In Direst Peril

by David Christie Murray

Dinner was announced at the very instant of her arrival, and the count himself took her in to dinner. That, in the light of my latest knowledge of the lady, was the cruellest thing to remember, but the little traitress was all smiles and pompousness, and smiled and chatted as if no thought of mischief had ever entered her heart. Lady Rollinson had confided Violet to my care, and I sat at table between her and the baroness. She talked across me to my companion until my nerves grew rigid with the strain of the repression I was compelled to lay upon myself, and the dinner, which ought to have been a little foretaste of heaven to a newly-accepted lover, was a long-drawn discomfort. There were two gentlemen at the table besides the count and myself, but they were both Italians, and had no notion of the English custom of sitting over their wine after dinner. The count was a total abstainer, for his long-enforced abstention had taught him a curious delicacy of palate, so that all wines were actually distasteful to him. When the ladies had retired we smoked a cigarette, drank a cup of black coffee, and made our way to the drawing-room, where Lady Rollinson had promised us something unusual in the way of music. It was my right to have monopolized Violet's society, or if not actually to have monopolized it, to have taken a full share of it. I found opportunity to whisper to her that I had an especial reason for speaking to the baroness, and while the music was going on I planted myself at that lady's side. She received me with more than her usual foreign affability, and chattered so rapidly that one or two of the guests, who I suppose really cared for the performance then going on, cast glances of open disapproval in her direction. The little woman was quite at home, however, and continued to talk with great animation. I made two or three attempts to interject what I had to say, but she stopped me each time, and started off on a new theme before I could get more than a word in edgewise. I know that she must have seen from my looks that I was not in the least degree disposed to the flippant mood to which she herself pretended, and at last she either was, or feigned to be, tired of my failure to respond to her.

“You are bête to-night, mon beau capitaine,” she said at last, and with a humorously disdainful gesture of her fan she made a motion to rise.

“Not yet, baroness,” I said, taking the fan in my hand. “I have something serious to say to you.”

“I am not in the mind for anything serious tonight,” she answered, “and this is not the place for anything serious.”

“I am in the mood,” I said, “and the place will do well enough.”

She flashed her eyes at me with a sudden anger.

“Is that an impertinence or a gaucherie?” she asked. A second later her charming girlish smile lit up her face again, and rising from her seat she dropped a little mock rustic courtesy. “If M. le Capitaine Fyffe will honor me at my own humble residence, I am never abroad till one.” With that she shot me a curiously veiled glance and turned away, holding up her hand as if to ask me to listen to the last strains of the music which her own vehement chatter had already spoiled for everybody who cared to listen to it. She had evidently a purpose in holding me off, and I of course could form a reasonable guess as to what the nature of that purpose was. I devoted myself to Violet for the rest of the evening, and contrived so well to forget the baroness that by the time at which I was compelled to take my leave I was restored to the state of mind natural to an ardent lover who had only that day been lifted from something very like despair to the fulfilment of his hope.

When the baroness took leave I helped her to adjust her costly fur mantle. Violet was standing by, and the baroness was talking to her with a pretence of animation which I know was intended to prevent me from giving her a reminder of what had already passed between us. As she turned to go she gave me a moment's chance. I had been waiting for it, and I seized it instantly.

“To-morrow, then, at twelve,” I said.

She turned, with her eyes wide open and angered, as if I had presumed in speaking to her and had offered her an insult. But she changed her mind in the merest fraction of time, and answered, smilingly: