It was a lovely afternoon, and the sun glittered down his smiles on the gay throng, sitting in flowerlike groups, or lingering over the sward.
The stroll was not a very lively one for the three somewhat ill-matched companions. Frank Amberley’s heart was full of despairing love and pain. Gerald Danvers was in a downright rage. Lois felt worried and distrait. The two young men wished each other at Jericho, or the Arctic regions, and Miss Turquand would not have been sorry to see herself quit of their uncongenial company.
At a sudden turn they came upon Captain Desfrayne, who had just entered the gardens. He met them so unexpectedly that Lois was taken by surprise, and so was he. They stood for a moment staring at one another, then Paul Desfrayne recollected himself, and lifted his hat. Miss Turquand went through the conventional obeisance.
A few words—what they were neither knew. Captain Desfrayne exchanged courtesies for a brief moment with Frank Amberley, and bowed to Lady Quaintree, who was only a short way in arrear. Then he vanished as quickly as he had appeared.
The faint tinge of rose color on Lois Turquand’s cheeks deepened visibly as she hurriedly passed on. A strange kind of resentment rose up in her breast, and made her eyes glitter with anger. At a second reflection, however, reason came to her aid.
“It was not his fault,” she argued to herself, “that the kind old man to whom I owe my good fortune made an arrangement which is probably as distasteful to him as it is to me. I must not blame him. In fact, I am very much obliged to him, for I feel I should only be rude to him if he tried to talk to me. I don’t believe I ever could like him. He seems, though, to have pleasant, kindly eyes, from the hasty glance I had.”
Paul Desfrayne moved away as if from the vicinity of the plague.
“Confound it!” he muttered, going he hardly knew whither. “What bewitchingly lovely eyes that girl has, though she is so cold and formal; what magnificent hair, and the grace of a queen! I wish her better luck. Why couldn’t the old man have left his money rationally, and not make such a silly, preposterous, aggravating muddle behind him! Well, after all, I have nobody to blame but myself. My sins be on my own head; only I wish nobody else had been dragged in. If it were not for my mother, I should not care so much. Yet, after all, why need I linger in this life of misery? Would it not be better—better to stable my white elephant in the neighboring mews, and so let my fatal secret out at once?”
He laughed aloud, cynically, bitterly.
Having escaped from the neighborhood of Lady Quaintree’s party, he took a turn to ascertain if his mother was in the gardens, for she had sent him a pressing message to ask him to meet her; but finding that she had not, apparently, arrived, he walked listlessly away at random.