FAST BOUND IN MISERY AND IRON
By MARY CHOLMONDELEY



PRISONERS

FAST BOUND IN MISERY AND IRON

By

MARY CHOLMONDELEY

_Author of_

"Red Pottage"


"But for failing of love on our
part, therefore is all our travail."

--JULIAN OF NORWICH.


DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
NEW YORK MCMVI

Copyright, 1905, 1906, by

COLVER PUBLISHING COMPANY

Copyright, 1906, by

MARY CHOLMONDELEY

_Published, September, 1906_




To
My Brother
Reginald





ILLUSTRATIONS


"Her eyes turned towards it mechanically
because it contained ... the man of
whom she was thinking" _Frontispiece_

"A deathlike silence followed the _delegato's_
words" _Page_ 36

"'Is she worth it?' he said with sudden
passion" " 46

"'You are all blinder one than the other, that
it's Andrea I'm grieving for'" " 80

"If Fay had come in then he would have killed
her, done her to death with the chains he
had worn so patiently for her sake" " 146

"Fay noticed for the first time how lightly
Wentworth walked, how square his shoulders
were" " 184




CHAPTER I

Grim Fate was tender, contemplating you,
And fairies brought their offerings at your birth;
You take the rose-leaf pathway as your due,
Your rightful meed the choicest gifts of earth.

--ARTHUR C. LEGGE.


Fay stood on her balcony, and looked over the ilexes of her villa at
Frascati; out across the grey-green of the Campagna to the little
compressed city which goes by the great name of Rome.

How small it looked, what a huddled speck with a bubble dome, to be
represented by so stupendous a name!

She gazed at it without seeing it. Her eyes turned towards it
mechanically because it contained somewhere within its narrow precincts
the man of whom she was thinking, of whom she was always thinking.

It was easy to see that Fay--the Duchess of Colle Alto--was an
Englishwoman, in spite of her historic Italian name.

She had the look of perfect though not robust health, the reflection
over her whole being of a childhood spent much in the open air. She was
twenty-three, but her sweet fair face, with its delicate irregular
features, was immature, childish. It gave no impression of experience,
or thought, or of having met life. She was obviously not of those who
criticise or judge themselves. In how many faces we see the conflict, or
the remains of conflict with a dual nature. Fay, as she was called by
her family, seemed all of a piece with herself. Her unharassed
countenance showed it, especially when, as at this moment, she looked
harassed. Anxiety was evidently a foreign element. It sat ill upon her
smooth face, as if it might slide off at any moment. Fay's violet eyes
were her greatest charm. She looked at you with a deprecating, timid,
limpid