Thus admonished, Gabrielle paused. Her aspect and bearing were reserved, as those of one who yields in obedience to good manners rather than to personal inclination. But Adrian, nothing daunted, followed up his advantage.
"I came here to-day, chère Madame," he said, "as soon as possible after my return. My idea was to consult our friend Miss Beauchamp, to ask her advice and enlist her assistance. I feared my conduct might have appeared erratic, inexplicable. I proposed begging her to act as my ambassadress, asking her to recount to you certain things which have taken place since we parted at Ste. Marie—things very grievous, in a way unexampled and unnatural. But as I have the good fortune to find you here, I entreat you to wait and hear me while I acquaint you with those occurrences myself. You will remain, yes? Let us go over there then, out of earshot of the insupportably recurrent Mr. Byewater. I need to speak to you alone, chère Madame, without frivolous interruptions. And Mr. Byewater is forever at hand. He annoys me. He is so very far from decorative. He reminds me of a fish—of an underdone filet de sole."
Madame St. Leger's reserve gave slightly.
"Unhappy Mr. Byewater!" she murmured.
"Yes, indeed unhappy, since you too observe the likeness," Adrian pursued, darting positively envenomed glances in the direction of the doorway. "Yet is it not unpardonable in any man to resemble the insufficiently fried section of a flat fish? You recognize it as unpardonable? Sit down here then, trés chère Madame, at the farthest distance possible from that lanky poisson d'Amérique. Ah! I am grateful to you," he added, with very convincing earnestness. "For in listening you will help to dissipate the blackness of regret which engulfs me. You will hear and you will judge; yes, it is for you, for you only and supremely to do that—to judge."
"I fear you will be no end fatigued, Miss Beauchamp, standing all this long time talking," the excellent, and, fortunately, quite unconscious Byewater was meanwhile saying. "I believe I ought to go right now. I had promised myself I would escort Madame St. Leger home to the Quai Malaquais. But I don't believe I stand to gain anything by waiting. Recent developments hardly favor the supposition that promise is likely to condense into fact."
He nodded his head, indicating the couple ensconced at the opposite end of the room in two pillowed, cane-seated, cane-backed gilt chairs of pseudo-classic pattern. The wall immediately behind them carried a broad, tall panel of looking-glass, the border of which blossomed on either side at about half its height into a cluster of shaded electric lamps. The mellow light from these covered the perfectly finished figures of the young man and woman, sitting there in such close proximity, and created a bright circle about them, as Anastasia Beauchamp noted, curiously isolating them from all surrounding objects save their own graceful images repeated in the great looking-glass. Her eyes dwelt upon them in indulgent tenderness. Might they prosper! And therewith, very genially, she turned her attention to the fish-like Byewater once more.
But that same bright isolation and close proximity worked strongly upon Gabrielle St. Leger. Her pulse quickened. A subtle excitement took possession of her, which, just because of her anxiety to ignore and conceal it, obliged her to speak.
"Your cousin's death has evidently pained you. You mourn her very truly, very much?"
"I cannot mourn enough."