“But your desert friends—”
“—can wait,” he said succinctly. And dreading the noisy ballroom, too tired and too utterly indifferent at the moment to care if she was outraging the proprieties Marny did not press the matter. The quiet conservatory, the restfulness and courage she seemed to derive from the mere presence of the man beside her were giving her strength to meet the ordeal that still lay before her, the ugly scene that invariably terminated Geradine’s so-called nights of amusement. It would happen tonight, as it always happened, and she would have to go through with it. For how many more years? She thrust the thought from her and turned again to Carew. But before she could speak the peaceful little winter garden was invaded. Not a dancing couple seeking for a solitary spot in which to continue a flirtation begun in the ballroom but two men who, deeming the place empty, did not trouble to modulate their voices as they took possession of a wicker seat a few feet away from the fern-hidden sofa.
“And this soi-disant countess—this copper-haired goddess you are raving about—” the words were uttered in fluent French but with a rough Slavonic accent.
“Soi-disant! I have it from her own lips,” interrupted an indignant voice that Carew recognised as belonging to Patrice Lemaire.
“Possibly,” was the caustic rejoinder, “but not necessarily correct for all that. An Austrian, you say, from Vienna? The wife of a Count Sach who held a court appointment, and who abused her infamously—and now, since his death, a lady of independent means who travels through Europe trying to forget her unhappy past?”
“That is what I said. Do you doubt it?”
“Your word, no. But the lady’s—yes.”
“Why?”
“You forget, my friend, that I am also of Vienna. I have no recollection of a Count Sach who held a court appointment, or of the lady who styles herself Countess Sach. And she is no more Austrian than you are, Lemaire. From her accent I should judge her to be English.”
“English? Bah! She doesn’t speak a word of the language.”