‘You are too emotional, tear poy,’ he said; ‘you are too easily vorked upon. I will rink the pell for a prandy-ant-zoda, ant you shall lie town vor a leettle while.’
It was the thick-set Evariste who brought the syphon bottle and the small carafe of brandy and the tumblers, and it was she who caught Paul on her broad Flemish bosom when the drink, which he had accepted soberly, went the wrong way, and with a wild snort into his tumbler he fell backwards.
‘Le bauvre cheune homme à dombé zupidement malade.’
The poor young man was horribly afraid at first of having irredeemably hurt Darco’s feelings, but that excellent enthusiast had not even the beginning of an idea that it was possible for anyone to laugh at him unless he chose of purpose aforethought to be laughable. Thus the episode passed lightly enough, but Paul was continually in danger of a reversion to it whenever the distraught heroine appeared upon the scene.
He saw but little of Annette during the weeks of labour to which Darco’s new enterprise enforced him. She slept alone, and was rarely accessible before the mid-day breakfast or later than the dinner-hour. Laurent visited her almost daily, and she seemed to submit to his attentions with a better grace than she had shown at first; but she was still subject to those rapid and violent alternations of mood which had already perplexed and alarmed her husband. She had apparently conceived an aversion to being seen abroad, and it was with the greatest difficulty that she could be persuaded to take an occasional carriage drive.
‘I shall venture to advise you,’ said Laurent to Paul ‘You tell me that your work is almost finished, and that in a day or two you are setting out for London.’
‘Yes,’ said Paul.
‘You will do well to take Mrs. Armstrong with you,’ Laurent said. ‘She is in need of change and distraction. This quiet, dead-alive existence is not good for her. You must insist upon her shaking herself free of the habits of seclusion into which she is falling. I should urge you very strongly to find some good creature of her own sex who would be a companion to her. She is living too much alone; she has too few interests.’
‘Well, of course,’ Paul answered, ‘that is very largely my fault; but the press of work is over now, and I shall be able to give more time and care to her.’
‘You will find it advisable,’ said Laurent, with a certain meaning in his face and voice which Paul at the moment could not fathom.