They got away safely from England within a week of the fateful visit to “Thames Lawn,” all difficulties being smoothed away by the co-operation of the Colonel who, while he made no effort to see his daughter again, did everything in his power to help her and her husband to get away quickly and quietly. They prided themselves on managing everything very neatly, and both men hoped that the young husband and wife would be able to get lost, not only to the world, but to the vicious and vindictive Chloris White, even without the adoption of a feigned name, which the Colonel advised, but which Lauriston declined to resort to.
“If they made up their minds to find me, Nouna’s peculiar beauty would be clue enough to track me by to the end of the world,” said he. “I have done nothing to disgrace my name, and it’s one of my deepest wishes to make my wife so proud of it that she will forget that she ever had any other.”
They started in the early morning from Charing Cross, Lord Florencecourt meeting them at the station to see them off. The greeting between father and daughter was a curious one. Nouna, whose prejudice against the Colonel had hitherto found vent in avoidance or in sauciness, now received him with a low bow and humble touch of the hand of decorous respect, while in her lowered eyes hatred of the man who had abandoned her mother struggled with her strong native sense of the majesty of a father. The Colonel’s manner, on the other hand, was nervous and jerky. He was grieved to lose Lauriston, delighted to lose his daughter, and haunted by a dread of what his demon-wife might take it into her head to do now she was foiled in her cherished ambition for her child. He had brought a beautiful basket of roses for Mrs. Lauriston, and he insisted on paying for their tickets himself, to save poor Nouna what he thought might be the shock of travelling second-class. When, as the train started, Nouna saw that, on shaking hands with her husband, the Colonel’s eyes grew moist and kindly, she relented, and leaning far out of the carriage window, bestowed upon her amazed and unwilling father a kiss which, being justified only by that relationship which he was trying so hard to conceal, was scarcely less unwelcome than a charge of grapeshot.
The train was out of sight before he recovered a degree of serenity, which was shaken immediately afterwards by a glimpse he caught, as he was leaving the station, of a tall, lean man wearing a red fez, who came out by a different door, and crossing the inclosure in front with quick strides, was lost to his sight among the crowd in the Strand. Although George had not informed him of all he feared from Rahas, he had told him enough about this dark-skinned agent of Chloris White’s to make the Colonel suspect that with all their care they had not succeeded in evading her evil vigilance. At first he thought he would warn George, but reflecting how common foreign headgear of all sorts is in London, he decided that he had not enough grounds for disturbing so soon the poor fellow’s sense of security.
With their arrival in Paris began the third era in the married life of George and his wife. Nouna’s delight in the bright city was so great that at first the fact of having to live in two small rooms on the fourth floor of a house in a narrow street off the Boulevard Poissonnière was of no account compared with the knowledge of the pleasures that lay outside, the walks along the lighted boulevards in the evening before the shops were shut, the expeditions in a tramcar to the Bois de Boulogne or Saint Cloud, above all the Sunday trips upon the Seine on a steamer, all joys within the reach of a most modest purse, were delirious excitements to her susceptible temperament, in the first ecstasy of which the handsome house at Kensington, the tropical plants, the supper parties, even the services of her servant Sundran, were for the time forgotten. On one memorable Sunday they indulged in a drive round the Bois in a fiacre, and in ices at the little châlet restaurant opposite the cascade, where the lower middle-class brides come in all their bravery of white satin and long veil and orange-blossom wreath, looking coquettish, happy, and at ease in the unaccustomed attire which an English girl of the same class wears with such shamefaced awkwardness. To Nouna that day gave a glimpse of Paradise: the fiacre was more comfortable than her victoria in London had been, Hyde Park could not compare with the Bois, the passers-by amused, the ice intoxicated her. When the sunshine had faded into twilight, and they had driven back home through the lighted streets, she climbed up the long flights of stairs, still in a silent ecstasy, and sat down in a little low chair George had bought for her, seeing nothing in the gloom but moving carriages, and small trees growing thickly round a lake that glittered in sunshine, and pretty mock châlets and a ridiculous little waterfall that fell from nothing into nowhere.
Presently she got up and went out on to the broad balcony which, encroaching upon the size of the rooms, was yet the chief charm of this little home under the roof. She had hung one corner of it with curtains, and George had contrived a canvas awning under which, when the weather was fine, she spent most of the hours of his absence. Her husband watched without following her as she leaned upon the rail and looked out at the yellow glow in the west which could still be seen behind the housetops. Suddenly she turned and came back to him. Standing just within the window with her back to the fading light, her face could not be seen; but her voice rang out with a strange vibration as she called to him, holding her arms towards him:
“George, why don’t you come out to me?”
He was with her in a moment, found her trembling and dry-lipped, and tried to persuade her to lie down while he called to the old woman from whom they rented the rooms, to prepare their supper. But Nouna shook her head, and insisted on his remaining with her by the window. Yes, she was tired, she admitted, but she wanted the air; she would go out on the balcony again if he would go with her. As she seemed to desire it, he let her lead him out, all the time keeping her eyes fixed in a remarkable manner immovably on his face.
“Look out,” she said, “at the sky—at the houses—at all you can see.”
He let his gaze pass obediently from her face to the pale-starred sky, the grey-blue of which was merging into the last red rays of the disappearing sunset: to the house-roofs and chimney-pots, of which they had a good though not an extensive view, to the street below, with its little globes of yellow light, and the dark specks which were all he could see of the moving passengers. Then he turned to her curiously.