“Nevertheless, ma’am, you’ll start with me for Dijon tomorrow.”
She raised her eyes to his face. “You cannot wrest me by force from this house, my lord.”
“Can’t I?” he said. His lip curled. “We shall see. Don’t try to escape me. I should run you to earth within a day, and if you put me to that trouble you might find my temper unpleasant.” He walked to the door. “I have the honour to bid you good night,” he said curtly, and went out.
Chapter XIII
Meanwhile, to anyone who knew her, Miss Marling’s reckless air of gaiety that night would have betokened an inward disquiet. She seemed to be in the highest spirits, but her eyes were restless, always searching the fashionable throng.
Paris had gone to Miss Marling’s head, and the attentions of such a known connoisseur as the Vicomte de Valmé could not but flatter her. The Vicomte protested that his heart was under her feet. She did not entirely believe this, but a diet of admiration and compliments spoiled her for the criticisms of Mr. Comyn. When he first appeared at her cousin’s house she had tumbled headlong into his arms, but this first unaffected rapture suffered a check. She proceeded to pour into her Frederick’s ears a recital of all her pleasures and triumphs. He listened in silence, and at the end said gravely that although he could not but be glad that she had found amusement, he had not thought that she would be so extremely gay and happy away from him.
Partly because it was the fashion to be coquettish, partly from a feeling of guilt, Juliana had answered in an arch, provocative way that did not captivate Mr. Comyn in the least. Bertrand de Saint-Vire would have known just what to say. Mr. Comyn, unskilled in the art of flirtation, said that Paris had not improved his Juliana.
They quarrelled, but made it up at once. But it was an ill beginning.
Miss Marling made Mr. Comyn known to her new friends, amongst them the Vicomte de Valmé. Mr. Comyn, with a lamentable lack of tact, spoke disparagingly of the Vicomte, whom he found insupportable. Truth to tell, the Vicomte, who was well aware of Mr. Comyn’s pretensions, was impelled by an innate love of mischief to flirt outrageously with Juliana under the very nose of her stiff and disapproving lover. Juliana, anxious to awake a spark of jealousy in what at that moment seemed to her an unresponsive heart, encouraged him. All she wanted was to be treated to a display of ruthless and possessive manhood. If Mr. Comyn, later, had seized her in his arms in a decently romantic fashion there would have been an end to the Vicomte’s flirtation. But Mr. Comyn was deeply hurt, and he did not recognize in these signs a perverted expression of his Juliana’s love for him. He was young, and he handled the affair very ill. He was forbearing where he should have been violent, and found fault when he should have made love. Miss Marling determined to teach him a lesson.
It was this laudable resolve that took her to the Hôtel Saint-Vire. Mr. Comyn should learn that it was unwise to lecture and criticize Miss Marling. But because under her airs and graces she was really very much in love with him, she induced her cousin to provide him with a card for the ball.