And there was still no sign of the Minister.
It was, however, a clearly understood, definitely promised arrangement. Monpavon was to call for him at the club. From time to time the good Jenkins glanced at his watch, while applauding absently the bouquet of brilliant notes which the Wauters was pouring forth from her fairy lips, a bouquet costing three thousand francs, useless, like the other expenses of the evening, if the duke did not come.
Suddenly the double doors were flung wide open:
“His excellency M. le Duc de Mora!”
A long quiver of excitement welcomed him, a respectful curiosity that ranged itself in two rows instead of the mobbing crowd that flocked on the heels of the Nabob.
None better than he knew how to bear himself in society, to walk across a drawing-room with gravity, to endow futile things with an air of seriousness, and to treat serious things lightly; that was the epitome of his attitude in life, a paradoxical distinction. Still handsome, despite his fifty-six years, with a comeliness compounded of elegance and proportion, wherein the grace of the dandy was fortified by something military about the figure and the haughtiness of the face; he wore with striking effect his black dress-coat, on which, to do honour to Jenkins, he had pinned a few of his decorations, which he was in the habit of never wearing except upon official occasions. The reflection from the linen, from the white cravat, the dull silver of the decorations, the smoothness of the thin hair now turning gray, enhanced the pallor of the features, more bloodless than all the bloodless faces that were to be seen that evening in the Irishman’s house.
He had led such a terrible life! Politics, play under all its forms, from the Stock Exchange to the baccarat-table, and that reputation of a man successful with women which had to be maintained at all costs. Oh, this man was a true client of Jenkins; and this princely visit, he owed it in good sooth to the inventor of those mysterious pills which gave that fire to his glance, to his whole being that energy so vibrating and extraordinary.
“My dear duke, permit me to——”
Monpavon, with solemn air and a great sense of his own importance, endeavoured to effect the presentation so long looked forward to; but his excellency, preoccupied, seemed not to hear, continued his progress towards the large drawing-room, borne along by one of those electric currents that break the social monotony. On his passage, and while he greeted the handsome Mme. Jenkins, the ladies bent forward a little with seductive airs, a soft laugh, concerned to please. But he noticed only one among them, Felicia, on her feet in the centre of a group of men, discussing some question as though she were in her studio, and watching the duke come towards her, while tranquilly taking her sherbet. She greeted him with perfect naturalness. Those near had discreetly retired to a little distance. There seemed to exist between them, however, notwithstanding what de Gery had overheard with regard to their presumed relations, nothing more than a quite intellectual intimacy, a playful familiarity.
“I called at your house, mademoiselle, on my way to the Bois.”