Dumaresque watched her with interest. There seemed much of deliberation back of every move she made. The men of mark were the only ones to whom she gave encouragement, and she found several so responsive that there was 78 no doubt, now, as to whether she was awake to her own power––more, she had a mind to use it. She was spoken of as one of the beauties of the day.
The McVeighs had gone to Italy, the mother to visit a relative, the son to view the late battle fields on the other side of the Pyrenees and acquaint himself with military matters wherever he found them.
He had called on the Marquise the day following the fete at the Hotel Dulac. She had quite recovered her slight indisposition of the preceding evening, and there had been no hesitation about receiving him. She was alone, and she met him with the fine, cool, gracious manner reserved for the people who were of no importance in her life.
Looking at her, listening to her, he could scarcely believe this could be the girl who had provoked him into a declaration of love less than a day ago, and in whose eyes he had surprised a fervor responding to his own. She called him Lieutenant McVeigh, with an utter disregard of the fact that she had ever called him anything else.
When in sheer desperation he referred to their first meeting, she listened with a chill little smile.
“Yes,” she agreed; “Fontainbleau was beautiful in the spring time. Maman was especially fond of it. She, herself, had been telling a friend lately of the very unconventional meeting under the bushes of the Mademoiselle and Monsieur Incognito, and he––the friend––had thought it delightfully amusing, good enough for the thread of a comedy.”
Then she sent some kindly message to Mrs. McVeigh, but refused to see the wonder––the actual pain––in the eyes where before she had remembered those half slumberous smiles, or that brief space of passionate pleading. He interrupted some cool remark by rising.
“It is scarcely worth while––all this,” he said, abruptly. “Had you closed your doors against me after last night I should have understood––I should have gone away adoring you just the same. But to open them, to receive me, and then––”
His voice trembled in spite of himself. All at once he appeared so much more boyish than ever before––so helpless in a sort of misery he could not account for, she turned away her head.