"Est-ce bien Madame que Monsieur veut voir?" was the reply, in an odd muffled voice.
"Les dames enfin," he returned, impatiently, "sont elles à la maison? Dites moi donc vite."
A low laugh was now the only answer, but it seemed to satisfy Mr. Earnscliffe perfectly as to whether the ladies were at home, for he did not repeat his question, but caught the respondent in his arms, and murmured between kisses, "Wicked Flora! to try my patience so, and keep me waiting for this."
Now time resumed its gallop for Flora, and everything became interesting. Being asked to decide between this dress or that was no longer tiresome, since Mr. Earnscliffe was there to say which he thought the prettier. It came to within about ten days of the eventful twenty-first, and everything seemed to bid fair to contradict the old saying that "the course of true love never did run smooth." But one evening as they drove home from the Bois de Boulogne, Mrs. Elton and Mary passed them, driving very fast, but not before Mary had time to recognise them and bow most markedly.
"The Eltons here!" exclaimed Flora. "Helena did not tell me that they were coming to Paris." And she looked at Mr. Earnscliffe, but to her amazement she saw that he had become strangely pale, and seemed scarcely to hear her; then, with that sort of shudder which she had before observed, he said, "Here! yes, I had no idea of it."
He scarcely spoke again all the evening, yet he could not bear Flora to be away from him for a moment.
Here was the first shadow: it was not a very great one, but it was one. Flora could no longer blind herself to the fact that in Mr. Earnscliffe's mind there was some sinister train of thought in connection with Mary Elton. To doubt Mr. Earnscliffe was an impossibility to her, and she only wished to know what it was that caused this gloom, whenever Mary Elton was named or seen, in order that she might better know how to cheer him and make him forget it. She could not speak to him on this subject, because, as he had not volunteered to tell her, any questioning or remarks upon it might look like distrust, and she could not bear to say anything which might wear the faintest semblance of such a feeling. So on that evening she could only exert all her powers of charm and affection to try to chase away his sadness. He stayed late, and when he was going away he held her for a moment longer than usual in his arms, and said, but more to himself than to her, "Would that you were really mine, Flora! then I should have nothing to dread, but now——"
"What is that you dread now, Edwin?"
"You would laugh at me if I were to tell you, Flora, and it does seem to be folly, but—oh, the power of a woman for good or evil is fearful! I have a right to dread it."
"But tell me what it is that makes you sad, be it folly or not, and I will try to banish it away, Edwin," she said with a smile.