Chapter Thirty One.
In the Hotel de Louvre.
“Come, girls! It’s time for you to be dressing. The gentlemen are due in half an hour.”
The speech was made in a handsome apartment of the Hotel de Louvre, and addressed to two young ladies, in elegant dishabille, one of them seated in an easy chair, the other lying full length upon a sofa.
A negress, with chequered toque, was standing near the door, summoned in to assist the young ladies in their toilet.
The reader may recognise Mrs Girdwood, daughter, niece, and servant.
It is months since we have met them. They have done the European tour up the Rhine, over the Alps, into Italy. They are returning by way of Paris, into which capital they have but lately entered; and are still engaged in its exploration.
“See Paris last,” was the advice given them by a Parisian gentleman, whose acquaintance they had made; and when Mrs Girdwood, who smattered a little French, asked, Pourquoi? she was told that by seeing it first she would care for nothing beyond.
She had taken the Frenchman’s hint, and was now completing the programme.
Though she had met German barons and Italian counts by the score, her girls were still unengaged. Nothing suitable had offered itself in the shape of a title. It remained to be seen what Paris would produce.
The gentlemen “due in half an hour” were old acquaintances; two of them her countrymen, who, making the same tour, had turned up repeatedly on the route, sometimes travelling in her company. They were Messrs Lucas and Spiller.
She thought nothing of these. But there was a third expected, and looked for with more interest; one who had only called upon them the day before, and whom they had not seen since the occasion of his having dined with them in their Fifth Avenue house in New York.
It was the lost lord.
On his visit of yesterday everything had been explained; how he had been detained in the States on diplomatic business; how he had arrived in London after their departure for the Continent, with apologies for not writing to them—ignorant of their whereabouts.
On Mr Swinton’s part this last was a lie, as well as the first. In the chronicles of the time he had full knowledge of where they might have been found. He had studiously consulted the American newspaper published in London, which registered the arrivals and departures of transatlantic tourists, and knew to an hour when Mrs Girdwood and her girls left Cologne, crossed the Alps, stood upon the Bridge of Sighs, or climbed to the burning crater of Vesuvius.
And he had sighed and burned to be along with them, but could not. There was something needed for the accomplishment of his wishes—cash.
It was only when he saw recorded the Girdwood arrival in Paris, that he was at length enabled to scrape together sufficient for the expenses of a passage to, and short sojourn in, the French capital; and this only after a propitious adventure in which he had been assisted by the smiles of the goddess Fortune, and the beauty of his beloved Fan. Fan had been left behind in the London lodging. And by her own consent. She was satisfied to stay, even with the slender stipend her husband could afford to leave for her maintenance. In London the pretty horse-breaker would be at home.
“You have only half an hour, my dears!” counselled Mrs Girdwood, to stimulate the girls towards getting ready.
Cornelia, who occupied the chair, rose to her feet, laying aside the crochet on which she had been engaged, and going off to be dressed by Keziah.
Julia, on the sofa, simply yawned.
Only at a third admonition from her mother, she flung the French novel she had been reading upon the floor, and sat up.
“Bother the gentlemen?” she exclaimed, repeating the yawn with arms upraised. “I wish, ma, you hadn’t asked them to come. I’d rather have stayed in all day, and finished that beautiful story I’ve got into. Heaven bless that dear Georges Sand! Woman that she is, she should have been a man. She knows them as if she were one; their pretensions and treachery. Oh, mother! when you were determined on having a child, why did you make it a daughter? I’d give the world to have been your son!”
“Fie, fie, Jule! Don’t let any one hear you talk in that silly way!”
“I don’t care whether they do or not. I don’t care if all Paris, all France, all the world knows it. I want to be a man, and to have a man’s power.”
“Pff, child! A man’s power! There’s no such thing in existence, only in outward show. It has never been exerted, without a woman’s will at the back of it. That is the source of all power.”
The storekeeper’s relict was reasoning from experience. She knew whose will had made her the mistress of a house in the Fifth Avenue; and given her scores, hundreds, of other advantages, she had never credited to the sagacity of her husband.
“To be a woman,” she continued, “one who knows man and how to manage him, that is enough for me. Ah! Jule, if I’d only had your opportunities, I might this day have been anything.”
“Opportunities! What are they?”
“Your beauty for one.”
“Oh, ma! you had that. You still show it.”
To Mrs Girdwood the reply was not unpleasant. She had not lost conceit in that personal appearance that had subdued the heart of the rich retailer; and, but for a disinheriting clause in his will, might have thought of submitting her charms to a second market. But although this restrained her from speculating on matrimony, she was still good for flattery and flirtation.
“Well,” she said, “if I had good looks, what mattered they without money? You have both, my child.”
“And both don’t appear to help me to a husband—such as you want me to have, mamma.”
“It will be your own fault if they don’t. His lordship would never have renewed his acquaintance with us if he didn’t mean something. From what he hinted to me yesterday, I’m sure he has come to Paris on our account. He almost said as much. It is you, Julia, it is you.”
Julia came very near expressing a wish that his lordship was at the bottom of the sea; but knowing how it would annoy her mother, she kept the sentiment to herself. She had just time to get enrobed for the street; as the gentleman was announced. He was still plain Mr Swinton, still travelling incognito, on “seqwet diplomatic business for the Bwitish Government.” So had he stated in confidence to Mrs Girdwood.
Shortly after, Messrs Lucas and Spiller made their appearance, and the party was complete.
It was only to be a promenade on the Boulevards, to end in a little dinner in the Café Riche, Royale, or the Maison Doré.
And with this simple programme, the six sallied forth from the Hotel de Louvre.