It was a trivial incident in itself, yet it was the means of an acquaintance of sorts springing up between the duke and Mr. Edward Sydney, an acquaintance which permitted a whisky and soda together in the buffet and a word or two when they met in the foyer.
The introduction to Galva took place after dinner one night, when Edward was leaving the hotel with the ladies for the opera. The duke's large white motor-car had refused to budge from in front of the entrance, and the girl and her foster-mother had had to walk round it to their waiting fiacre. The duke had apologized very prettily, and Galva's already favourable impression of him suffered nothing from the meeting—rather the reverse.
From that time the young people seemed to be always crossing the foyer at the same time, and once Galva and Edward had accepted the duke's invitation to join him in a spin in the lovely car to Barbizon. It was when he was driving his engine that the duke showed to his best advantage and told clearly that under the dandified exterior was a nerve of iron. To see his capable hands grip the steering-wheel was in itself enough to inspire the utmost confidence.
Galva never forgot that ride and the other rides that followed hard upon it. During her stay in England she had hardly seen a car—the roads round Tremoor were not ideal for the sport, and the novelty of it all was, to her, wonderful. The long, straight, white roads fringed with tall poplars, and the absence of speed-limit, showed her motoring at its best, and she would return to the hotel with cheeks aglow and with fascinating tendrils of hair escaping from the dainty motor-bonnet she had bought in the Magasin du Louvre.
It seemed nearly every day that the great white car sped away from the hotel with the duke at the wheel and the little fur-clad figure of Miss Baxendale tucked up cosily by his side. Edward, who invariably sat with the chauffeur in the tonneau, enjoyed these exhilarating spins as much as any one, but he began to wonder where it would all end, and to ask himself whether he was doing his duty in the sphere to which he had called himself.
He indirectly tackled the girl on the subject one day as they sat after tea in their private drawing-room. Anna was writing in her own room, and the opportunity was too good to be missed. Edward cleared his throat, and started the subject by saying—
"I have been looking out the trains, Galva. We will go through to Madrid, I think. It is a little out of our way, but it will be interesting."
"Why, guardy, you don't want to leave Paris, surely. It's grand here, and old Spain can wait. When I get to San Pietro there'll be a lot of horrid things to think about and to worry us. I love Paris."
"Is it only Paris you are so loath to leave, Galva?"
The princess blushed a delicious pink that did not pass unnoticed by her self-appointed guardian. He rose and straightened himself importantly, pulling down his waistcoat with a tug.