‘You’ll see, we shall be rolling in riches,’ he said after a moment. ‘Now you must be going,’ and he hurried her gently to the door.
That morning Paul had had a note from the Princess to say that she should call for him at his own house to go to the usual place. The usual place was the cemetery. Lately there had been what Madame Astier called ‘a fresh start’ of Herbert. Twice a week the widow went to the cemetery with flowers, or tapers, or articles for the chapel, and urged the progress of the work; her conjugal feelings had broken out again. The fact was, that after a long and painful hesitation between her vanity and her love, the temptation of keeping her title and the fascinations of the delightful Paul—a hesitation the more painful that she confided it to no one, except in her journal every evening to ‘poor Herbert’—the appointment of Sammy had finally decided her, and she thought it proper, before taking a new husband, to complete the sepulture of the first and have done with the mausoleum and the dangerous intimacy of its seductive designer.
Paul, without understanding the flutterings of the foolish little soul, was amused by them, and thought them excellent symptoms, indicating the approach of the crisis. But the thing dragged, and he was in a hurry; it was time to hasten the conclusion and profit by Colette’s visit, which had been long proposed but long deferred, the Princess, though curious to see the young man’s lodgings, being apparently afraid to meet him in a place much more private than her own house or her carriage, where there were always the servants to see. Not that he had ever been over-bold; he only seemed to surround her with his presence. But she was afraid of herself, her opinion coinciding with that of the young man, who, being an experienced general in such matters, had classed her at once as one of the ‘open towns.’ It was his name for the sort of fashionable women who, in spite of a high and apparently unassailable position, in spite of a great apparatus of defences in every direction, are in reality to be carried by a bold attack. He did not intend now to make the regular assault, but only a smart approach or so of warm flirtation, sufficient to set a mark upon his prey without hurting her dignity, and to signify the final expropriation of the deceased. The marriage and the million would follow in due time. Such was the happy dream which Madame Astier had interrupted. He was pursuing it still, at the same desk and in the same contemplative attitude, when the whole house resounded with another ring at the bell, followed however only by conversation at the front door. ‘What is it?’ said Paul impatiently, as he came out.
The voice of a footman, whose tall black figure was conspicuous in the doorway against a background of splashing rain, answered from the steps, with respectful insolence, that my lady was waiting for him in the carriage. Paul, though choking with rage, managed to get out the words, ‘I am coming,’ But what horrid curses he muttered under his breath! The dead fellow again! Sure enough, it was the remembrance of him that had kept her away. But after a few seconds the hope of avenging himself before long in a highly amusing way enabled him so far to recover countenance, that when he joined the Princess he was as cool as ever, and showed nothing of his anger but a little extra paleness in the cheek.
It was warm in the brougham, the windows having been put up because of the shower. Huge bouquets of violets and wreaths as heavy as pies loaded the cushions round Madame de Rosen and filled her lap.
‘Are the flowers unpleasant? Shall I put the window down?’ said she, with the cajoling manner which a woman puts on when she has played you a trick and wants not to have a quarrel over it. Paul’s gesture expressed a dignified indifference. It was nothing to him whether the window was put down or put up. The Princess, whose deep veil, still worn on such occasions as the present, concealed a blooming face, felt more uncomfortable than if he had reproached her openly. Poor young man! She was treating him so cruelly—so much more cruelly than he knew! She laid her hand gently upon his, and said, ‘You are not angry with me?’
He? Not at all. Why should he be angry with her?
‘For not coming in. I did say I would, but at the last moment I—I did not think I should hurt you so much.’
‘You hurt me very much indeed.’
When a gentleman of severely correct deportment is betrayed into a word or two of emotion, oh, what an impression they make upon a woman’s heart! They upset her almost as much as the tears of an officer in uniform.