“The prince,” said Steinmetz to those who were interested in the matter, “is mad. He thinks that a Russian principality is to be worked on the same system as an English estate.”
He would laugh and shrug his shoulders, and then he would sit down and send a list of further requirements to Paul Howard Alexis, Esquire, in London.
Paul had met Mrs. Sydney Bamborough on one or two occasions, and had been interested in her. From the first he had come under the influence of her beauty. But she was then a married woman. He met her again toward the end of the terrible winter to which reference has been made, and found that a mere acquaintanceship had in the meantime developed into friendship. He could not have told when and where the great social barrier had been surmounted and left behind. He only knew in an indefinite way that some such change had taken place, as all such changes do, not in intercourse, but in the intervals of absence. It is a singular fact that we do not make our friends when they are near. The seed of friendship and love alike is soon sown, and the best is that which germinates in absence.
That friendship had rapidly developed into something else Paul became aware early in the season; and, as we have seen from his conversation, Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, innocent and guileless as she was, might with all modesty have divined the state of his feelings had she been less overshadowed by her widow’s weeds.
She apparently had no such suspicion, for she asked Paul in all good faith to call the next day and tell her all about Russia—“dear Russia.”
“My cousin Maggie,” she added, “is staying with me. She is a dear girl. I am sure you will like her.”
Paul accepted with alacrity, but reserved to himself the option of hating Mrs. Sydney Bamborough’s cousin Maggie, merely because that young lady existed and happened to be staying in Upper Brook Street.
At five o’clock the next afternoon he presented himself at the house of mourning, and completely filled up its small entrance-hall.
He was shown into the drawing-room, where he discovered Miss Margaret Delafield in the act of dragging her hat off in front of the mirror over the mantelpiece. He heard a suppressed exclamation of amused horror, and found himself shaking hands with Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.
The lady mentioned Paul’s name and her cousin’s relationship in that casual manner which constitutes an introduction in these degenerate days. Miss Delafield bowed, laughed, and moved toward the door. She left the room, and behind her an impression of breeziness and health, of English girlhood and a certain bright cheerfulness which acts as a filter in social muddy waters.
“It is very good of you to come—I was moping,” said Mrs. Sydney Bamborough. She was, as a matter of fact, resting before the work of the evening. This lady thoroughly understood the art of being beautiful.
Paul did not answer at once. He was looking at a large photograph which stood in a frame on the mantelpiece—the photograph of a handsome man of twenty-eight or thirty, small-featured, fair, and shifty looking.
“Who is that?” he asked abruptly.
“Do you not know? My husband.”
Paul muttered an apology, but he did not turn away from the photograph.
“Oh, never mind,” said Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, in reply to his regret that he had stumbled upon a painful subject. “I never—”
She paused.
“No,” she went on, “I won’t say that.”
But, so far as conveying what she meant was concerned, she might just as well have uttered the words.
“I do not want a sympathy which is unmerited,” she said gravely.
He turned and looked at her, sitting in a graceful attitude, the incarnation of a most refined and nineteenth-century misfortune. She raised her eyes to his for a moment—a sort of photographic instantaneous shutter, exposing for the hundredth part of a second the sensitive plate of her heart. Then she suppressed a sigh—badly.
“I was married horribly young,” she said, “before I knew what I was doing. But even if I had known I do not suppose I should have had the strength of mind to resist my father and mother.”
“They forced you into it?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bamborough. And it is possible that a respectable and harmless pair of corpses turned in their respective coffins somewhere in the neighborhood of Norwood.
“I hope there is a special hell reserved for parents who ruin their daughters’ lives to suit their own ambition,” said Paul, with a sudden concentrated heat which rather startled his hearer.
This man was full of surprises for Etta Sydney Bamborough. It was like playing with fire—a form of amusement which will be popular as long as feminine curiosity shall last.
“You are rather shocking,” she said lightly. “But it is all over now, so we need not dig up old grievances. Only I want you to understand that that photograph represents a part of my life which was only painful—nothing else.”
Paul, standing in front of her, looked down thoughtfully at the beautiful upturned face. His hands were clasped behind him, his firm mouth set sternly beneath the great fair mustache. In Russia the men have good eyes—blue, fierce, intelligent. Such eyes had the son of the Princess Alexis. There was something in Etta Bamborough that stirred up within him a quality which men are slowly losing—namely, chivalry. Steinmetz held that this man was quixotic, and what Steinmetz said was usually worth some small attention. Whatever faults that poor knight of La Mancha who has been the laughingstock of the world these many centuries—whatever faults or foolishness may have been his, he was at all events a gentleman.
Paul’s instinct was to pity this woman for the past that had been hers; his desire was to help her and protect her, to watch over her and fight her battles for her. It was what is called Love. But there is no word in any
