“I liked her at once. I shall be glad to do anything I can, you know. She has a great capacity for making friends.”
“She has already made a few—this evening,” put in the Frenchman, with a significant gesture of his gloved hand.
“Ah!”
“Not one who can hurt her, I think. I can see to that. The usual enemy—of a pretty girl—that is all.”
He broke off with a sudden laugh. Once or twice he had laughed like that, and his manner was restless and uneasy. In a younger man, or one less experienced and hardened, the observant might have suspected some hidden excitement. Lady Orlay turned and looked at him curiously, with the frankness of a friendship which had lasted nearly half a century.
“What is it?”
He laughed—but he laughed uneasily—and spread out his hands in a gesture of bewilderment.
“What is what?”
Lady Orlay looked at her fan reflectively as she opened and closed it.
“Reginald Cartoner has turned up quite suddenly,” she said. “Mr. Mangles has arrived from Washington. You are here from Paris. A few minutes ago old Karl Steinmetz, who still watches the nations en amateur, shook hands with me. This Prince Bukaty is not a nonentity. All the Vultures are assembling, Paul. I can see that. I can see that my husband sees it.”