“You bring up young Count Almaviva like a prince, madame. It is something to have good blood in one’s veins, even on one side—”
If she could have killed him with a look of those bright dark eyes, he would have fallen dead as he spoke the words that struck one by one at her broken heart. He knew his power; he knew wherein it lay, and how to use it—and he loved to wound her; because, though he had won wealth and rank from her, he had never conquered her, and he felt that even in her despair she defied him.
“You are irrelevant, monsieur. Pray be so kind as to say what brought you here, where I would not insult your good sense by saying you are a welcome visitor.”
“Briefly then, madame. Our domestic arrangements do not please me. We are never known to quarrel, it is true; but we are rarely seen to address each other, and we are not often seen in public together. Very well this in South America, where we were king and queen of our circle—here it will not do. To say the least, it is mysterious. The fashionable world is scandalous. People draw inferences—monsieur does not love madame, and he married her for her money; or, on the other hand, madame does not love monsieur, but married him because she had some powerful motive for so doing. This will not do, countess. A banker must be respectable, or people may be afraid to trust him. I must be, what I am now called, ‘the eminent banker;’ and I must be universally trusted.”
“That you may the better betray, monsieur; that is the motive for winning people’s confidence, in your code of moral economy, is it not?”
“Madame is becoming a logician; her argument by induction does her credit.”
“But, your business, monsieur?”
“Was to signify my wish, madame, that we should be seen oftener together in public. The Italian Opera, now, madame, though you have so great a distaste for it—a distaste which, by the by, you did not possess during the early period of your life—is a very popular resort. All the world will be there tonight, to witness the début of a singer of continental celebrity. Perhaps you will do me the honour to accompany me there?”
“I do not take any interest, monsieur—”
“In the fortunes of tenor singers. Ah, how completely we outlive the foolish fancies of our youth! But you will occupy the box on the grand tier of her Majesty’s Theatre, which I have taken for the season. It is to your son’s—to Cherubino’s interest, for you to comply with my request.” He glances towards the boy once more, with a sneer on his thin lips, and then turns and bows to Valerie, as he says—
“Au revoir, madame. I shall order the carriage for eight o’clock.”
A horse, which at a sale at Tattersall’s had attracted the attention of all the votaries of the Corner, for the perfection of his points and the enormous price which he realized, caracoles before the door, under the skilful horsemanship of a well-trained and exquisitely-appointed groom. Another horse, equally high-bred, waits for his rider, the Count de Marolles. The groom dismounts, and holds the bridle, as the gentleman emerges from the door and springs into the saddle. A consummate horseman the Count de Marolles; a handsome man too, in spite of the restless and shifting blue eyes and the thin nervous lips. His dress is perfect, just keeping pace with the fashion sufficiently to denote high ton in the wearer, without outstripping it, so as to stamp him a parvenu. It has that elegant and studious grace which, to a casual observer, looks like carelessness, but which is in reality the perfection of the highest art of all—the art of concealing art.
It is only twelve o’clock, and there are not many people of any standing in Piccadilly this September morning; but of the few gentlemen on horseback who pass Monsieur de Marolles, the most aristocratic-looking bow to him. He is well-known in the great world as the eminent banker, the owner of a superb house in Park Lane. He possesses a man cook of Parisian renown, who wears the cross of the Legion of Honour, given him by the first Napoleon on the occasion of a dinner at Talleyrand’s. He has estates in South America and in France; a fortune, said to be boundless, and a lovely wife. For the rest, if his own patent of nobility is of rather fresh date, and if, as impertinent people say, he never had a grandfather, or indeed anything in the way of a father to speak of, it must be remembered that great men, since the days of mythic history, have been celebrated for being born in rather an accidental manner.
But why a banker? Why, possessed of an enormous fortune, try to extend that fortune by speculation? That question lies between Raymond de Marolles and his conscience. Perhaps there are no bounds to the ambition of this man, who entered Paris eight years ago an obscure adventurer, and who, according to some accounts, is now a millionaire.
II
Mr. Peters Sees a Ghost
Mr. Peters, pensioned off by Richard’s mother with an income of a hundred pounds a year, has taken and furnished for himself a small house in a very small square not far from Mr. Darley’s establishment, and rejoicing in the high-sounding address of Wellington Square, Waterloo Road. Having done this, he feels that he has nothing more to do in life than to retire upon his laurels, and enjoy the otium cum dignitate which he has earned so well.
Of course Mr. Peters, as a single man, cannot by any possibility do for himself; and as—having started an establishment of his own—he is no longer in a position to be taken in and done for, the best thing he can do is to send for
