Her husband was still living, but he was at St. Petersburg. He was a Frenchman by family, but had been born in Russia. He had been attached to the Russian embassy in London, but was now attached to diplomacy in general in Russia. She did not join him because she loved England—oh, so much! And, perhaps, her husband might come back again some day. She did not say that she had not seen him for ten years, and was not quite sure whether he was dead or alive; but had she made a clean breast in all things, she might have done so. She said that she was a good deal still at the Russian embassy; but she did not say that she herself was a paid spy. Nor do I say so now, positively; but that was the character given to her by many who knew her. She called her brother Edouard, as though Harry had known the count all his life; and always spoke of Lady Ongar as Julie. She uttered one or two little hints which seemed to imply that she knew everything that had passed between “Julie” and Harry Clavering in early days; and never mentioned Lord Ongar without some term of violent abuse.
“Horrid wretch!” she said, pausing over all the r’s in the name she had called him. “It began, you know, from the very first. Of course he had been a fool. An old roué is always a fool to marry. What does he get, you know, for his money? A pretty face. He’s tired of that as soon as it’s his own. Is it not so, Mr. Clavering? But other people ain’t tired of it, and then he becomes jealous. But Lord Ongar was not jealous. He was not man enough to be jealous. Hor‑r‑rid wr‑retch!” She then went on telling many things which, as he listened, almost made Harry Clavering’s hair stand on end, and which must not be repeated here. She herself had met her brother in Paris, and had been with him when they encountered the Ongars in that capital. According to her showing, they had, all of them, been together nearly from that time to the day of Lord Ongar’s death. But Harry soon learned to feel that he could not believe all that the little lady told him.
“Edouard was always with him. Poor Edouard!” she said. “There was some money matter between them about écarté. When that wr‑retch got to be so bad, he did not like parting with his money—not even when he had lost it! And Julie had been so good always! Julie and Edouard had done everything for the nasty wr‑retch.” Harry did not at all like this mingling of the name of Julie and Edouard, though it did not for a moment fill his mind with any suspicion as to Lady Ongar. It made him feel, however, that this woman was dangerous, and that her tongue might be very mischievous if she talked to others as she did to him. As he looked at her—and being now in her own room she was not dressed with scrupulous care—and as he listened to her, he could not conceive what Lady Ongar had seen in her that she should have made a friend of her. Her brother, the count, was undoubtedly a gentleman in his manners and way of life, but he did not know by what name to call this woman, who called Lady Ongar Julie. She was altogether unlike any ladies whom he had known.
“You know that Julie will be in town next week?”
“No; I did not know when she was to return.”
“Oh, yes; she has business with those people in South Audley Street on Thursday. Poor dear! Those lawyers are so harassing! But when people have seven—thousand—pounds a year, they must put up with lawyers.” As she pronounced those talismanic words, which to her were almost celestial, Harry perceived for the first time that there was some sort of resemblance between her and the count. He could see that they were brother and sister. “I shall go to her directly she comes, and of course I will tell her how good you have been to come to me. And Edouard has been dining with you? How good of you. He told me how charming you are,”—Harry was quite sure then that she was fibbing—“and that it was so pleasant! Edouard is very much attached to Julie; very much. Though, of course, all that was mere nonsense; just lies told by that wicked lord. Bah! what did he know?” Harry by this time was beginning to wish that he had never found his way to Mount Street.
“Of course they were lies,” he said roughly.
“Of course, mon cher. Those things always are lies, and so wicked! What good do they do?”
“Lies never do any good,” said Harry.
To so wide a proposition as this madame was not prepared to give an unconditional assent; she therefore shrugged her shoulders and once again looked like her brother.
“Ah!” she said. “Julie is a happy woman now. Seven—thousand—pounds a year! One does not know how to believe it; does one?”
“I never heard the amount of her income,” said Harry.
“It is all that,” said the Franco-Pole, energetically, “every franc of it, besides the house! I know it. She told me herself. Yes. What woman would risk that, you know; and his life, you may say, as good as gone? Of course they were lies.”
“I don’t think you understand her, Madame Gordeloup.”
“Oh, yes; I know her, so well. And love her—oh, Mr. Clavering, I love her so dearly! Is she not charming?
