"Beca.s.sine a la Broche," he murmured. "I must remember that."
Then he turned in his chair and looked at Wilhelmina.
"You are worrying," he declared abruptly.
She shrugged her shoulders, alabaster white, rising from the unrelieved black of her velvet gown.
"My maid"s fault," she added. "I ought to have worn white. Of course I"m worrying. I don"t care about carrying the signs of it about with me though. I think I shall have to adopt Peggy"s advice, and go to the rouge-pot."
"Perhaps," he said deliberately, "it will not be necessary."
She looked up at him quickly. His words sounded encouraging.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that a way may be found to induce a certain gentleman to return to his native country and stay there," Deyes said smoothly. "After dinner we are going to have some talk. Please oblige me now by abandoning the discussion and eating something. Ah! that champagne will do you good."
Her neighbour on the other side addressed her, and Wilhelmina was conscious of a sudden lightening of the load upon her heart. Like every one else, she had confidence in this tall, self-contained man whose life was somewhat of a mystery even to his friends, and who had about him that suggestion of power which reticence nearly always brings. He was going to help her. She pushed all those miserable thoughts away from her. She became herself again.
"Let no one imagine," Lady Peggy said, carefully knocking the end of a cigarette upon the table, "that I am going to try to catch the eyes of all you women, and go sailing away with my nose in the air to look at engravings in the drawing-room. You can just get up and go when you like, any or all of you. There are bridge tables laid out for you in the library, music and a hopping girl--I don"t call it dancing--in the drawing-room, a pool in the billiard-room, or flirtation in the winter-garden. Coffee and liqueurs will follow you wherever you go. Take your choice, good people. For myself, the Duke is telling me stories of Cairo. J"y suis, j"y reste. I"m only thankful no one else can hear them!"
The party at the great round table dispersed slowly by two and threes.
Wilhelmina and Deyes strolled into the winter-garden. Deyes lit a cigarette and stood with his hands behind him. Wilhelmina was leaning against the back of a chair. She was too excited to sit down.
"Please!" she begged.
Deyes threw his cigarette away. His face seemed to harden and soften at the same time. His mouth was suddenly firm, but his eyes glowed. All the boredom was gone from his manner and expression.
"Wilhelmina," he said, "I have wanted to marry you ever since I saw you in the Cafe de Paris with that atrocious blackguard who has caused you so much suffering. You may remember that I have hinted as much to you before!"
She was startled--visibly disturbed.
"You know very well," she said, "that you are speaking of impossible things!"
"Things that were impossible, Wilhelmina," he said. "Suppose I take Jean le Roi off your hands? Suppose I promise to send him back to his own country like a rat to his hole? Suppose I promise that your marriage shall be annulled without a line in the newspapers, without a single vestige of publicity?"
"You cannot do it," she murmured eagerly.
"You want your freedom, then?" he asked.
"Yes! I want my freedom," she answered. "I have a right to it, haven"t I?"
"And I," he said slowly, "want you!"
There was a short pause. Through the palms came the faint wailing of a violin, the crash of pianoforte chords, the clear soft notes of a singer. Wilhelmina felt her eyes fill with tears. She was overwrought, and there were new things, things that were strange to her, in the worn, lined face of the man who was bending towards her.
"Wilhelmina," he said softly, "life, our life, does its best to strangle the emotions. One feels that one does best with a pulse which has forgotten how to quicken, and a heart which beats to the will of its owner. But the most hardened of us come to grief sometimes. I am afraid that I have come--very much to grief!"
"I am sorry," she said quietly.
He drew away and his face became like marble.
"You mean--that it isn"t any use?" he asked hoa.r.s.ely.
She looked at him, and he did not press for words.
"Is it--the missioner?" he asked.
Her head sank a little lower, but still she did not answer. Gilbert Deyes drew himself upright. He remembered the cigarette which had burnt itself out between his fingers, and he carefully re-lit it.
"I am now," he said, blowing a cloud of blue smoke into the heart of a yellow rose, "confronted by a somewhat hackneyed, but always interesting problem. Do I care for you enough--or too little--or too much--to continue your friend, when my aid will probably ensure the loss of you for ever! It is not a problem to be hurried over, this!"
"There is no need for haste," she answered. "I know you, Gilbert, better than you know yourself. I am very sure that you will help me--if you can."
He laughed bitterly.
"You are a good deal surer of me than I am of myself," he answered. "Why should I give you up to a boy who hasn"t learnt yet the first lesson of life?"
"What is it?" she asked. "I am not clear that I have graduated."
"You can see it blazoned over the portals as you pa.s.s through the gates," he answered, ""Abandon all enthusiasm, ye who enter here." The pathways of life are heaped with the corpses of those who will not understand. Do you think that this boy will fare better than the rest, with his preaching and lectures and East End work? It"s sheer impertinence! Man, the individual, is only a p.a.w.n in the game of life.
Why should he imagine that he can alter the things that are?"
"Even the striving to alter them," she said, "may tend towards betterment."
"A plat.i.tude," he declared--"and hopeless!"
She raised her eyes to his.
"Anyhow," she said softly, "I care for him."
He bowed low.
"Incomprehensible," he murmured. "Take your freedom and marry this young man if you must. But I warn you that you will be miserable. Apples and green figs don"t grow on the same tree."
He drew an envelope from his pocket and handed it to her.
"Jean le Roi," he said, "was married to Annette Hurier, in the town of Chalons, two years before he posed before you as the Duke of Languerois.
You will find Annette"s address in there. It took me a year to trace this out--a wasted year! Bah! you women are all disappointments. We will go and play bridge."
Lady Peggy stared at Wilhelmina when they entered the library a few minutes later.
"What on earth have you been doing to her, Gilbert?" she demanded.
"She"s a changed woman!"
"Making love to her!" Deyes answered.
Lady Peggy laughed.