“Ah! Very well. Platnowsky is going to play for us presently. I hope you’ll enjoy it. He has a positive genius for entrancing an audience, irrespective of nationality, creed, taste, or personal inclinations.”
“Hm—he is not the only one,” Neville said, softly, his golden-brown eyes lingering admiringly upon the exquisite contour of Marguerite’s face and form. “Will you sing for us to-night, mademoiselle?”
“I! You are not thinking of what you say, Capitaine. I! Sing after Platnowsky’s wonderful playing, and Señora Vizazona’s folk-songs in A minor!” But an impatient touch on the arm made Marguerite turn and gaze at Laurence, who, with heightened color and a toss of the head that made the diamonds in her tiara sparkle furiously, was attempting to draw her away.
“I am waiting!” she said, shortly.
“I almost waited is how Louis-Quatorze put it!” rejoined Marguerite. “This sort of thing was managed better then.” And with a nod to Captain Moray she preceded Laurence across the room.
“What an exquisite little creature!” mused Moray, as he watched her disappearing into the music-room. He drew a deep breath and made his way unobtrusively to a near-by embrasure, where the window-curtains hid him from sight. His disappointment in Laurence had been keen just now. A few words sent him before her marriage had acquainted him with as much of the facts as she cared to reveal. He saw now before his eyes the lavender paper she always used, and the downward-slanting lines of violet ink closing with this characteristic sentence: “Beggars are no choosers. They do what they must. Pity me!”
From the shadowy corner where he stood, the new Military Attaché surveyed the brilliantly lighted salons with meditative eyes. He fell to wondering why she had written that hypocrite “Pity me!” Basil, still chatting with Régis de Plenhöel, was only a few feet away, and the watcher had to confess to himself that this handsome aristocrat—every inch a man—with the stars of some great Orders on his coat, his winning smile and high-bred bearing, was not to be classed with those whom a woman is very sorry to have married. Moreover, Laurence had been looking not only happy, but singularly triumphant, before his own appearance within her range of vision. Her exultant attitude, her sumptuous toilette, her regal jewels, did not frame somehow with the picture one makes oneself of a poor heartbroken creature—vierge et martyr—forced into a distasteful union; and for the first time his love and loyalty for her wavered.
Presently she came back toward the sofa where Basil and “Antinoüs” were established. She was leaning on the arm of an Ambassador, extremely young-looking for so weighty a distinction, who was obviously delighted with his present rôle as cavalière-servente to the most-looked-at woman in the room. Laurence, her pretty color heightened, her eyes sparkling with animation, was responding to his graceful compliments in faultless Italian, “flying her hands” as if really to the manner born. The two men on the sofa had risen, and the little group was now so close to Neville that he could hear every word distinctly. And suddenly through the archway of the music-room he saw Marguerite de Plenhöel standing by the concert piano, where Platnowsky had just installed himself, and half unconsciously he took a step in that direction, putting aside the curtain, and standing for a second irresolute and half revealed.
Laurence’s eyes, meeting his, changed to extreme harshness, and in a voice new to her audience—especially to Basil—she asked him to have their carriage called.
“Not before hearing Platnowsky!” remonstrated “Antinoüs.” “He is the nail of the evening—and looks it,” he added, indicating the interminable maestro, thin almost to emaciation, and topped by an exuberant mane of dull potato-colored hair, weeping-willowing across his melancholy brow. But Laurence was not attuned to humorous remarks just now, and with an impatient gesture she reiterated what might easily have been mistaken for a command, and encountered Basil’s glance of astonishment with a frown.