifications. The agent rather sarcastically intimates that the perfect professional guide required is not to be found, but that he might be able to enlist the help of Prince Dantarini— at n price! The bargain is made, subject to the Prince's consent, and Gail goes off in a gondola, pausing at an antique shop to inquire the price of some brocade. She is surprised to find the shopkeeper a very handsome and courteous gentleman, who speaks English with an Oxford accent. She is further surprised when lie not only quietly refuses to lower I.is price for the brocade, but refuses to sell it at all, eve" at a higher price, when he hoars that she intends to cut it up. After a polite skirmish, however, she is permitted to buy the bi'Ocade on giving hor pledge not to mutilate the work in any way. Returning to the gondola she loses her balance and in saving herself from falling into the canal <lf"P s her gold-mesh handbag into the water. Jhe mysterious shopkeeper promptly dives an<l restores it to her. On his return to the room behind the shop, he finds his mother, who is no less n person than the 1 nncess Dantarini, discussing the ungracious American girl with Cavaroni's agent, who lins come to inform him of the opportunity offered him to act as guide Dantarini decides to accept. Meanwhile on hor return to the hotel Gail receives the expected messago that " the prince " has consented to act as her guide and will call at three o'clock. She despatches a cheque for , the brocade to the shopkeeper of -he morning, adds 5000 lire as a reward for the rescue of her handbag and then awaits the " prince's " arrival. When in due course he is shown to her suite, she is filled with mingled anger, surprise and secret excitement to find that he and the hero of the morning arc one and the same person, rla hands back her "reward" and shows so much independence that Gail is forced to compromise and engage him only on his own termß. They begin by going down to dance at the hotel.

CHAPTER V A number of people who, like Miss Molesey, didn't dance but enjoyed watching those who did, were having tea and letting the music Cover their gossip. Gail had remembered at luncheontime to reserve a table, which luckily was large enough for three, and close by sat the two ladies known to her as " Mole's hags." The girl was impatient to test the skill of her newly-acquired slave as a dancer, so after tea and patisseries had been ordered she did not wait for them to bo served. (< "Let's try this!" she said. Do you think you can manage a waltz " "J hope for the best! Dantarini answered, smiling a kinder smile than ho had smiled yet—except for one or two ho had given Mole; then his arm slid round the younger woman s waist, and to Gail's amazement, she felt a queer electric thrill shooo through her nerves or veins. ' . , The man waltzed perfectly. He led her well. He held her well. He seemed to be almost what you might call an acquisition. Gail was sorry when the moment came to stop. But enthusiasts applauded the music and pbtained an encore, lne second waltz; was even better than the first. Extraordinary! Gail knew that she had never had „uch a partner, bhe felt completely in tvno with him, body and spirit, for yes. she was distinctly conscious of possessing a spirit. ®bc could havo sung with the music in sheer joy of movement. This man was going to be well worth his two_ thousand lire a day, even if she decided to spend many weeks in Venice. The thought came to her: Wo two must lock beautiful together! And it wasn't -exactly a conceited thought. It was merely an expression of happiiigss. But she was right. They did look beautiful together, these two. Everyone was gazing at them as if they had been a pair of exhibition dancers. After the danco Gail turned to Miss Molesey and said: " Didn't I read somewhere not long ago, while we were in Rome or Florence, that if you buy the property belonging to a titled family, in some parts of Italy you buy the right to tho title with the land? Maybe it would bo the same with the house. H'm! It would be fun to go home-with the title of ' princess,' and not have had to marry some poor foreign Iftol to get it! " ... ~ " Yes, there was an article in ihe Daily Mail, I think," agreed Mole. "Do you actually moan you would offer to buy the Dantarini palace so as to call yourself princess? " —" I mean just that! " said Gail. " Good heavens. 1 shouldn't like to ask that man to sell me his palace and title!" cried Mole. " No, not if I could afford to pay a million for them.' " I can offer to pay a m'llion," Gail boasted, calmly. 44 Not that I'd need to, not even in dollars. I don't believe tho Dantarini * family ever heard of a million." ~ . , , " Well, I may bo wrong," sighed Mole. " But my impression of that man makes mo feel lie wouldn't sell his palace, to say nothing of his title, for any money." ~,, . " You're so sentimental!" _ sneered Gail. " Every man has his price. This one will be no exception, you'll see." But suddenly she remembered the brocade. Miss Molesey could, almost, even at her age, have fallen in love with the prince in evening dress, that night at the opera, but she saw Gail looking the man over critically now and then, when liis attention was safely fixed on tho Sta the first time in tli«ir several stormy years together, the lit lie woman would have revelled in hurting thft girl. " I believe she's worse than I ever thought her," Mole told herself. '* She lias a cruel streak in her after all. Staring at the poor fellow like that, and making up her mind to strip him of everything he's got, if she can, for her own selfish use. Yes, if she can ! But Gail wasn't making up her mind to do anything of tho sort. She wanted to see more of the palace before she could be at all sure it was worth buying, and to find out more about the Dantarinis before she would dream of bidding for the title, as a feather in her cap. to take back to New York. * Next day an incident occurred, an incident which in Mole's diary was given a capital I. Miss Grant graciously allowed her princely guide to map out a programme of sight-seeing for the day, but for the evening she had a plan of her own. " Last night," she said, "1 heard those Americans in the next box to ours talking about a sort of music hall or vaudeville place called ' Piccolo Lido.' One man was telling the others that it was hotter stuff than anything in Paris or Berlin. It might bo fun! I should like to have you get us the tickets." "■l'm sorry, I can't do that," replied Dantarini. Leaning on both elbows on tho handsome centre table in her royal salon, Gail Grant stared across at Pietro Dantarini. Ho had just finished writing down a list of his suggestions for the day, and without glancing up, he meticulously folded tho paper. * " You can't?" echoed Gail. " You mean you think all the seats will be sold out before to-night? Tf they are, we can go to-morrow aight."

" I don't know," said Dantarini, " whether the seats are likely to be sold or not. What I meant was that the Piccolo Lido isn't a place where 1 could take you and Miss Molesey." " Is it so improper?" asked Gail, with a cynical little sinile. She was only leading him on to show how oldfashioned and stilted wero his ideas of where he could take ladies before she beat down his silly objwctions with her modern American insistence. "It is disgusting," Dantarini informed her. The answer was rather a blow, and Gail guessed that ho meant it to be just that. " Improper " is a word that

(COPYRIGHT)

Author of " Scarlet Runner," " Frozen Slippers," etc. A GRIPPING STORY OF LOVE AND ADVENTURE

n girl can copo with in these clays, argue down and sweep aside. But when a mun classifies a thing as " disgusting " he makes the next step more difficult. Miss Grant was not to be easily crushed, however. " Your ideas and ours about what's ' disgusting ' may be different," she suggested. " I am sure," said Dantarini, " that Miss Molesey's ideus and mine would be the same. As to yours—l may not be competent to judge." With that, ho pocketed his paper and looked her straight in the eyes. The tips of Gail's ears began to burn, as they always did if she felt herself flouted or insulted. " Well," she said, " the quickest way for you to learn to judge is to watch my reaction when we are there." " Wo shall not he there," announced the Prince. •" At least, 1 shall not. I shall not buy tickets for yon." " My hat, you are a queer sort of guide!" Gail slapped back at him. " Have I hired you to dictate to me where 1 am to go or not to go?" " I thought you did hire me for that very thing," said Dantarini. " To tell you what you ought to see and do in Venice." " Oh, churches and picture galleries, and lace shops and glass works, yes." she conceded. " You know them and I don't. Mole may, a little, though not enough, for foreigners can't. But places of amusement 1 can choose for myself, and I choose to go to this Piccolo Lido, which I heard my own countrymen recommend as very amusing." "Before you choose the Piccolo Lido, you will have to discharge me from your service," said the Prince. " I am quite willing to accept one minute's notice to quit." He was faintly smiling, what Mole noted in her diary as " a dangerous smile." And she added on the next page, " h'.s eyes looked exactly like grey agate, rather ugly agate." " You are always threatening me!" exclaimed Gail. " Not at all," he differed from her. " One ' threatens ' to take away from people something which they value. I don't flatter myself that you value mo highly enough to have a regret if 1 resign. I simply say I will not demean myself by taking you to a certain place. Or no! I'll go a Little further and say that you can choose between retaining my services a guide, or—going to the Piccolo Lido. It would be a disgrace to any professional or amateur guide if his clients went there. This is my Venice, not yours." " Oh, damn it, you do put on airs!" the girl broke out.' " You know perfectly well that 'l've got to have someone to trot me round Venice. I'm getting used to you now. You're better than beginning all over again with a stranger." " Thank you," said Dantarini, who allowed his hard face to show that Italian ladies in his class of life were not so free with their " damns " This is going to be a warm night for October and the moon is nearly full. I suggest instead of the Piccolo Lido and its filth, a dinner picnic on the lagoon. Two gondolas (your own will be ready by then), and I can get you the musicians we used to have in the old days: violin, 'cello and harp. Strangely enough the three survived the war." " Oh, very well," Gail agreed sulkily. " Arrange it!"

CHAPTER VI. Venice lias a mood of dreaminess in October. She wraps her beauty in a thin veil of creamy mist, embroidered with the light of sun and moon, netted with meshed bright reflections from canal and rio. And Gail Grant seemed to dream, too. The harsher side of her mismanaged nature had gone fast asleep. She almost startled Miss Molesey anew eacli day, with her unaccustomed groping after • information. In other places she had resented information. Now, she wanted to know things about history. Not that she read. Dantarini had brought her books about old Venice, and about Italian art. She scarcely glanced flt them, though she sce"med to like possessing them and keeping them under her hand. What she enjoyed was listening to tales of Venice, in days of ancient glory, and stories of old, great families whose palazzos still decorated, in shabby stateliness, the shores of the Grand Canal, iho histories that Dantarini knew by heart—histories of brave or wicked nobles and lovely, tragic women—were more exciting than the modern novels which Gail skipped through and tossed aside. Of his own ancestors the Prince did not speak, hoivever, possibly lest he might seem to boast, until one day Mole put him into a corner: You hitd an ancestor who was a doge, Mrs. Nugent Mac Arthur mentioned," she challenged him. As a matter of fact, secretly wanted Gail to know ho\v important this man was, this man whom she had hired to bo her guide, in his own city. " Tell me about the doge," Miss Grant instantly commanded. " Oh, my .connection with him,, was rather indirect," Dantarini said. " And the way it came about is a long story. It's a love story, too. Perhaps love stories bore you?" " Modern ones do," said Gail, " but not the old ones, of Venice. They're so nice and blood-thirsty." " This doesn't happen to bo as bloodthirsty as some of the others," the Prince apologised. "Tell it, anyhow," the girl ordered him. And he obeyed because he had no real objection to obeying, otherwise, as she had learned humiliatingly by this time, the talc would have remained untold. They were in one of the gondolas which Dantarini had obtained for Miss Grant, sightseeing as usual in the morning after, ten o'clock. " The story ought to be told in front of the three Giustiniani palaces, because it is concerned with the Giustiniani family, and you haven't heard anything about them yet. We'll row there before I begin." And ho spoke to the two smartly-dressed gondoliers. Past the Plazzo Pessonico, where the poet Browning died they rowed, past the Nani and on a little farther, where the threo great adjoining palaces of the Giustiniana tower up from the Grand Canal. In one of those your American writer, Mr..Howells, lived," said Dantarini, when the gondola had come to rest, " and in another Wagner wrote part of "fristran and Isolde.' But my story begins in the twelfth century, lhose were troubled times, and whenever there was any fighting to do the Giustiniani men were at the head and front of it. I think it was in 1171 that there was a massacre in Constantinople, and practically all the Venetians there wore exterminated. Of course, we sent a big expedition to tako revenge for the outrage." (Mole was amused at the Prince's casual " we," spoken as if he had been thero.) " Our pride made us sure that Manuel Comnenus would grovel; but this time God seemed not to bo on our side. Our galleys anchored at Scio, and the plague hit our army very hard. The expedition perished almost to a man, and not ono of the Giustiniani remained alive. i (To bo continued daily) ,