What an offence! Wasn't it enough to enrage the sweetest of women? Put yourself—I mean it was unpardonable!
For a second she seemed about to escape even more surreptitiously than she had entered; and then a smile, half sad, half whimsical, twitched her lips. A sense of humour—how much it spares us, how far it goes in life! A little pathetic that often a sense of humour wins affection, and the noble qualities get nothing but a dull respect. She looked at a pencil-case on the table, and stood tempted, her fingers at her mouth. Dared she do it! She would not have roused him for a coronet—and the creak of a board, even the scratching of the lead, might be fatal. She wavered. She moved towards the pencil slowly, stealthily, inch by inch.
The table was gained. There was nothing to write on. A paper-covered volume lay to her hand; with infinite precaution she tore the title-page. Tremulously she scribbled, holding her breath. Where to leave the message, where to put it so that it couldn't be overlooked? Again she hesitated. Conrad slept sound, a glance assured her of it. Again she ventured. An instant her gaze dwelt upon him, still with that smile half mirthful and half melancholy on her face. She nodded, wide-eyed—and on the tips of her toes crept out unheard, unseen.
When Conrad woke, a servant was admitting the sunshine through the window; his coffee steamed by his side. As he sat up—and almost before memory thudded in him—his view met the front page of "Le Marquis de Priola" pinned to the bed-curtain. He rolled towards it haggardly. On it was written:—
"Dreamer! Good-bye. There is no way back to Rouen."
CHAPTER XIII
"I must say I was very happy on the stage," sighed the Countess of Darlington, lifting the teapot.
The Earl of Armoury's mother threw up her eyes. A shapeless, waddling woman, the duchess, with a sanctimonious voice. There were elderly gentlemen who, remembering Flossie's agility with a tambourine at the old Pavilion, felt reformation to be a sad affair when they looked at her.
"Not 'happy,'" she said piously, "dazzled—only dazzled, dear Lady Darlington. Ladies like you and I can't be happy on the stage. It goes against the grain with you and I."