“It seems to me,” she cried, “that Count Edouard Marigny has been taking an interest in me that is certainly not warranted by any encouragement on my part. Open your letter, Mrs. Devar, and see if he, too, is on the London trail.... Ah, well—perhaps I am mistaken. I was so vexed for the moment that I thought he might have telegraphed to father when we did not turn up at Hereford. Of course, that is sheer nonsense. He couldn’t have done it. Father was in England before Monsieur Marigny was aware of our failure to connect with Hereford. I’m sure I don’t know what is vexing me, but something is, or somebody, and I want to quarrel with it, or him, or her, real bad.”
Without waiting for any opening of Marigny’s note she ran off to her room. Medenham had turned to leave the hotel when he heard a gurgling cry:
“Mr. Fitzroy—Lord Medenham—what does it all mean?”
Mrs. Devar’s distress was pitiable. Snatches of talk overheard in Paris and elsewhere warned her that Mrs. Leland would prove an unconquerable foe. She was miserably conscious that her own letter, posted overnight, would rise up in judgment against her, but already she had devised the plausible excuse that the very qualities which were excellent in a viscount were most dangerous in a chauffeur. Nevertheless, the letter, ill-advised though it might be, could not account for Peter Vanrenen’s sudden visit to England. She might torture her wits for a year without hitting on the truth, since the summoning of the millionaire to the rescue appeared to be the last thing Count Edouard Marigny would dream of doing. She actually held in her hand a summary of the telegrams he had dispatched from Bristol, but her mind was too confused to work in its customary grooves, and she blurted out Medenham’s title in a frantic attempt to gain his support.
“It means this,” he said coolly, resolved to clear the ground thoroughly for Mrs. Devar’s benefit; “your French ally is resorting to the methods of the blackmailer. If you are wise you will cut yourself entirely adrift from him, and warn your son to follow your example. I shall deal with Monsieur Marigny—have no doubt on that score—and if you wish me to forget certain discreditable incidents that have happened since we left London you will respect my earnest request that Miss Vanrenen shall not be told anything about me by you. I mean to choose my own time and place for the necessary explanations. They concern none but Miss Vanrenen and myself, in the first instance, and her father and mine, in the second. I have observed that you can be a shrewd woman when it serves your interests, Mrs. Devar, and now you have an opportunity of adding discretion to shrewdness. I take it you are asking for my advice. It is simple and to the point. Enjoy yourself, cease acting as a matrimonial agent, and leave the rest to me.”
The residents in the hotel were gathering in the veranda, as the luncheon hour was approaching, so Mrs. Devar could not press him to be more explicit. In the privacy of her own room she read Marigny’s letter. Then she learnt why Cynthia’s father had hurried across the Channel, for the Frenchman had not scrupled to warn him that his presence was imperative if he would save his daughter from a rogue who had replaced the confidential Simmonds as chauffeur.
Forthwith, Mrs. Devar became more dazed than ever. She felt that she must confide in someone, so she wrote a full account of events at Symon’s Yat to her son. It was the worst possible thing she could have done. Unconsciously—for she was now anxious to help instead of hindering Medenham’s wooing—some of the gall in her nature distilled itself into words. She dwelt on the river episode with all the sly rancor of the inveterate scandalmonger. She was really striving to depict her own confusion of ideas when stunned by the discovery of Medenham’s position, but she only succeeded in stringing together a series of ill-natured innuendoes. Sandwiched between each paragraph of the story were the true gossip’s catchwords—thus: “What was I to think?” “What would people say if they knew?” “My dear, just picture your mother’s predicament when midnight struck, and there was no news!” “Of course, one makes allowances for an American girl,” and the rest.
Though this soured woman was a ready letter-writer, she was no reader, or in days to come she might have parodied Pope’s “Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot”:
Why did I write? What sin to me unknown
Dipped me in ink?—my parents’, or my own?