WHAT could be the connection between Halsey and the Countess Rémond, Selden wondered, as he turned away. He tried to remember what he knew of Halsey, but it was not very much. They had met casually in Paris a number of times, and had dinner with him once at the Cercle Interallié, when they happened to be working on the same story, but that was all.
He had never liked Halsey’s style. The Journal was a sensational sheet; always seeking to play up the scandalous, never so happy as when it was able to uncover a dark corner in the life of some public man, ever eager to impute unworthy motives to the backers of any cause—and Halsey rather gave the impression that he liked that sort of thing. Certainly he was not held in very high esteem by his associates, and Selden’s own idea was that he had lived so long in a cynical circle in Paris that he had caught its tone.
Once he got hold of this affair of the prince and Myra Davis, Selden very well knew what he would make of it—more especially if he discovered the existence of Madame Ghita. But of that he was probably already aware, since the marriage had no doubt been played up by him at the time it occurred.
He wondered if the countess, for some reason of her own, was keeping Halsey informed. But she could scarcely do that, since Halsey’s jeers would imperil the whole plan upon which her heart was so evidently set. Or was she keeping him in order? Or was he just her lover? But Selden could not imagine why such a woman as the countess....
And then all thought of Halsey and the countess vanished, for he saw approaching the woman whom, from the first moment he reached the terrace, he had hoped to see; the woman about whom his thoughts were centring more and more; who, in the last half hour, had taken on for him a new interest and a new meaning.
She saw him at the same instant, and turned and spoke a word to the man walking beside her, and Selden, looking at him, perceived it was young Davis, completely immersed in Miss Fayard, who walked on his other side, and who was certainly not unresponsive. In another moment Davis was bringing the ladies toward him.
“Selden,” he said, “I want you to meet Madame Ghita. You remember....”
“Very well,” said Selden; “I am happy indeed to meet madame.”
“I also,” she said, and gave him her hand with a charming smile. “But let us speak French. To myself I said, who can it be, that man so distinguished whom I have not seen here before, and later I inquired of M. Davis. What he told me made me more than ever curious, so when I saw you just now, I commanded him to present you.”
“That was very nice of you,” said Selden, making a mental note of that word “later.” So the prince and Davis had kept the appointment, as he had supposed they would do.