Mrs. Lennox sank into a curiously carved old ebony chair, against which her bare arms and shoulders gleamed white. She was gowned in black, unrelieved except for the rope of pearls wound twice around her throat and hanging in a loose chain to her waist; but the severity of outline was exceedingly becoming to her slender figure and the absence of color emphasized the beauty of her skin, which was as fair and soft as if she were twenty instead of forty. She sighed a little as she leaned back in her chair, and Grémond reaching for some cushions from a divan near by tucked them in behind her comfortably.
“Madame is tired to-night,” he said.
“Monsieur Grémond,” turning her head the better to see him, “I feel as if I should offer you a thousand apologies. I had planned a gay evening for you and instead you are becoming initiated into intimate home life. We are already treating you like one of the family. Fancy!”
“A privilege not accorded to many; is it not so, Madame? I feel flattered beyond all telling.”
It pleased her that he was quick to recognize this as unusual treatment of the stranger within her gates and she said cordially, “I felt when I saw you that we should not make the usual beginning. It is a little peculiarity of mine that I steal into people’s lives in the middle—when I like them. I have never analyzed it, but I trust to my instincts and I am not often mistaken. Now you,” she said, leaning languidly back on her cushions, “you interest me and I’ve sent them all off to play billiards that we may have a quiet little talk together. I want to hear more of what you were telling me at dinner, if I may.”
“Madame is very good,” he said again. “We were speaking of Sidney Renshawe, were we not?”
“Of him—‘and one other,’” she quoted, watching his eloquent face.
His black eyes softened and he leaned forward a little, using his hands in frequent gesticulation as he began to talk. “I am reminded, Madame, of a certain witty English author who said that Columbus discovered America but America discovered him. To paraphrase him, I should say that two Americans discovered me—dear old Renshawe and the most charming little girl I ever knew.”
“Yes?” she said.
“But for those two, Madame, I might have been—anything!” He shrugged his shoulders expressively. “The one had faith in me, the other taught me to have faith in myself. She was my inspiration.” It seemed as natural to him to confide in this charming woman as if he had known her all his life, and in this he was not unlike the majority of people in whom Mrs. Lennox showed an interest, for she had that divine gift which for lack of an English word we call “simpatica”—an open sesame to all hearts.