Her visits to Omega Street were not entirely devoted to tête-a-têtes with her father. By reason of those coincidences which are so common to the lives of some people, it generally happened that M. Lenoble dropped in upon his invalid friend on the very day of Miss Paget's visit. M. Lenoble was in London on business, and this business apparently necessitated frequent interviews with Captain Paget. Of course such interviews could not take place in the presence of Diana. Gustave was wont, therefore, to wait with praiseworthy patience until the conclusion of the young lady's visit; and would even, with an inconsistent gallantry, urge her to prolong her stay to its utmost limit.
"It will always be time for my affairs, Miss Paget," he urged, "and I know how your father values your society; and he well may value it. I only hope my daughters will be as good to me, if I have the gout, by-and-by."
Diana had spent nearly a dozen evenings in Omega Street, and on each of those evenings had happened to meet M. Lenoble. She liked him better on every occasion of these accidental meetings. He was indeed a person whom it was difficult for any one to dislike, and in the thirty-four years of his life had never made an enemy. She had been pleased with him on the first evening; his bright handsome face, his courteous reverence for her sex—expressed in every word, every tone, every look—his sympathy with all good thoughts, his freshness and candour, were calculated to charm the coldest and most difficult of judges. Diana liked, and even admired him, but it was from an abstract point of view. He seemed a creature as remote from her own life as a portrait of Henry of Navarre, seen and admired in some royal picture-gallery to-day, to fade out of her memory to-morrow.
There was only one point in connection with Gustave Lenoble which occupied her serious thoughts; and this was the nature of his relations with her father.
This was a subject that sorely troubled her. Hope as she might for the future, she could not shut her eyes to the past. She knew that her father had lived for years as a cheat and a trickster—now by one species of falsehood and trickery, now by another—rarely incautious, but always unscrupulous. How had this village seigneur of Normandy fallen into the Captain's toils; and what was the nature of the net that was spread for him?
The talk of business, the frequent interviews, the evident elation of her father's spirits, combined to assure her that some great scheme was in progress, some commercial enterprise, perhaps not entirely dishonest—nay even honest, when regarded from the sanguine speculator's point of view, but involving the hazard of Gustave Lenoble's fortune.
"It is quite as easy for my father to delude himself as it is for him to delude others. This M. Lenoble is ignorant of English commerce, no doubt, and will be ready to believe anything papa tells him. And he is so candid, so trusting, it would be very hard if he were to be a loser through his confidence in papa. His daughters, too; the hazard of his fortune is peril to their future." Such doubts and fears, gradually developed by reflection took stronger hold on Miss Paget's mind after every fresh visit to Omega Street. She saw the Frenchman's light-hearted confidence in all humanity, her father's specious manner and air of quixotic honour. His sanguine tone, his excellent spirits, filled her with intolerable alarm. Alas! when had she ever seen her father in good spirits, except when some gentlemanly villany was in progress?
Miss Paget endured this uneasiness of mind as long as she could, and then determined to warn the supposed victim. She planned the mode of her warning, and arranged for herself a diplomatic form which would reflect the least possible discredit upon her father; and having once come to this resolution, she was not slow to put it into effect.
When her father was about to send for a cab to convey her back to Bayswater, after her next visit to Omega Street, she surprised him by intercepting his order.
"There is a cab-stand in Sloane Square, papa," she said; "and if M.
Lenoble will be so kind as to take me there, I—I would rather get the
cab from the stand. The man charges more when he is fetched off the rank,
I believe."