"Tonight," she announced, as they sat side by side at the small round table, "I am going to take advantage of the situation. I am your hostess and you are an invalid. It is my opportunity to talk. Are you a good listener, Sir Julien?"
She had dropped her voice almost to a whisper. Those beautiful deep-set eyes were challenging his. She seemed to have made up her mind that for that night, at any rate, her beauty should be unquestioned. She wore a dress of black net, fitting very closely, a wonderful background for her white skin and the ropes of pearls which were twined about her neck. He had never seen her décolletée, but he remembered reading in a ladies' fashion paper that a famous sculptor had once declared her neck and bust to be the most beautiful in Paris. She had even added the slightest touch of color to her cheeks. There was no longer any sign of the wrinkles at the sides of her eyes. She read the half ingenuous, half unwilling admiration in his face, and she laughed at him.
"Ah, my friend," she murmured, "I can see that you object to the rôle of listener! Very well, then, you shall talk. You shall tell me of your life in England. You shall tell me what dreams have come to you for the days when once more you shall help to shape the destinies of your nation. Tell me how you mean to live! Shall you be again—what was it Lady Anne thought you?—a prig?"
"I am like many other and more famous men," he remarked. "I have learned much in adversity."
"I read the English papers," she continued presently. "I have also a large correspondence. Do you know that there is nearly a rebellion in your party? Questions have been asked about you in the House. Both sides want you back. There is a feeling that you were allowed to go much too easily, that the indiscretion of which you were guilty was a trifle. This man Carraby is what you call—a cad! That does not do in the high places. Nationality cannot conceal a lack of breeding."
"I have thought over many things," Julien admitted. "If the way is made clear for me, I shall go back. Why not? I believe that I can serve my country, and it is the life for which I am best fitted. Carraby may have his good points, but his ambitions have been a little too extensive. He would have made a better mayor of the town where he was born."
"You are right," she declared. "There is no place for such men in the great world. You will go back. It is written. See—I drink to England's future Prime Minister!"
She raised her glass, which the butler had just filled with champagne. She looked into his eyes as she drank and Julien was conscious of a passing uneasiness. She set the glass down, empty. Her hand lay for a moment near his.
"You will go back," she murmured. "You will forget. The people whom you have met in your brief period of adversity will seem to you like shadows. Is it not so?"
He took her hand and raised it boldly to his lips.