In every respect she had ample reason to be well satisfied with the results of the scheme she had devised in the morning and so effectually carried out in the afternoon,—a scheme so wild and having so many thousand chances against its success, that none save the intrepid, resolute, far-seeing Laura could have possibly hoped to conduct it to a triumphant issue.
Having proceeded to the end of the avenue, she ordered the coachman to retrace his way and return home;—but she was not destined to reach the Rue Monthabor without experiencing another adventure, which may for the moment seem trivial, but which was nevertheless destined to exercise no mean amount of influence upon her future career.
As the carriage was emerging from the Champs Elysées, two gentlemen on horseback, just entering the fashionable lounge, were about to pass by, when one of them, recognising Laura, suddenly pulled up and made her a low bow. She immediately ordered the carriage to stop; for it was her courteous and obliging friend the professor of music, who had thus saluted her—and she was anxious to express to him the delight she had experienced from a perusal of the translations he had sent to her the preceding evening. After the exchange of the usual complimentary remarks, the professor, turning towards his companion, said, “My lord, permit me to introduce you to one of my fair pupils—my fairest pupil, I should rather observe,” he added, in a good-tempered manner: “Miss Laura Mortimer—the Marquis of Delmour.”
Laura was startled for an instant at finding her music-master in such aristocratic society; and as she inclined gracefully in acknowledgment of the nobleman’s courteous salutation, she observed that his lordship was an elderly, if not actually an old man, but that his countenance was far from disagreeable.
A brief conversation ensued; and although the marquis had no opportunity of speaking more than a dozen words, and even those on common topic Laura nevertheless saw enough of him to be convinced that his manners were of polished elegance, and that his disposition was frank and unassuming.
It was not therefore without emotions of secret pleasure that she heard herself thus addressed by the professor of music:—
“Miss Mortimer, his lordship, and myself, are old acquaintances, and he permits me to call him my friend. His lordship will honour my humble abode with his presence, to-morrow, evening: there will be a musical soirée of the same unpretending kind as that which you yourself graced with your company the evening before last. My wife will doubtless send you the formal card; but may I in a less ceremonial fashion, solicit you to favour us with your presence?”
Laura signified the pleasure she should experience in accepting the invitation; and all the time she was listening to the professor and replying to him, she had the agreeable consciousness that the marquis was gazing upon her with an admiration which he could not repress. She however affected not to be in the slightest degree aware that she was undergoing such an impassioned survey; and when she turned towards his lordship to make the parting bow, it was with the formal reserve and yet graceful dignity of a lady to whom a stranger has only just been introduced.
The carriage rolled on in one direction—the horsemen pursued their way in another;—and while the Marquis of Delmour was putting innumerable questions to his friend relative to the houri whom they had thus met, Laura was on her side resolving that Rosalie should without delay institute all possible inquiries respecting the position, fortune, and character of that nobleman.
We should here remind the reader that the professor of music was a man eminent in his special sphere, of high respectability, and great moral worth; and, moreover, he was a native of a country where talent is prized and looked up to, instead of being merely tolerated and looked down upon. It is not, therefore, extraordinary if we find him moving in the best society, and having his entertainments attended by the elite of the residents or visitors in the gay city of Paris.