"Ah, Mademoiselle Marie! I must introduce you to my friend, Lord Barkley, though I see that you are already acquainted with his son."
Marie thought she perceived his lordship frown as he bowed to her, and said with a chilling smile—
"I have heard of Mademoiselle Arbi from my daughter, Mrs. Penton, who met her travelling in Italy last year with some acquaintances of ours." And turning to Colonel de St. Severan, to whom he had been already introduced, he added more graciously—"Her kind protector, Colonel de St. Severan's name is one too noted to be unknown to any one who has been much in France."
Colonel de St. Severan seemed to be pleased at this, and said he hoped to have the "honneur" of receiving his lordship at his hotel. The two old gentlemen then fell into a conversation upon the African wars, and Edmund, in obedience to a glance from his father, turned to Miss Molyneux, and tried to make her talk; whilst Marie leaned over the box's parapet, and feigned to be much occupied with the light afterpiece which followed the opera; yet had she been suddenly asked what it was about, she could no more have told than she could tell what was going on in Algiers at that moment.
Mr. Barkley did not, however, continue his efforts at "doing the agreeable" to Miss Molyneux very long, and Marie's painful thoughts were broken in upon by his bending over her chair, and asking in a low tone—
"Has Miss Arbi, then, forgotten Italy and the friends whom she met there, and whom, in those days, she seemed to honour with her regard, for she has not once bid me welcome to Paris?"
Marie looked up at him, and in her large truthful eyes might be read an expression of gentle but sorrowful reproach, as she said, "One forgets not always that which one ought to forget; also I have not forgotten Italy, and if I have not said, be welcome, I felt it."
"Ah! Mademoiselle, if you only knew how the memory of Italy has haunted me, you would not be so chary of your acknowledgment that you too had not forgotten it. I may have the happiness of seeing you here, may I not?"
"I have heard my dear father ask Lord Barkley to come to see us, and perhaps you will come with Monsieur votre père."
"Can you doubt it?"