Anna swung herself to her feet. She glanced at the clock.
"I suppose so," she a.s.sented.
"I have three gowns laid out," the maid continued respectfully. "Madame would look wonderful in the light green."
"Anything," Anna yawned.
The telephone bell tinkled. Anna took down the receiver herself.
"Yes?" she asked.
Her manner suddenly changed. It was a familiar voice speaking. Her maid, who stood in the background, watched and wondered.
"It is you, Baroness! I rang up to see whether there was any chance of your being able to dine with me? I have just got back to town."
"How dared you go away without telling me!" she exclaimed. "And how can I dine with you? Do you not realise that it is Ascot Thursday, and I have had many invitations to dine to-night? I am going to a very big dinner-party at Thurm House."
"Bad luck!" Norgate replied disconsolately. "And to-morrow?"
"I have not finished about to-night yet," Anna continued. "I suppose you do not, by any chance, want me to dine with you very much?"
"Of course I do," was the prompt answer. "You see plenty of the Princess of Thurm and nothing of me, and there is always the chance that you may have to go abroad. I think that it is your duty--"
"As a matter of duty," Anna interrupted, "I ought to dine at Thurm House.
As a matter of pleasure, I shall dine with you. You will very likely not enjoy yourself. I am going to be very cross indeed. You have neglected me shamefully. It is only these wonderful roses which have saved you."
"So long as I am saved," he murmured, "tell me, please, where you would like to dine?"
"Any place on earth," she replied. "You may call for me here at half-past eight. I shall wear a hat and I would like to go somewhere where our people do not go."
Anna set down the telephone. The listlessness had gone from her manner.
She glanced at the clock and ran lightly into the other room.
"Put all that splendour away," she ordered her maid cheerfully. "To-night we shall dazzle no one. Something perfectly quiet and a hat, please. I dine in a restaurant. And ring the bell, Marie, for two aperitifs--not that I need one. I am hungry, Marie. I am looking forward to my dinner already. I think something dead black. I am looking well tonight. I can afford to wear black."
Marie beamed.
"Madame has recovered her spirits," she remarked demurely.
Anna was suddenly silent. Her light-heartedness was a revelation. She turned to her maid.
"Marie," she directed, "you will telephone to Thurm House. You will ask for Lucille, the Princess"s maid. You will give my love to the Princess.
You will say that a sudden headache has prostrated me. It will be enough.
You need say no more. To-morrow I lunch with the Princess, and she will understand."
CHAPTER XXV
"Confess," Anna exclaimed, as she leaned back in her chair, "that my idea was excellent! Your little restaurant was in its way perfection, but the heat--does one feel it anywhere, I wonder, as one does in London?"
"Here, at any rate, we have air," Norgate remarked appreciatively.
"We are far removed," she went on, "from the clamour of diners, that babel of voices, the smell of cooking, the meretricious music. We look over the house-tops. Soon, just behind that tall building there, you will see the yellow moon."
They were taking their coffee in Anna"s sitting-room, seated in easy-chairs drawn up to the wide-flung windows. The topmost boughs of some tall elm trees rustled almost in their faces. Away before them spread the phantasmagoria of a wilderness of London roofs, softened and melting into the dim blue obscurity of the falling twilight. Lights were flashing out everywhere, and above them shone the stars. Norgate drew a long breath of content.
"It is wonderful, this," he murmured.
"We are at least alone," Anna said, "and I can talk to you. I want to talk to you. Should you be very much flattered, I wonder, if I were to say that I have been thinking of little else for the last three or four days than how to approach you, how to say something to you without any fear of being misunderstood, how to convince you of my own sincerity?"
"If I am not flattered," he answered, looking at her keenly, "I am at least content. Please go on."
"You are one of those, I believe," she continued earnestly, "who realise that somewhere not far removed from the splendour of these summer days, a storm is gathering. I am one of those who know. England has but a few more weeks of this self-confident, self-esteeming security. Very soon the shock will come. Oh! you sit there, my friend, and you are very monosyllabic, but that is because you do not wholly trust me."
He swung suddenly round upon her and there was an unaccustomed fire in his eyes.
"May it not be for some other reason?" he asked quickly.
There was a moment"s silence. Her own face seemed paler than ever in the strange half light, but her eyes were wonderful. He told himself with pa.s.sionate insistence that they were the eyes of a truthful woman.
"Tell me," she begged, "what reason?"
He leaned towards her.
"It is so hopeless," he said. "I am just a broken diplomat whose career is ended almost before it is begun, and you--well, you have everything at your feet. It is foolish of me, isn"t it, but I love you."
He took her hand, and she did not withdraw it.
"If it is foolish," she murmured, "then I am foolish, too. Perhaps you can guess now why I came to London."
He drew her into his arms. She made no resistance. Her lips, even, were seeking his. It seemed to him in those breathless moments that a greater thing than even the destiny of nations was born into the world. There was a new vigour in his pulses as she gently pushed him back, a new splendour in life.
"Dear," she exclaimed, "of course we are both very foolish, and yet, I do not know. I have been wondering why this has not come to me long ago, and now that it has come I am happy."
"You care--you really care?" he insisted pa.s.sionately.
"Of course I do," she told him, quietly enough and yet very convincingly. "If I did not care I should not be here. If I did not care, I should not be going to say the things to you which I am going to say now. Sit back in your chair, please, hold my hand still, smoke if you will, but listen."
He obeyed. A deeper seriousness crept into her tone, but her face was still soft and wonderful. The new things were lingering there.
"I want to tell you first," she said, "what I think you already know. The moment for which Germany has toiled so long, from which she has never faltered, is very close at hand. With all her marvellous resources and that amazing war equipment of which you in this country know little, she will soon throw down the gage to England. You are an Englishman, Francis.
You are not going to forget it, are you?"
"Forget it?" he repeated.