"My dear father," interrupted Lydie, with grave determination, "let me tell you once for all that over this matter my mind is fully made up. While I have a voice in the administration of this Kingdom of France, I will not allow her to sully her fair name by such monstrous treachery as the abandonment of a friend who trusted in her honour and the promises she made him."
Her voice had shaken somewhat as she spoke. Altogether she seemed unlike herself, less sure, less obstinately dominant. That look of understanding between her father and Lady Eglinton had troubled her in a way for which she could not account. Yet she knew that the whole matter rested in her own hands. No one—not even His Majesty—had ever questioned her right to deal with Treasury money. And money was all that was needed. Though the final word nominally rested with milor, he left her perfectly free, and she could act as she thought right, without let or hindrance.
Yet, strangely enough, she felt as if she wanted support in this matter. It was a purely personal feeling, and one she did not care to analyse. She had no doubt whatever as to the justice and righteousness of her desire, but in this one solitary instance of her masterful administration she seemed to require the initiative, or at least the approval, of her father or of the King.
Instead of this approval she vaguely scented intrigue.
She rose from the settee and went to the window behind it. The atmosphere of the room had suddenly become stifling. Fortunately the tall casements were unlatched. They yielded to a gentle push, and Lydie stepped out on to the balcony. Already the air was hot, and the sun shone glaringly on the marble fountains, and drew sparks of fire from the dome of the conservatories. The acrid, pungent smell of cannas and of asters rose to her nostrils, drowning the subtler aroma of tea roses and of lilies; the monotonous drip of the fountains was a soothing contrast in her ear to the babel of voices within.
At her feet the well-sanded walks of the park stretched out like ribbons of pale gold to the dim, vast distance beyond; the curly heads of Athenian athletes peeped from among the well-trimmed bosquets, showing the immaculate whiteness of the polished marble in the sun. A couple of gardeners clad in shirts of vivid blue linen were stooping over a bed of monthly roses, picking off dead leaves and twigs that spoilt the perfect symmetry of the shrubs, whilst two more a few paces away were perfecting the smoothness of a box hedge, lest a tiny leaflet were out of place.
Lydie sighed impatiently. Even in this vastness and this peace, man brought his artificiality to curb the freedom of nature. Everything in this magnificent park was affected, stilted and forced; every tree was fashioned to a shape not its own, every flower made to be a counterpart of its fellow.
This sense of unreality, of fighting nature in its every aspect, was what had always oppressed her, even when she worked at first in perfect harmony with her father, when she still had those utopian hopes of a regenerate France, with a wise and beneficent monarch, an era of truth and of fraternity, every one toiling hand-in-hand for the good of the nation.
What a child she had been in those days! How little she had understood this hydra-headed monster of self-seeking ambition, of political wire-pulling, of petty cabals and personal animosities which fought and crushed and trampled on every lofty ideal, on every clean thought and high-minded aspiration.
She knew and understood better now. She had outgrown her childish ideals: those she now kept were a woman's ideals, no less pure, no less high or noble, but lacking just one great quality—that of hope. She had continued to work and to do her best for this country which she loved—her own beautiful France. She had—with no uncertain hand—seized the reins of government from the diffident fingers of her lord, she still strove to fight corruption, to curb excesses and to check arrogance, and made vain endeavours to close her eyes to the futility of her noblest efforts.