“No, my friend,” she repeated. “We know each other too well for that. It would never do.”
“But when I tell you that I love you,” he said quietly, with his voice well in control.
“I did not know that the word was in your vocabulary—you, a diplomat.”
“And a man—you put the word there—Etta.”
The hand-screen was raised for a moment in objection—presumably to the Christian name of which he had made use.
He waited; passivity was one of his strong points. It had frightened men before this.
Then, with a graceful movement, she swung suddenly round in her chair, looking up at him. She broke into a merry laugh.
“I believe you are actually in earnest!” she cried.
He looked quietly down into her face without moving a muscle in response to her change of humor.
“Very clever,” he said.
“What?” she asked, still smiling.
“The attitude, the voice, everything. You have known all along that I am in earnest, you have known it for the last six months. You have seen me often enough when I was—well, not in earnest, to know the difference.”
Etta rose quickly. It was some lightning-like woman’s instinct that made her do so. Standing, she was taller than M. de Chauxville.
“Do not let us be tragic,” she said coldly. “You have asked me to marry you; why, I don’t know. The reason will probably transpire later. I appreciate the honor, but I beg to decline it. Et voilà tout. All is said.”
He spread out apologetic hands.
“All is not said,” he corrected, with a dangerous suavity. “I acknowledge the claim enjoyed by your sex to the last word. In this matter, however, I am inclined to deny it to the individual.”
Etta Sydney Bamborough smiled. She leaned against the mantelpiece, with her chin resting on her curved fingers. The attitude was eminently calculated to show to full advantage a faultless figure. She evidently had no desire to cheapen that which she would deny. She shrugged her shoulders and waited.
De Chauxville was vain, but he was clever enough to conceal his vanity. He was hurt, but he was man enough to hide it. Under the passivity which was his by nature and practice, he had learned to think very quickly. But now he was at a disadvantage. He was unnerved by his love for Etta—by the sight of Etta before him daringly, audaciously beautiful—by the thought that she might never be his.
“It is not only that I love you,” he said, “that I have a certain position to offer you. These I beg you to take at their poor value. But there are other circumstances known to both of us which are more worthy of your attention—circumstances which may dispose you to reconsider your determination.”
“Nothing will do that,” she replied; “not any circumstance.”
Etta was speaking to De Chauxville and thinking of Paul Alexis.
“I should like to know since when you have discovered that you never could under any circumstances marry me,” pursued M. de Chauxville. “Not that it matters, since it is too late. I am not going to allow you to draw back now. You have gone too far. All this winter you have allowed me to pay you conspicuous and marked attentions. You have conveyed to me and to the world at large the impression that I had merely to speak in order to obtain your hand.”
“I doubt,” said Etta, “whether the world at large is so deeply interested in the matter as you appear to imagine. I am sorry that I have gone too far, but I reserve to myself the right of retracing my footsteps wherever and whenever I please. I am sorry I conveyed to you or to anyone else the impression that you had only to speak in order to obtain my hand, and I can only conclude that your overweening vanity has led you into a mistake which I will be generous enough to hold my tongue about.”
The diplomatist was for a moment taken aback.
“Mais—” he exclaimed, with indignant arms outspread; and even in his own language he could find nothing to add to the expressive monosyllable.
“I think you had better go,” said Etta quietly. She went toward the fireplace and rang the bell.
M. de Chauxville took up his hat and gloves.
“Of course,” he said coldly, his voice shaking with suppressed rage, “there is some reason for this. There is, I presume, someone else—someone has been interfering. No one interferes with me with impunity. I shall make it my business to find out who is this—”
He did not finish: for the door was thrown open by the butler, who announced:
“Mr. Alexis.”
Paul came into the room with a bow toward De Chauxville, who was going out, and whom he knew slightly.
“I came back,” he said, “to ask what evening next week you are free. I have a box for the Huguenots.”
Paul did not stay. The thing was arranged in a few moments, and as he left the drawing-room he heard the wheels of De Chauxville’s carriage.
Etta stood for a moment when the door had closed behind the two men, looking at the portière which had hidden them from sight, as if following them in thought. Then she gave a little laugh—a queer laugh that might have had no heart in it, or too much for the ordinary purposes of life. She shrugged her shoulders and took up a magazine, with which she returned to the chair placed for her before the fire by Claude de Chauxville.
In a few minutes Maggie came into the room. She was carrying a bundle of flannel.
“The weakest thing I ever did,” she said cheerfully, “was to join Lady Crewel’s working guild. Two flannel petticoats for the young by Thursday morning. I chose the young because the petticoats are so ludicrously small.”
“If you never do anything weaker than that,” said Etta,
