Mademoiselle Julie said nothing. She retreated behind the circle that surrounded Lady Henry. But Montresor jumped up and offered her his chair.
"I wish I had you for a secretary, mademoiselle," he said, gallantly. "I never before heard Lady Henry ask you for anything you couldn"t find."
Lady Henry flushed, and, turning abruptly to Bury, began a new topic.
Julie quietly refused the seat offered to her, and was retiring to an ottoman in the background when the door was thrown open and the footman announced:
"Captain Warkworth."
VI
The new-comer drew all eyes as he approached the group surrounding Lady Henry. Montresor put up his gla.s.ses and bestowed on him a few moments of scrutiny, during which the Minister"s heavily marked face took on the wary, fighting aspect which his department and the House of Commons knew. The statesman slipped in for an instant between the trifler coming and the trifler gone.
As for Wilfrid Bury, he was dazzled by the young man"s good looks.
""Young Harry with his beaver up!"" he thought, admiring against his will, as the tall, slim soldier paid his respects to Lady Henry, and, with a smiling word or two to the rest of those present, took his place beside her in the circle.
"Well, have you come for your letters?" said Lady Henry, eying him with a grim favor.
"I think I came--for conversation," was Warkworth"s laughing reply, as he looked first at his hostess and then at the circle.
"Then I fear you won"t get it," said Lady Henry, throwing herself back in her chair. "Mr. Montresor can do nothing but quarrel and contradict."
Montresor lifted his hands in wonder.
"Had I been aesop," he said, slyly, "I would have added another touch to a certain tale. Observe, please!--even after the Lamb has been devoured he is still the object of calumny on the part of the Wolf! Well, well!
Mademoiselle, come and console me. Tell me what new follies the d.u.c.h.ess has on foot."
And, pushing his chair back till he found himself on a level with Julie Le Breton, the great man plunged into a lively conversation with her.
Sir Wilfrid, Warkworth, and a few other _habitues_ endeavored meanwhile to amuse Lady Henry. But it was not easy. Her brow was lowering, her talk forced. Throughout, Sir Wilfrid perceived in her a strained attention directed towards the conversation on the other side of the room. She could neither see it nor hear it, but she was jealously conscious of it. As for Montresor, there was no doubt an element of malice in the court he was now paying to Mademoiselle Julie. Lady Henry had been th.o.r.n.y over much during the afternoon; even for her oldest friend she had pa.s.sed bounds; he desired perhaps to bring it home to her.
Meanwhile, Julie Le Breton, after a first moment of reserve and depression, had been beguiled, carried away. She yielded to her own instincts, her own gifts, till Montresor, drawn on and drawn out, found himself floating on a stream of talk, which Julie led first into one channel and then into another, as she pleased; and all to the flattery and glorification of the talker. The famous Minister had come to visit Lady Henry, as he had done for many Sundays in many years; but it was not Lady Henry, but her companion, to whom his homage of the afternoon was paid, who gave him his moment of enjoyment--the moment that would bring him there again. Lady Henry"s fault, no doubt; but Wilfrid Bury, uneasily aware every now and then of the dumb tumult that was raging in the breast of the haughty being beside him, felt the pathos of this slow discrowning, and was inclined, once more, rather to be sorry for the older woman than to admire the younger.
At last Lady Henry could bear it no longer.
"Mademoiselle, be so good as to return his father"s letters to Captain Warkworth," she said, abruptly, in her coldest voice, just as Montresor, dropping his--head thrown back and knees crossed--was about to pour into the ears of his companion the whole confidential history of his appointment to office three years before.
Julie Le Breton rose at once. She went towards a table at the farther end of the large room, and Captain Warkworth followed her. Montresor, perhaps repenting himself a little, returned to Lady Henry; and though she received him with great coolness, the circle round her, now augmented by Dr. Meredith, and another politician or two, was reconst.i.tuted; and presently, with a conscious effort, visible at least to Bury, she exerted herself to hold it, and succeeded.
Suddenly--just as Bury had finished a very neat a.n.a.lysis of the Shah"s public and private character, and while the applauding laughter of the group of intimates amid which he sat told him that his epigrams had been good--he happened to raise his eyes towards the distant settee where Julie Le Breton was sitting.
His smile stiffened on his lips. Like an icy wave, a swift and tragic impression swept through him. He turned away, ashamed of having seen, and hid himself, as it were, with relief, in the clamor of amus.e.m.e.nt awakened by his own remarks.
What had he seen? Merely, or mainly, a woman"s face. Young Warkworth stood beside the sofa, on which sat Lady Henry"s companion, his hands in his pockets, his handsome head bent towards her. They had been talking earnestly, wholly forgetting and apparently forgotten by the rest of the room. On his side there was an air of embarra.s.sment. He seemed to be choosing his words with difficulty, his eyes on the floor. Julie Le Breton, on the contrary, was looking at him--looking with all her soul, her ardent, unhappy soul--unconscious of aught else in the wide world.
"Good G.o.d! she is in love with him!" was the thought that rushed through Sir Wilfrid"s mind. "Poor thing! Poor thing!"
Sir Wilfrid outstayed his fellow-guests. By seven o"clock all were gone.
Mademoiselle Le Breton had retired. He and Lady Henry were left alone.
"Shut the doors!" she said, peremptorily, looking round her as the last guest disappeared. "I must have some private talk with you. Well, I understand you walked home from the Crowboroughs" the other night with--that woman."
She turned sharply upon him. The accent was indescribable. And with a fierce hand she arranged the folds of her own thick silk dress, as though, for some relief to the stormy feeling within, she would rather have torn than smoothed it.
Sir Wilfrid seated himself beside her, knees crossed, finger-tips lightly touching, the fair eyelashes somewhat lowered--Calm beside Tempest.
"I am sorry to hear you speak so," he said, gravely, after a pause.
"Yes, I talked with her. She met me very fairly, on the whole. It seemed to me she was quite conscious that her behavior had not been always what it should be, and that she was sincerely anxious to change it. I did my best as a peacemaker. Has she made no signs since--no advances?"
Lady Henry threw out her hand in disdain.
"She confessed to me that she had pledged a great deal of the time for which I pay her to Evelyn Crowborough"s bazaar, and asked what she was to do. I told her, of course, that I would put up with nothing of the kind."
"And were more annoyed, alack! than propitiated by her confession?" said Sir Wilfrid, with a shrug.
"I dare say," said Lady Henry. "You see, I guessed that it was not spontaneous; that you had wrung it out of her."
"What else did you expect me to do?" cried Sir Wilfrid. "I seem, indeed, to have jolly well wasted my time."
"Oh no. You were very kind. And I dare say you might have done some good. I was beginning to--to have some returns on myself, when the d.u.c.h.ess appeared on the scene."
"Oh, the little fool!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Sir Wilfrid, under his breath.
"She came, of course, to beg and protest. She offered me her valuable services for all sorts of superfluous things that I didn"t want--if only I would spare her Julie for this ridiculous bazaar. So then my back was put up again, and I told her a few home truths about the way in which she had made mischief and forced Julie into a totally false position.
On which she flew into a pa.s.sion, and said a lot of silly nonsense about Julie, that showed me, among other things, that Mademoiselle Le Breton had broken her solemn compact with me, and had told her family history both to Evelyn and to Jacob Delafield. That alone would be sufficient to justify me in dismissing her. _N"est-ce pas?_"
"Oh yes," murmured Sir Wilfrid, "if you want to dismiss her."
"We shall come to that presently," said Lady Henry, shortly. "Imagine, please, the kind of difficulties in which these confidences, if they have gone any further--and who knows?--may land me. I shall have old Lord Lackington--who behaved like a brute to his daughter while she was alive, and is, all the same, a _poseur_ from top to toe--walking in here one night and demanding his granddaughter--spreading lies, perhaps, that I have been ill-treating her. Who can say what absurdities may happen if it once gets out that she is Lady Rose"s child? I could name half a dozen people, who come here habitually, who would consider themselves insulted if they knew--what you and I know."
"Insulted? Because her mother--"
"Because her mother broke the seventh commandment? Oh, dear, no! That, in my opinion, doesn"t touch people much nowadays. Insulted because they had been kept in the dark--that"s all. Vanity, not morals."
"As far as I can ascertain," said Sir Wilfrid, meditatively, "only the d.u.c.h.ess, Delafield, Montresor, and myself are in the secret."
"Montresor!" cried Lady Henry, beside herself. "_Montresor!_ That"s new to me. Oh, she shall go at once--at once!" She breathed hard.
"Wait a little. Have you had any talk with Jacob?"
"I should think not! Evelyn, of course, brings him in perpetually--Jacob this and Jacob that. He seems to have been living in her pocket, and the three have been intriguing against me, morning, noon, and night. Where Julie has found the time I can"t imagine; I thought I had kept her pretty well occupied."
Sir Wilfrid surveyed his angry companion and held his peace.
"So you don"t know what Jacob thinks?"