“You need not, indeed,” said George in a vibrating voice, gazing intently at the black silhouette, of which he could make out exasperatingly little but the shape of a close bonnet. “I am sure my wife will have particular pleasure in seeing you. I beg you to let me fetch her.”
The lady—there was no mistaking a certain refinement in the voice, even in that hurried whisper—was evidently agitated; but she said nothing as Lauriston retreated towards the door. He crossed the hall to call his wife, scarcely leaving the door of the housekeeper’s room out of sight as he did so. But in that moment when his eyes were not upon it, the mysterious stranger found means to escape; for when Nouna flew down and rushed into the small apartment at her husband’s bidding, there was no one for her to see but Mrs. Benfield, who, much perturbed and grey about the face, explained that her friend, being a nervous woman, had not dared to face the ordeal of a personal introduction to the young lady.
George said nothing, and let his wife wander away again without further explanation, thinking that after all the one small bit of knowledge he had gained he had better at present keep to himself.
He knew by the unmistakable evidence of the voice that he had just seen and spoken with Nouna’s mother.
CHAPTER XVII.
George Lauriston was not allowed to make much of his small discovery that Nouna’s mother was not so far off as she wished it to be believed. The very morning after his meeting with the strange lady in the housekeeper’s room he received a private communication to the effect that Madame di Valdestillas had run over to England from Paris on purpose to see in the flesh the man upon whom her daughter’s happiness depended; she had not dared to show herself to Nouna lest her darling should be overwhelmed at the shortness of her visit, and ply her with prayers which it would be impossible to resist and cruel to her invalid husband to grant. She had seen, so she declared, generosity and all noble qualities imprinted in her son-in-law’s face, and she begged him to open his heart to receive her as his mother as well as Nouna’s, when, at two or three months’ time at farthest, she would induce her husband to settle permanently in England, so that she might be near her children.
“You must have seen, my dear Mr. Lauriston,” she went on, “that at sight of you I was almost too much overcome to speak. Think what it is to be face to face, for the first time, with the person to whose care you have blindly confided the being you love best in the world, to be for the first time in seven years under the same roof with the creature for whose sake alone the world seems bright to you, and the chill air of this earth worth the breathing. I lead a brilliant life as the wife of a rich man, a man of rank; but it is empty and dreary to me without the child whom for her own sake I may not now see. Be kind to her, cherish her, be to her the tender guardian my other ties prevented me from being, for what I have entrusted to your care is the idol of my prayers.
“Ever your affectionate mother,
“Lakshmi di Valdestillas.
“P.S.—Any money you may require for setting up your establishment in a manner befitting the position in the world I wish my son and daughter to take I will willingly advance at once through Messrs. Smith and Angelo. An officer of such a regiment as yours wants no passport to the best set in London; but if you propose to come to France, or Spain, or Germany, during the autumn, let me know, and I will take care to furnish you with the very best introductions.”
This communication was the same curious combination as before of passionate letter and prosaic postscript, and again the rather flowery language and gleams of practical sense reminded him of Nouna. The romantic, hybrid signature, Lakshmi di Valdestillas, had an undoubtedly strong effect in explaining the eccentricity of the writer, who, with her Eastern descent and Spanish surroundings, could not fairly be judged by rules which govern the ordinary Englishwoman.
The Countess did not fail to impress the purport of her postscript on her daughter’s mind also, and Nouna was not slow to profit by the injunction. She loved luxury and splendour, had a strong sense of the picturesque, and would have surrounded herself, if that had been possible, with the half-barbarous state of an Oriental potentate. That being out of the question, she snatched readily at the best substitute that offered itself, and found her husband’s fellow-officers, who made no delay in calling upon her, more interesting, if less picturesque, than the turbaned slaves with whom she would have filled her fancifully-decorated apartments.
George was much astonished by the unexacting rapidity with which his wife was “taken up” by people to whom her mother’s foreign title meant nothing. For those officers who were married brought their wives, and no vagary either in Nouna’s dress or manner, no peculiarity in the arrangement of her rooms prevented them from making “a lion” of the fascinating little Indian, from imploring her to come to their receptions, enshrining her photograph—in an impromptu costume rigged up hastily with pins, out of a table-cloth and two antimacassars, and universally pronounced “so deliciously Oriental”—on their cabinets, and begging her scrawling signature for their birthday-books. It was not until some days after the stream of calls and invitations had begun to pour in upon the delighted Nouna that it occurred to George to remember that the pioneer of this invasion was Lord Florencecourt’s sister, the Countess of Crediton, a lady who combined her brother’s hardness of feature with a corresponding rigidity of mind which made her a pillar of strength to all the uncompromising virtues. When he did recall this circumstance, George felt more surprise than ever. No one but the Colonel himself, who had an enormous influence over his sister, could have induced her to take this step; and yet his attitude towards Nouna, on that awkward introduction which he had made no attempt to follow up by a call, had apparently been one of dislike but faintly tempered with the scantest possible courtesy. Why, his very endeavour to get Lauriston to exchange and put the Irish Channel between himself and his old friend was clearly born of the wish to get rid, not of the promising young lieutenant, but of the dark-complexioned wife!