It was a simple straight-forward design, and one that carried success in its pocket. No one could suspect anything.
Yet at the very first step suspicion, or what looked like it, stared at him from the eyes of the concierge when he asked for Madame Gautier.
"Monsieur is not of the friends of Madame?" she asked curiously.
He knew better than to resent the curiosity. He explained that he desired to see Madame on business.
"You will see her never," the woman said dramatically; "she sees no one any more."
"Is it that she is ill?"
"It is that she is dead,--and the dead do not receive, Monsieur." She laughed, and told the tale of death circ.u.mstantially, with grim relish of detail.
"And the young ladies--they have returned to their parents?"
"Ah, it is in the young ladies that Monsieur interests himself? But yes. Madame"s brother, who is in the Commerce of Nantes, he restored instantly the young ladies to their friends. One was already with her aunt."
Vernon had money ready in his hand.
"What was her name, Madame--the young lady with the aunt?"
"But I know not, Monsieur. She was a new young lady, who had been with Madame at her Villa--I have not seen her. At the time of the regrettable accident she was with her aunt, and doubtless remains there. Thank you, Monsieur. That is all I know."
"Thank you, Madame. I am desolated to have disturbed you. Good day."
And Vernon was in the street again.
So Betty had never come to the Rue Vaugirard! The aunt must somehow have heard the news--perhaps she had called on the way to the train--she had returned to the Bete and Betty now was Heaven alone knew where. Perhaps at Long Barton. Perhaps in Paris, with some other dragon.
Vernon for a day or two made a point of being near when the studios--Julien"s, Carlorossi"s, Delacluse"s, disgorged their students. He did not see Betty, because she was not studying at any of these places, but at the Atelier Bianchi, of which he never thought.
So he shrugged his shoulders, and dined again with Lady St. Craye, and began to have leisure to a.n.a.lyse the emotions with which she inspired him. He had not believed that he could be so attracted by a woman with whom he had played the entire comedy, from first glance to last tear--from meeting hands to severed hearts. Yet attracted he was, and strongly. He experienced a sort of resentment, a feeling that she had kept something from him, that she had reserves of which he knew nothing, that he, who in his blind complacency had imagined himself to have sucked the orange and thrown away the skin, had really, in point of fact, had a strange lovely fruit s.n.a.t.c.hed from him before his blunt teeth had done more than nibble at its seemingly commonplace rind.
In the old days she had reared barriers of reserve, walls of reticence over which he could see so easily; now she posed as having no reserves, and he seemed to himself to be following her through a darkling wood, where the branches flew back and hit him in the face so that he could not see the path.
"You know," she said, "what makes it so delightful to talk to you is that I can say exactly what I like. You won"t expect me to be clever, or shy, or any of those tiresome things. We can be perfectly frank with each other. And that"s such a relief, isn"t it?"
"I wonder whether it would be--supposing it could be?" said he.
They were driving in the Bois, among the autumn tinted trees where the pale mist wreaths wandered like ghosts in the late afternoon.
"Of course it could be; it is," she said, opening her eyes at him under the brim of her marvel of a hat: "at least it is for simple folk like me. Why don"t you wear a window in your breast as I do?"
She laid her perfectly gloved hand on her sables.
"Is there really a window? Can one see into your heart?"
"_One_ can--not the rest. Just the one from whom one feareth nothing, expecteth nothing, hopeth nothing. That"s out of the Bible, isn"t it?"
"It"s near enough," said he. "Of course, to you it"s a new sensation to have the window in your breast. Whereas I, from innocent childhood to earnest manhood, have ever been open as the day."
"Yes," she said, "you were always transparent enough. But one is so blind when one is in love."
Her calm references to the past always piqued him.
"I don"t think Love is so blind as he"s painted," he said: "always as soon as I begin to be in love with people I begin to see their faults."
"You may be transparent, but you haven"t a good mirror," she laughed; "you don"t see yourself as you are. It isn"t when you begin to love people that you see their faults, is it? It"s really when they begin to love you."
"But I never begin to love people till they begin to love me. I"m too modest."
"And I never love people after they"ve done loving me. I"m too--"
"Too what?"
"Too something--forgetful, is it? I mean it takes two to make a quarrel, and it certainly takes two to make a love affair."
"And what about all the broken hearts?"
"What broken hearts?"
"The ones you find in the poets and the story books."
"That"s just where you do find them. Nowhere else.--Now, honestly, has your heart ever been broken?"
"Not yet: so be careful how you play with it. You don"t often find such a perfect specimen--absolutely not a crack or a chip."
"The pitcher shouldn"t crow too loud--can pitchers crow? They have ears, of course, but only the little pitchers. The ones that go to the well should go in modest silence."
"Dear Lady," he said almost impatiently, "what is there about me that drives my friends to stick up danger boards all along my path? "This way to Destruction!" You all label them. I am always being solemnly warned that I shall get my heart broken one of these days, if I don"t look out."
"I wish you wouldn"t call me dear Lady," she said; "it"s not the mode any more now."
"What may I call you?" he had to ask, turning to look in her eyes.
"You needn"t call me anything. I hate being called names. That"s a pretty girl--not the dark one, the one with the fur hat."
He turned to look.
Two girls were walking briskly under the falling leaves. And the one with the fur hat was Betty. But it was at the other that he gazed even as he returned Betty"s prim little bow. He even turned a little as the carriage pa.s.sed, to look more intently at the tall figure in shabby black whose arm Betty held.
"Well?" said Lady St. Craye, breaking the silence that followed.
"Well?" said he, rousing himself, but too late. "You were saying I might call you--"
"It"s not what I was saying--it"s what you were looking. Who is the girl, and why don"t you approve of her companion?"
"Who says I don"t wear a window in my breast?" he laughed. "The girl"s a little country girl I knew in England--I didn"t know she was in Paris. And I thought I knew the woman, too, but that"s impossible: it"s only a likeness."
"One nice thing about me is that I never ask impertinent questions--or hardly ever. That one slipped out and I withdraw it. I don"t want to know anything about anything and I"m sorry I spoke. I see, of course, that she is a little country girl you knew in England, and that you are not at all interested in her. How fast the leaves fall now, don"t they?"