"For was not the lady arrestingly elegant?—Sapristi! if ever a young man had luck! Yet, after all, why not? For he, too, repaid observation. Truly a handsome fellow, and of a type of male beauty eminently Gallic—refined yet virile; perfectly distinguished, moreover, in manner and in dress. She appeared languid. Well, what more easily comprehensible, since—a marriage of inclination, without doubt—"
Whereupon, in the intervals of anxiously retrieving some strayed all too adventurous Mimi or Toto, the fond parental being beheld, in prophetic vision, Adrian the Magnificent also shepherding a delicious little human flock.
"How did you know, or was it by chance that you came?" Gabrielle presently inquired.
And, in reply, Adrian explained that, the affairs of the Smyrthwaite inheritance being completed sooner than he anticipated, he had advanced his return—Ah! shade, accusing shade, of Joanna! But with la belle Gabrielle's hand resting confidingly upon his arm, he could hardly be expected to turn aside to appease that unhappy phantom.
"Unfortunately I missed the connection in London, and failed to catch the midday Channel boat. Consequently I only reached Paris early this morning. I had passed two practically sleepless nights"—again accusing shade of Joanna, sound of footsteps, and dragging of draperies upon the corridor outside his bedroom door!—"To my shame," he continued, "I made up for my broken rest to-day. It was already past three o'clock when I went to my office. I had omitted to warn my people there of my return. Picture then, chère Madame, my emotion when my secretary handed me a letter from our friend Miss Beauchamp!"
"So it was Anastasia," Madame St. Leger murmured; but whether resentfully or gratefully her hearer failed to determine.
"I flung myself into the automobile—and—enfin—you know the rest."
"Yes," she agreed, "I know the rest."
And, thereupon, she gave a little cry of astonishment.
For, turning the eastern side of the would-be Moorish palace and passing on to the terrace in front of it, the whole of Paris was disclosed to view outspread below along the valley of the Seine. In intermingling, finely gradated tones, blond and silver, the immense panorama presented itself; squares, gardens, monuments, world-famous streets and world-famous buildings seen in the splendid clarity of the sun-penetrated atmosphere, purple-stained here and there by the shadows of detached high-sailing clouds. Upon the opposite height, crowning Montmartre, the Church of the Sacré Coeur rose ivory-white, its dome and clock-tower seeming strangely adjacent to the vast blue arch of the summer sky; while, in the extreme distance both to right and left, beyond the precincts of the laughing city, a gray, angular grimness of outlying forts struck the vibrant and masculine note of the peril of war.