“Ah!” François clapped his hands. “It is true, m’sieur. I am a very good valet—oh, but very good!” He skipped to the bed and picked up an embroidered satin vest. This he laid over a chair-back.
“The vest of M’sieur Philippe,” he said reverently.
“So I see,” said Sir Maurice. “What’s he doing, lying abed so late?”
“Ah, non, m’sieur! He does not lie abed late! Oh, but never, never. It is that the barber is here, and the tailor—imbeciles, both! They put M’sieur Philippe in a bad humour with their so terrible stupidity. He spends an hour explaining what it is that he wishes.” François cast up his eyes. “And they do not understand, no! They are of so great a density! M’sieur Philippe he become much enraged, naturally.”
“Monsieur Philippe is very particular, eh?”
François beamed. He was opening various pots in readiness for his master.
“Yes, m’sieur. M’sieur Philippe must have everything just as he likes it.”
At that moment Philip walked in, wrapped in a gorgeous silk robe, and looking thunderous. When he saw his father his brow cleared.
“You, sir? Have you waited long?”
“No, only ten minutes or so. Have you strangled the tailor?”
Philip laughed.
“De près! François, I will be alone with M’sieur.”
François bowed. He went out with his usual hurried gait.
Philip sat down before his dressing-table.
“What do you think of the incomparable François?” he asked.
“He startled me at first,” smiled Sir Maurice. “A droll little creature.”
“But quite inimitable. You’re out early this morning, sir?”
“My dear Philip, it is close on noon! I have been to see Cleone.”
Philip picked up a nail-polisher and passed it gently across his fingers.
“Ah?”
“Philip, I am worried.”
“Yes?” Philip was intent on his nails. “And why?”
“I don’t understand the child! I could have sworn she was dying for you to return!”
Philip glanced up quickly.
“That is true?”
“I thought so. At home—yes, I am certain of it! But now she seems a changed being.” He frowned, looking at his son. Philip was again occupied with his hands. “She is in excellent spirits; she tells me that she enjoys every moment of every day. She was in ecstasies! I spoke of you and she was quite indifferent. What have you done to make her so, Philip?”
“I do not quite know. I have become what she would have had me. To test her, I aped the mincing extravagance of the typical town-gallant. She was surprised at first, and then angry. That pleased me. I thought: Cleone does not like the thing I am; she would prefer the real me. Then I waited on Lady Malmerstoke. Cleone was there. She was, as you say, quite changed. I suppose she was charming; it did not seem so to me. She laughed and flirted with her fan; she encouraged me to praise her beauty; she demanded the madrigal I had promised her. When I read it she was delighted. She asked her aunt if I were not a dreadful, flattering creature. Then came young Winton, who is, I take it, amoureux à en perdre la tête. To him she was all smiles, behaving like some Court miss. Since then she has always been the same. She is kind to every man who comes her way, and to me. You say you do not understand? Nor do I. She is not the Cleone I knew, and not the Cleone I love. She makes herself as—Clothilde de Chaucheron. Charmante, spirituelle, one to whom a man makes trifling love, but not the one a man will wed.” He spoke quietly, and with none of his usual sparkle.
Sir Maurice leaned forward, striking his fist on his knee.
“But she is not that type of woman, Philip! That’s what I can’t understand!”
Philip shrugged slightly.
“She is not, you say? I wonder now whether that is so. She flirted before, you remember, with Bancroft.”
“Ay! To tease you!”
“Cela se peut. This time it is not to tease me. That I know.”
“But, Philip, if it is not for that, why does she do it?”
“Presumably because she so wishes. It is possible that the adulation she receives has flown to her head. It is almost as though she sought to captivate me.”
“Cleone would never do such a thing!”
“Well, sir, you will see. Come with us this afternoon. Tom and I are bidden to take a dish of Bohea with her ladyship.”
“Sally has already asked me. I shall certainly come. Mordieu, what ails the child?”
Philip rubbed some rouge on to his cheeks.
“If you can tell me the answer to that riddle, sir, I shall—thank you.”
“You do care, Philip? Still?” He watched Philip pick up the haresfoot with fingers that trembled a little.
“Care?” said Philip. “I—yes, sir. I care—greatly.”
Lady Malmerstoke glanced critically at her niece.
“You are very gay, Clo,” she remarked.
“Gay?” cried Cleone. “How could I be sober, Aunt Sally? I am enjoying myself so much!”
Lady Malmerstoke pushed a bracelet farther up one plump arm.
“H’m!” she said. “It’s very unfashionable, my dear, not to say bourgeois.”
“Oh, fiddle!” answered Cleone. “Who thinks that?”
“I really don’t know. It is what one says. To be in the mode you must be fatigued to death.”
“Then I am not in the mode,” laughed Cleone. “Don’t forget, Aunt, that I am but a simple country-maid!” She swept a mock curtsey.
“No,” said her ladyship placidly. “One is not like to forget it.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Cleone.
“Don’t eat me,” sighed her aunt. “ ’Tis your principal charm—freshness.”
“Oh!” said Cleone doubtfully.
“Or it was,” added Lady Malmerstoke, folding her hands and closing her eyes.
“Was! Aunt Sally, I insist that you tell me what it is you mean!”
“My love, you know very well what I mean.”
“No, I do not! I—I—Aunt Sally, wake up!”
Her ladyship’s brown eyes opened.
“Well, my dear, if you must have it, ’tis this—you make yourself cheap by your flirtatious ways.”
Cleone’s cheeks flamed.
“I—oh, I don’t f—flirt! I—Auntie, how can you say so?”
“Quite easily,” said her ladyship. “Else
