Paul made his way to the drawing-room, and found there the Knickerbocker lady and the demure Countess, with whom he had already a slight but agreeable acquaintance. He had had time to recover his self-possession, and though he wished himself a hundred miles away, he did his best to set the kite of conversation flying. He was making an attempt in his somewhat halting French to tell the story of his delay when Gertrude entered, and he told the tale to her, leaving her to translate it. His narrative was so vivacious that she trilled with laughter at it, and broke in upon it with a rapid paraphrase in French here and there, so that she and the Countess and the historian were all laughing heartily together when Mr. Janes came in with a sombre countenance, and made so funereal an effort to join in the mirth that Paul was fiercely tickled. And whilst he made a comedy of the morning’s accident for her amusement, he was thinking all the while, ‘You heartless, cruel, dangerous little jade!’ and thinking it, too, with a real savagery of hatred. ‘How many have you betrayed,’ he asked in his heart ‘To how many hungers of passion deliberately awakened have you offered that heart of stone?’
The Baroness knew him mainly on the sentimental side, but that evening he launched out as a raconteur, and was gay and brilliant. Even Mr. Janes was awakened to sporadic laughter at the dinner-table, where they sat by preconcerted arrangement without the formality of evening-dress, and fared admirably from the hors d’oeuvres to the coffee—a flawless meal. And dinner being over, they drove away under a noble moon to the railway-station, and bowled back to Paris.
Paul, still with an air of gaiety, begged Gertrude to accord him ten minutes on the following day.
‘I have something to tell you,’ he said, ‘in which I am sure you will take the warmest interest. May I trespass on your time for just ten minutes in the morning? I got a curious little bit of intelligence to-day which will carry me, I fancy, to the United States.’
‘The United States? cried Gertrude. ‘I can send you to the nicest people there. But shall you be long away?’
‘I shall be able to tell you that to-morrow,’ Paul answered. ‘May I?
‘Certainly,’ she replied graciously. ‘Shall we all breakfast together at twelve?’
‘I am sorry,’ said Paul, ‘but for me that is impossible. But if I may see you at a quarter to the hour——’
‘Certainly,’ she said again.
‘Thank you,’ he said, and turning away somewhat abruptly, as he thought afterwards, he began to talk to the irresponsive Janes, who sat, as it were, in fog.