IX
When Miss Le Breton reached the hall, a footman was at the outer door reciting Lady Henry’s excuses as each fresh carriage drove up; while in the inner vestibule, which was well screened from the view of the street, was a group of men, still in their hats and overcoats, talking and laughing in subdued voices.
Julie Le Breton came forward. The hats were removed, and the tall, stooping form of Montresor advanced.
“Lady Henry is so sorry,” said Julie, in a soft, lowered voice. “But I am sure she would like me to give you her message and to tell you how she is. She would not like her old friends to be alarmed. Would you come in for a moment? There is a fire in the library. Mr. Delafield, don’t you think that would be best? … Will you tell Hutton not to let in anybody else?”
She looked at him uncertainly, as though appealing to him, as a relation of Lady Henry’s, to take the lead.
“By all means,” said that young man, after perhaps a moment’s hesitation, and throwing off his coat.
“Only please make no noise!” said Miss Le Breton, turning to the group. “Lady Henry might be disturbed.”
Everyone came in, as it were, on tiptoe. In each face a sense of the humor of the situation fought with the consciousness of its dangers. As soon as Montresor saw the little Duchess by the fire, he threw up his hands in relief.
“I breathe again,” he said, greeting her with effusion. “Duchess, where thou goest, I may go. But I feel like a boy robbing a hen-roost. Let me introduce my friend, General Fergus. Take us both, pray, under your protection!”
“On the contrary,” said the Duchess, as she returned General Fergus’s bow, “you are both so magnificent that no one would dare to protect you.”
For they were both in uniform, and the General was resplendent with stars and medals.
“We have been dining with royalty,” said Montresor. “We want some relaxation.”
He put on his eyeglasses, looked round the room, and gently rubbed his hands.
“How very agreeable this is! What a charming room! I never saw it before. What are we doing here? Is it a party? Why shouldn’t it be? Meredith, have you introduced M. du Bartas to the Duchess? Ah, I see—”
For Julie Le Breton was already conversing with the distinguished Frenchman wearing the rosette of the Legion of Honor in his buttonhole, who had followed Dr. Meredith into the room. As Montresor spoke, however, she came forward, and in a French which was a joy to the ear, she presented M. du Bartas, a tall, well-built Norman with a fair mustache, first to the Duchess and then to Lord Lackington and Jacob.
“The director of the French Foreign Office,” said Montresor, in an aside to the Duchess. “He hates us like poison. But if you haven’t already asked him to dinner—I warned you last week he was coming—pray do it at once!”
Meanwhile the Frenchman, his introductions over, looked curiously round the room, studied its stately emptiness, the books on the walls under a trellis-work, faintly gilt, the three fine pictures; then his eyes passed to the tall and slender lady who had addressed him in such perfect French, and to the little Duchess in her flutter of lace and satin, the turn of her small neck, and the blaze of her jewels. “These Englishwomen overdo their jewels,” he thought, with distaste. “But they overdo everything. That is a handsome fellow, by-the-way, who was with la petite fée when we arrived.”
And his shrewd, small eyes travelled from Warkworth to the Duchess, his mind the while instinctively assuming some hidden relation between them.
Meanwhile, Montresor was elaborately informing himself as to Lady Henry.
“This is the first time for twenty years that I have not found her on a Wednesday evening,” he said, with a sudden touch of feeling which became him. “At our age, the smallest break in the old habit—”
He sighed, and then quickly threw off his depression.
“Nonsense! Next week she will be scolding us all with double energy. Meanwhile, may we sit down, mademoiselle? Ten minutes? And, upon my word, the very thing my soul was longing for—a cup of coffee!”
For at the moment Hutton and two footmen entered with trays containing tea and coffee, lemonade and cakes.
“Shut the door, Hutton, please,” Mademoiselle Le Breton implored, and the door was shut at once.
“We mustn’t, mustn’t make any noise!” she said, her finger on her lip, looking first at Montresor and then at Delafield. The group laughed, moved their spoons softly, and once more lowered their voices.
But the coffee brought a spirit of festivity. Chairs were drawn up. The blazing fire shone out upon a semicircle of people representing just those elements of mingled intimacy and novelty which go to make conversation. And in five minutes Mademoiselle Le Breton was leading it as usual. A brilliant French book had recently appeared dealing with certain points of the Egyptian question in a manner so interesting, supple, and apparently impartial that the attention of Europe had been won. Its author had been formerly a prominent official of the French Foreign Office, and was now somewhat out of favor with his countrymen. Julie put some questions about him to M. du Bartas.
The Frenchman feeling himself among comrades worthy of his steel, and secretly pricked by the presence of an English cabinet minister, relinquished the half-disdainful reserve with which he had entered, and took pains. He drew the man in question, en silhouette, with a hostile touch so sure, an irony so light, that his success was instant and great.
Lord Lackington woke up. Handsome, white-haired dreamer that he was, he had been looking into the fire, half—smiling, more occupied, in truth, with his own thoughts than with his companions. Delafield had brought him in; he did not exactly know why he was there, except that he liked Mademoiselle Le Breton, and
