M. de Saynthine was in love. In reality M. de Saynthine was always in love, on principle. He possessed the sentimental temperament of a certain Arigonde, alias the Parisian, who, in his youth, had achieved notoriety as a squire of dames.
We know that this notoriety had landed him in the Assize Court, and even beyond that Court, as a result of irretrievable accidents which had befallen the ladies to whom he paid court. The few years that he had spent in the convict settlement had by no means extinguished his ardor.
In the early days this lady-killer was prodigal of his favors and not very particular in the choice of his partners. But he had become tired of so many commonplace adventures and victories won, as it were, before a shot was fired, that he felt the longing for an affair which would be more difficult to complete, more serious and more lasting. He had encountered Giselle at Violette's shop in Paris, for Nina Noha was one of its customers.
Nina Noha, to serve her own purposes, which may be imagined—particularly if it is remembered that she was of Hungarian descent and quite recently naturalized—never lost an opportunity of introducing M. de Saynthine into society circles as an old friend, who was interested in stock breeding in the Argentine, and who had come to France on the declaration of war to discover the most effective means of serving his country.
The truth—unfortunately only too obvious—was that enemy propaganda, which was always on the lookout to increase its army of spies in the old as well as the new world, had its ramifications even in the gold-diggings in Guiana, and had enlisted the Parisian and his gang at a moment, when, having escaped a second time from their prison, they reached, in utter destitution, the frontier of Dutch Guiana.
Enemy agents had at once seen how to turn those miscreants to account, and had supplied them with the necessary social status to enable them to live in France.
Nina Noha had to take the Parisian in hand, and when she was entrusted with the mission of organizing a system of espionage among the fashionable crowd on the Riviera, she brought the Parisian with her, and his gang followed.
The Parisian's first intention had been to make love to the dancer, but she repressed him so remorselessly that he accepted his rejection without demur.
"We are not here to amuse ourselves," she flung at him.
The consciousness that he was her subordinate was extremely distasteful to M. de Saynthine. Until he had succeeded in striking the blow which he was meditating against the Nut, he sought, therefore, to pass the time and console himself for Nina Noha's contempt by engaging in one of those little sentimental intrigues in which he was a past master. Giselle's handsome face, with its touch of sadness, appealed to him from the first—from the day on which he saw her when he accompanied Nina Noha on one of her visits to Violette's.