M. de Chauxville watched the door close behind Miss Delafield with a queer smile. Then he turned suddenly on his heels and faced Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.
“Your cousin,” he said, “is a typical Englishwoman—she only conceals her love.”
“For you?” enquired Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.
The baron shrugged his shoulders.
“Possibly. One can never tell. She conceals it very well if it exists. However, I am indifferent. The virtue of the violet is its own reward, perhaps, for the rose always wins.”
He crossed the room toward Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, who was standing near the mantelpiece. Her left hand was hanging idly by her side. He took the white fingers and gallantly raised them to his lips, but before they had reached that fount of truth and wisdom she jerked her hand away.
M. de Chauxville laughed—the quiet, assured laugh of a man who has read in books that he who is bold enough can win any woman, and believes it. He was of those men who treat and speak of women as a class—creatures to be dealt with successfully according to generality and maxim. It is a singular thing, by the way, that men as a whole continue to disbelieve in a woman’s negative—singular, that is, when one reflects that the majority of men have had at least one negative which has remained a negative, so far as they were concerned, all the woman’s life.
“I am aware,” said M. de Chauxville, “that the rose has thorns. One reason why the violet is hors de concours.”
Etta smiled—almost relenting. She was never quite safe against her own vanity. Happy the woman who is, and rare.
“I suspect that the violet is innocent of any desire to enter into competition,” said Etta.
“Knowing,” suggested De Chauxville, “that although the race is not always to the swift, it is usually so. Please do not stand. It suggests that you are waiting for me to go or for someone else to come.”
“Neither.”
“Then prove it by taking this chair. Thus. Near the fire, for it is quite an English spring. A footstool. Is it permitted to admire your slippers—what there is of them? Now you look comfortable.”
He attended to her wants, divined them, and perhaps created them with a perfect grace and much too intimate a knowledge. As a carpet knight he was faultless. And Etta thought of Paul, who could do none of these things—or would do none of them—Paul, who never made her feel like a doll.
“Will you not sit down?” she said, indicating a chair, which he did not take. He selected one nearer to her.
“I can think of nothing more desirable.”
“Than what?” she asked. Her vanity was like a hungry fish. It rose to everything.
“A chair in this room.”
“A modest desire,” she said. “Is that really all you want in this world?”
“No,” he answered, looking at her.
She gave a little laugh and moved rather hurriedly.
“I was going to suggest that you could have both at certain fixed periods—whenever—I am out.”
“I am glad you did not suggest it.”
“Why?” she asked sharply.
“Because I should have had to go into explanations. I did not say all.”
Mrs. Bamborough was looking into the fire, only half listening to him. There was something in the nature of a duel between these two. Each thought more of the next stroke than of the present party.
“Do you ever say all, M. de Chauxville?” she asked.
The baron laughed. Perhaps he was vain of the reputation that was his, for this man was held to be a finished diplomatist. A finished diplomatist, be it known, is one who is a dangerous foe and an unreliable friend.
“Perhaps—now that I reflect upon it,” continued the clever woman, disliking the clever man’s silence, “the person who said all would be intolerable.”
“There are some things which go without it,” said De Chauxville.
“Ah?” looking lazily back at him over her shoulder.
“Yes.”
He was cautious, for he was fighting on a field which women may rightly claim for their own. He really loved Etta. He was trying to gauge the meaning of a little change in her tone toward him—a change so subtle that few men could have detected it. But Claude de Chauxville—accomplished steersman through the shoals of human nature, especially through those very pronounced shoals who call themselves women of the world—Claude de Chauxville knew the value of the slightest change of manner, should that change manifest itself more than once.
The ring of indifference, or something dangerously near it, in Etta’s voice had first been noticeable the previous evening, and the attaché knew it. It had been in her voice whenever she spoke to him then. It was there now.
“Some things,” he continued, in a voice she had never heard before, for this man was innately artificial, “which a woman usually knows before they are told to her.”
“What sort of things, M. le Baron?”
He gave a little laugh. It was so strange a thing to him to be sincere that he felt awkward and abashed. He was surprised at his own sincerity.
“That I love you—hum. You have known it long?”
The face which he could not see was not quite the face of a good woman. Etta was smiling.
“No—o,” she almost whispered.
“I think you must have known it,” he corrected suavely. “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”
It was very correctly done, Claude de Chauxville had regained control over himself. He was able to think about the riches which were evidently hers. But through the thought he loved the woman.
The lady lowered the feather screen which she was holding between her face and the fire. Regardless of the imminent danger in which she was placing her complexion, she studied the glowing cinders for some moments, weighing something or some persons in her mind.
“No, my friend,” she answered in French, at length.
The baron’s face was drawn and white. Beneath his trim black mustache there was a momentary gleam of sharp white teeth as he bit his lip.
He came nearer to her, leaning one hand on the
