If Pauline Lunelle had a tenderness for any of them, it was for the sous-lieutenant; at the Englishman, and indeed at a great many others--Frenchmen, commis-voyageurs, tradesmen in the city, or clerks in the merchants' offices on the Quai--she laughed unmercifully; not to their faces, indeed--that would have been bad for business, and Pauline throughout her life had the keenest eye to her own benefit. Her worth as a decoy-duck was so fully appreciated by Monsieur Etienne, the proprietor of the restaurant, that she had insisted upon receiving a commission on all moneys paid by those whose visits thither were unquestionably due to her attraction. But when they had retired for the night, the little top bedroom which she occupied in conjunction with Mademoiselle Mathilde would ring with laughter, caused by her repetition of the sweet things which had been said to her during the evening by her admirers, and her imitations of the manner and accents in which they had been delivered. So Adolphe de Noailles had it all his own way, and Pauline had seriously debated within herself whether she should not let him run the risk of offending his family and marrying him out of hand (the disappointment to be occasioned thereby to Mademoiselle Krebs, a haughty and purse-proud young lady, being one of her keenest incentives to the act), when another character appeared upon the scene.
This was another Englishman, but in every way as different as possible to poor Mr. Jenkins--not merely speaking French like a Parisian, but salting his conversation with a vast amount of Parisian idiomatic slang, full of fun and wild practical jokes, impervious to ridicule, impossible to be put down, and spending his money in the most lavish and free-handed manner possible. This was Tom Durham, who had suddenly turned up in Marseilles, no one knew why. He had been to Malta, he said, on a "venture," and the venture had turned out favourably, and he was going back to England, and had determined to enjoy himself by the way. He was constantly at the Restaurant du Midi, paid immense attention to the dame du comptoir, and she in her turn was fascinated by his good temper, his generous ways, his strange eccentric goings-on. But Tom Durham, laughing, drinking, and spending his money, was the same cool observant creature that he had been ever since he shipped as 'prentice on board the Gloucestershire, when he was fifteen years of age. All the time of his sojourn at the Restaurant du Midi he was carefully "taking stock," as he called it, of Pauline Lunelle. In his various schemes he had long felt the want of a female accomplice, and he thought he had at last found the person whom he had for some time been seeking. That she was worldly-wise he knew, or she would never have achieved the position which she held in Monsieur Etienne's establishment; that there was far more in her than she had ever yet given proof of he believed; for Mr. Tom Durham was a strong believer in physiognomy, and had more than once found the study of some use to him. Sipping his lemonade-and-cognac and puffing at his cigar, he sat night after night talking pleasantly with any chance acquaintance, but inwardly studying Pauline Lunelle; and when his studies were completed, he had made up his mind that he saw in her a wonderful mixture of headstrong passion and calm common sense, unscrupulous, fearless, devoted, and capable of carrying out anything, no matter what, which she had once made up her mind to perform. "A tameable tiger, in point of fact," said Tom Durham to himself as he stepped out into the street and picked his way across the filthy gutters towards his home; "and if only kept in proper subjection, capable of being made anything of." He knew there was only one way by which Pauline could be secured, and he made up his mind to propose to her the next night.
He proposed accordingly; but Pauline begged for four-and-twenty hours to consider her decision, and in the early morning went out into the Prado to think it all through, and deliberately to weigh the merits of the propositions made respectively by Adolphe de Noailles and Tom Durham; the result being that the sous-lieutenant's hopes were crushed for ever--or for fully a fortnight, when they blossomed in another direction--and that Pauline, dame du comptoir no longer, linked her fate with that of Tom Durham. Thenceforward they were all in all to each other. She had no relatives, nor, as he told her, had he. "I have not seen Alice for five years," he said to himself; "and from what I recollect of her, she was a stuck-up, straitlaced little minx, likely to look down upon my young friend the tiger here, and give herself airs which the tiger certainly would not understand; so, as they are not likely to come together, it will be better to ignore her existence altogether." In all his crooked schemes, and they were many and various, Pauline took her share, unflagging, indefatigable, clear in council, prompt in action, jealous of every word, of every look he gave to any other woman; at the same time the slave of his love and the prop and mainstay of his affairs. Tom Durham himself had not that quality which he imputed to his half-sister; he certainly was not strait-laced; but his escapades, if he had any, were carefully kept in the background, and Pauline, suspicious as she was, had never felt any real ground for jealousy until she had witnessed the scene at parting at the Southampton station.
The Prado and its associations had faded out of her mind, and she was trying to picture to herself the various chances which could possibly have detained her husband, when a porter halted before her, and civilly touching his cap, asked for what train she was waiting.
"The train for Weymouth," she replied.
"For Weymouth!" echoed the porter; "the train for Weymouth has just gone."
"Yes, I know that," said Pauline; "but I was expecting some one--a gentleman--to meet me. He will probably come in time for the next."
"You will have a longish waiting bout," said the man; "next train don't come till two-forty-five, nigh upon three o'clock."
"That is long," said Pauline. "And the next?"
"Only one more after that," said the porter--"eight forty--gets into Weymouth somewhere between ten and eleven at night. You'll never think of waiting here, ma'am, for either of them. Better go into the town to one of the hotels, or have a row on the river, or something to pass the time."