This man, I thought, had seen, and was avoiding us, without wishing to appear to do so. It so happened, however, that some time later, in the tea-room, mamma was placed beside him. I was near enough to hear. Mamma recognised him with a smile and a little bow. He replied with just surprise enough in his looks and tones to imply that he had not known, up to that moment, that she was there.
"You are surprised to see me here?" he said; "I can scarcely believe it myself. I've been away thirteen months—a wanderer all over Europe; and I shall be off again in a few days. By-the-bye, you hear from Lady Lorrimer sometimes: I saw her at Naples, in January. She was looking flourishing then, but complaining a good deal. She has not been so well since—but I'll look in upon you to-morrow or the next day. I shall be sure to see her again, immediately. Your friends, the Wiclyffs, were at Baden this summer, so were the D'Acres. Lord Charles is to marry that French lady; it turns out she's rather an heiress; it is very nearly arranged, and they seemed all very well pleased. Have you seen my friend Carmel lately?"
"About three weeks ago; he was going to North Wales," she said.
"He is another of those interesting people who are always dying, and never die," said Monsieur Droqville.
I felt a growing disgust for this unfeeling man. He talked a little longer, and then turned to me and said:
"There's one advantage, Miss Ware, in being an old fellow—one can tell a young lady, in such charming and brilliant looks as yours to-night, what he thinks, just as he might give his opinion upon a picture. But I won't venture mine; I'll content myself with making a petition. I only ask that, when you are a very great lady, you'll remember a threadbare doctor, who would be very glad of an humble post about the court, and who is tired of wandering over the world in search of happiness, and finding a fee only once in fifty miles."
I do not know what was in this man's mind at that moment. If he was a Jesuit, he certainly owed very little to those arts and graces of which rumour allows so large a share to the order. But brusque and almost offensive as I thought him, there was something about him that seemed to command acceptance, and carry him everywhere he chose to go. He went away, and I saw him afterwards talking now to one great lady, and now to another. Lord Rillingdon, who looked like the envious witch whom Madame D'Aulnois introduces sometimes at the feasts of her happy kings and queens, throwing a malign gloom on all about them, had vanished.
That night, however, was to recall, as unexpectedly, another face, a more startling reminder of Malory and Laura Grey.
