Lucille started round eagerly.
"What do you mean?" she cried.
"Your husband is in London," the d.u.c.h.ess answered.
Lucille laughed with the gaiety of a child. Like magic the lines from beneath her eyes seemed to have vanished. Lady Carey watched her with pale cheeks and malevolent expression.
"Come, Prince," she cried mockingly, "it was only a week ago that you a.s.sured me that my husband could not leave America. Already he is in London. I must go to see him. Oh, I insist upon it."
Saxe Leinitzer glanced towards the d.u.c.h.ess. She laid down her knitting.
"My dear Countess," she said firmly, "I beg that you will listen to me carefully. I speak to you for your own good, and I believe I may add, Prince, that I speak with authority."
"With authority!" the Prince echoed.
"We all," the d.u.c.h.ess continued, "look upon your husband"s arrival as inopportune and unfortunate. We are all agreed that you must be kept apart. Certain obligations have been laid upon you. You could not possibly fulfil them with a husband at your elbow. The matter will be put plainly before your husband, as I am now putting it before you. He will be warned not to attempt to see or communicate with you as your husband. If he or you disobey the consequences will be serious."
Lucille shrugged her shoulders.
"It is easy to talk," she said, "but you will not find it easy to keep Victor away when he has found out where I am."
The Prince intervened.
"We have no objection to your meeting," he said, "but it must be as acquaintances. There must be no intermission or slackening in your task, and that can only be properly carried out by the Countess Radantz and from Dorset House."
Lucille smothered her disappointment.
"Dear me," she said. "You will find Victor a little hard to persuade."
There was a moment"s silence. Then the Prince spoke slowly, and watching carefully the effect of his words upon Lucille.
"Countess," he said, "it has been our pleasure to make of your task so far as possible a holiday. Yet perhaps it is wiser to remind you that underneath the glove is an iron hand. We do not often threaten, but we brook no interference. We have the means to thwart it. I bear no ill-will to your husband, but to you I say this. If he should be so mad as to defy us, to incite you to disobedience, he must pay the penalty."
A servant entered.
"Mr. Reginald Brott is in the small drawing-room, your Grace," he announced. "He enquired for the Countess Radantz."
Lucille rose. When the servant had disappeared she turned round for a moment, and faced the Prince. A spot of colour burned in her cheeks, her eyes were bright with anger.
"I shall remember your words, Prince," she said. "So far from mine being, however, a holiday task, it is one of the most wearisome and unpleasant I ever undertook. And in return for your warnings let me tell you this. If you should bring any harm upon my husband you shall answer for it all your days to me. I will do my duty. Be careful that you do not exceed yours."
She swept out of the room. Lady Carey laughed mockingly at the Prince.
"Poor Ferdinand!" she exclaimed.
CHAPTER XIII
He had been kept waiting longer than usual, and he had somehow the feeling that his visit was ill-timed, when at last she came to him. He looked up eagerly as she entered the little reception room which he had grown to know so well during the last few weeks, and it struck him for the first time that her welcome was a little forced, her eyes a little weary.
"I haven"t," he said apologetically, "the least right to be here."
"At least," she murmured, "I may be permitted to remind you that you are here without an invitation."
"The worse luck," he said, "that one should be necessary."
"This is the one hour of the day," she remarked, sinking into a large easy-chair, "which I devote to repose. How shall I preserve my fleeting youth if you break in upon it in this ruthless manner?"
"If I could only truthfully say that I was sorry," he answered, "but I can"t. I am here--and I would rather be here than anywhere else in the world."
She looked at him with curving lips; and even he, who had watched her often, could not tell whether that curve was of scorn or mirth.
"They told me," she said impressively, "that you were different--a woman-hater, honest, gruff, a little cynical. Yet those are the speeches of your salad days. What a disenchantment!"
"The things which one invents when one is young," he said, "come perhaps fresh from the heart in later life. The words may sound the same, but there is a difference."
"Come," she said, "you are improving. That at any rate is ingenious.
Suppose you tell me now what has brought you here before four o"clock, when I am not fit to be seen?"
He smiled. She shrugged her shoulders.
"I mean it. I haven"t either my clothes or my manners on yet. Come, explain."
"I met a man who interested me," he answered. "He comes from America, from Lenox!"
He saw her whiten. He saw her fingers clutch the sides of her chair.
"From Lenox? And his name?"
"The Duke of Souspennier! He takes himself so seriously that he even travels incognito. At the hotel he calls himself Mr. Sabin."
"Indeed!"
"I wondered whether you might not know him?"
"Yes, I know him."
"And in connection with this man," Brott continued, "I have something in the nature of a confession to make. I forgot for a moment your request.
I even mentioned your name."
The pallor had spread to her cheeks, even to her lips. Yet her eyes were soft and brilliant, so brilliant that they fascinated him.
"What did he say? What did he ask?"
"He asked for your address. Don"t be afraid. I made some excuse. I did not give it."
For the life of him he could not tell whether she was pleased or disappointed. She had turned her shoulder to him. She was looking steadily out of the window, and he could not see her face.