Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/247

 give up gambling and her son of twenty was wild and always in trouble with women. But worst of all and hardest to bear was Eugenia Beatrice. Why had God sent her another daughter late in life? And why had He sent her such a little monster who was as ugly as if she had been the daughter of the Devil himself? Nobody would ever marry such an ugly creature even with a dot of a million lira. What chance would she have without a penny? Why had she, a good woman, been punished thus?

There was nothing to be done with Eugenia Beatrice, said her aunt, but to put her into a convent as soon as possible. Even there a creature so ugly was certain to frighten the other nuns.

That night Eugenia Beatrice did not return from the park. They searched for her, not too carefully, for there was no one who really wanted to find her, but at evening of the next day she was brought home by a peasant living on the side of the mountain fifteen miles away. He had found her shivering among the rocks when he went out with his goats in the early morning.

As the two women passed through the great arched doorway of the Palazzo Gonfarini, the janitress went ahead leading the way up the wide stone stairway. It was cool here, for the thick walls shut out the hot wind that sang so perversely along the ancient cornices. At the second turning of the stairway, Signora Bardelli opened a door and they found themselves in a long corridor with a row of cell