The lady, sitting thus with her feet on the fender, her hands comfortably clasping the big arms of the dressing chair, and her head lolling rather ungracefully over its back, fell into slumber.
If Mrs. John Arthur had made a midnight appointment with Lucifer, she would have fortified herself for the encounter by making a "stunning" toilet. It was one of her fixed principles—she had fixed principles—never to permit friend or foe of the male persuasion to gaze upon her charms when they would show at a disadvantage. So when she entered the arbor, which was suffused with a soft moonlight glow from a heavily-shaded lamp, for the arbor stood among dense shrubbery, and but for this lamp would have been in Egyptian darkness, she was indeed a personification of loveliness.
Ungracious as was his mood, Percy would not have been a beauty-adoring mortal if he had not paid involuntary tribute to the charms of the woman who was his bitterest foe. Gazing down upon her a moment, he said in his soft legato:
"I am almost angry at you for being so beautiful, after having taken yourself to other lovers, Ma belle."
The woman smiled triumphantly, as she threw herself into an easy chair, and said in her softest, sweetest tone: "And did you expect me to go mourning for you all these years, sir?"
"I don't think you were ever the woman to do that;" dropping lazily into a rustic seat near her. "May I smoke?"
Cora nodded.
"Are you sure we are quite safe here?" looking about him. "Somehow, I am suspicious of that sharp French maid."
"Quite sure," nodding again. "Mr. Arthur was in bed before I came out; Miss Arthur was ordering up a lunch to her room, and the French maid must needs be in attendance for an hour or more; and besides, I know she is not at all dangerous. None of the other servants ever have occasion to come here, and most of them are in bed by now."