What did it mean, that square of paper lying in front of her? It meant exactly what it said to her, in her own handwriting—“Monsieur le Marquis de Château-Foix.” (Lucienne never could remember that one was not supposed to use titles any more.) It represented Gilbert. He would come at once, he would probably marry her to-morrow. To-morrow, then, she would be really his. It would be rest of a sort. She was far enough from feeling aversion to him. It would be the best solution. . . .
No, she was not made for so heroic a remedy!
“What shall I do—what shall I do?” she whispered desperately to herself, sitting in front of the letter and twisting her hands. The Caryatids of the fireplace could not advise her, nor that little marquise of the school of La Tour, who looked so rosily out of her tarnished frame over the mantelpiece. But a small sound spoke to her and decided her fate. Because it was a chilly evening Madame Gaumont had had a fire lit in the boudoir. And as Lucienne sat there, tossed on a thousand conflicting currents of thought, a piece of wood, burnt through, fell in with a gentle crash. Almost before she had realised it the girl had risen, crossed the room, flung the letter into the flames, and, returning to the escritoire, buried her face in her hands, drawing long breaths of relief. She had the sensation of having escaped a pursuer. . . .
In the few simple words of commendation that the Princess had spoken to her, Madame Gaumont had learnt that it was also the wish of Lucienne’s affianced husband, the Marquis de Château-Foix, that the girl should go to England. And as the banker’s widow dearly loved all circumstances attending wooings, betrothals, marriages, and the like, she looked forward to the arrival of the happy suitor with more pleasure, had she but known it, than the future herself. But Lucienne made something of a fight for the situation next morning. The weary air of one who has not slept was attributed by her hostess, and with partial accuracy, to her grief at parting with Madame Elisabeth. Being conscious of this Lucienne was able to answer her sympathetic questions about Gilbert naturally enough. But the day dragged on, and still Gilbert did not come. How thankful she was that she had burnt her letter! She was now a prey to all the instincts of conventionality, which had never made themselves heard in her overstrung condition of the previous night. It was her dead mother’s wish which had delayed the marriage; how could she have dreamed of outraging it? And Gilbert—what would he have thought of a girl who offered herself in that fashion? At times she was almost cheerful at the thought of her escape, and, ironically enough, when Madame Gaumont was thinking complacently, “The poor child is reviving already at the prospect of seeing her betrothed,” Lucienne was congratulating herself that the day would see him, after all, in no closer relationship.
It was late in the afternoon before the expected visitor was announced to Madame Gaumont, where she sat in her partially dismantled boudoir doing accounts in preparation for her departure, and where Lucienne, her head on her hand, was gazing out of the window—“looking for her lover,” thought her hostess. But the lover, when he entered, was something of a surprise. He was not the handsome young nobleman whom she had imagined to herself. Gilbert’s serious manner and his rather severe style of dress usually gave him the appearance of an older man, and to-day, fresh from the scene of Louis’ arrest, he was more than usually grave. However, Madame Gaumont had hardly thrown down her pen and risen with delight to receive him before she decided that he had, after all, an air of distinction. Gilbert kissed her hand, and Lucienne’s.
“You will forgive the confusion in which you find us, Monsieur le Marquis, will you not?” asked the good lady cheerfully. “I need hardly apologise to you, since you know that I—we—I should say, are leaving on the day after to-morrow. It is a great pleasure to me to have the companionship of Mademoiselle d’Aucourt—though, to be sure, I am very sorry to be the instrument of taking her away from you! . . . And now,” she added, beaming, “since your time is so short, I will not take from you any of your precious moments. Au revoir, Monsieur.”
She got her bulk out of the door with such surprising alacrity that Gilbert had barely time to open it for her.
Lucienne, very pale in her white dress with its black ribbons, was standing, when he turned again, with her fingers resting on a little gilded table in the centre of the room. Her large dark eyes, which could be so full of laughter, were wide open and eager, and underneath them were black rings of fatigue and perhaps suffering, which Château-Foix had never seen there before. Again he felt the dizzy onslaught of that passion which had surprised him in the Tuileries. He fought it down; he dared not show it; he had frightened her once. He went up to her, and gently possessed himself of her hands instead.
“You are tired, my darling, and sad.”
She smiled a little—very bravely, he thought. “Not very tired. But sad, yes.”