The meeting was so unexpected,--for she had gathered from Sir Ralph that it would still be some weeks before the Martinworth's arrival,--that Pearl found herself murmuring commonplaces, and mechanically bowing, as she would have murmured and bowed to a complete stranger. Later on she realised how dazed, how completely lost she had been at the moment. It was only on perceiving the deathly pallor of the face before her that she remembered that she was in public, that a thousand eyes were upon her, and with a supreme effort she partially succeeded in recovering her presence of mind.
Lord Martinworth had been standing conversing with Count Carlitti, a member of one of the Foreign Legations and a former acquaintance whom he had unearthed in Tokyo, when the latter caught sight of Pearl's tall figure and straight back, clad in a perfectly cut gown. He had already announced himself as one of her many admirers, though, having only lately arrived in Japan, he was unacquainted as yet with the gossip of his new post. Always talking himself, and never giving another a chance to put in a word, he was so far, in ignorance of Mrs. Nugent's history. He had heard vaguely that she was separated from her husband, a fact which he considered much in her favour, for in the opinion of this vivacious gentleman every pretty woman profited much, certainly as far as he personally was concerned, in being placed in a position more or less irregular or equivocal. At any rate, if unfortunately a husband did happen to exist, the more such an inconvenient appendage remained in the background, the greater approval was the lady of the hour likely to find in Count Carlitti's soft brown eyes.
Those eyes were ever on the look out for a pretty face or a rounded bust. His taste in female beauty was considered, certainly by himself if by no one else, indisputable. So when at the Club he had once given out that there was no doubt whatsoever but that Mrs. Nugent was la plus belle femme de Tokyo, no one troubled, even if they disagreed, to contradict one who counted himself such an experienced judge of the correct and classic lines of feminine loveliness.
"I must, mon ami," he said to Martinworth, "present you to une beauté--mais une beauté incomparable! Madame Nugent is English. You see that beautiful, straight back, and leetle head poised so haughtily? Ah, I perceive you admire! But wait, mon ami, till you see her face. And when you will have seen her face, wait a leetle longer till you have seen her en robe de bal! Quelles epaules mon cher, ah! quelles epaules! Then tell me if we do not possess a gem in ce triste Tokyo."
The introduction promptly followed, and shortly afterwards Count Carlitti was heard relating that la parfaite beauté de cette Madame Nugent had made such an impression on ce brave Martinworth that he had actually trembled, and turned ashen from the violence of his emotions.
"My triumph is complete," he was saying to Tom Spence, a junior member of the English Legation. "C'etait le coup de foudre!"
"Coup de foudre, by Jove! I should just think it must have been," exclaimed Spence. "Why, my dear fellow, Martinworth is the very man with whom Mrs. Nugent (that's not her real name, you know) was mixed up with in that divorce-suit two or three years ago. She came out here, they say, to get rid of him. And now you go and introduce them to each other as if they had never met before! Ha, ha, ha! upon my word, that's the best joke, the rummest situation I have ever heard of!"
"Mon Dieu," exclaimed Carlitti, with a shrug of his shoulders, "if women change their names, how is it possible to know the right--what do you call it--co-respondents--that belong to them? Mais sapristi! quelle guigne!"
"What is the matter, Count?" asked Lady Thomson, who, with her husband the English Minister, at that moment joined the two young men. "You look quite upset. An unusual state of things for you."
"Carlitti has just been distinguishing himself by introducing Lord Martinworth to Mrs. Nugent," explained the amused Spence. "He evidently wished for a sensation."