After this he was gone and she sat down to think it over.
CHAPTER XXI
She saw him again during the following week and was obliged to tell him that she had not been able to take her charge to Kensington Gardens on the morning that he had appointed but that, as the girl was fond of the place and took pleasure in watching the children sailing their boats on the Round Pond, it would be easy to lead her there. He showed her a photograph of the woman she would find sitting on a particular bench, and he required she should look at it long enough to commit the face to memory. It was that of a quietly elegant woman with gentle eyes.
“She will call herself Lady Etynge,” he said. “You are to remember that you once taught her little girl in Paris. There must be no haste and no mistakes. It be well for them to meet—by accident—several times.”
Later he aid to her:
“When Lady Etynge invites her to go to her house, you will, of course, go with her. You will not stay. Lady Etynge will tell you what to do.”
In words, he did not involve himself by giving any hint of his intentions. So far as expression went, he might have had none, whatever. Her secret conclusion was that he knew, if he could see the girl under propitious circumstances—at the house of a clever and sympathetic acquaintance, he need have no shadow of a doubt as to the result of his efforts to please her. He knew she was a lonely, romantic creature, who had doubtless read sentimental books and been allured by their heroes. She was, of course, just ripe for young peerings into the land of love making. His had been no peerings, thought the pale Hirsch sadly. What girl—or woman—could resist the alluring demand of his drooping eyes, if he chose to allow warmth to fill them? Thinking of it, she almost gnashed her teeth. Did she not see how he would look, bending his high head and murmuring to a woman who shook with joy under his gaze? Had she not seen it in her own forlorn, hopeless dreams?
What did it matter if what the world calls disaster befell the girl? Fräulein Hirsch would not have called it disaster. Any woman would have been paid a thousand times over. His fancy might last a few months. Perhaps he would take her to Berlin—or to some lovely secret spot in the mountains where he could visit her. What heaven—what heaven! She wept, hiding her face on her hot, dry hands.
But it would not last long—and he would again think only of the immense work—the august Machine, of which he was a mechanical part—and he would be obliged to see and talk to her, Mathilde Hirsch, having forgotten the rest. She could only hold herself decently in check by telling herself again and again that it was only natural that such things should come and go in his magnificent life, and that the sooner it began the sooner it would end.
It was a lovely morning when her pupil walked with her in Kensington Gardens, and, quite naturally, strolled towards the Round Pond. Robin was happy because there were flutings of birds in the air, gardeners were stuffing crocuses and hyacinths into the flower beds, there were little sweet scents floating about and so it was Spring. She pulled a bare looking branch of a lilac bush towards her and stooped and kissed the tiny brown buttons upon it, half shyly.