“She is afraid of me,” Neville thought, as with a bow he passed on toward the music-room. “Afraid of me! Can it be possible? What does she take me for?” He felt very unhappy, almost ashamed, and especially puzzled. What did it all mean? Could this haughty, overbearing woman be the same who in the grace of all her girlish beauty had spoken so tenderly to him on the moonlit lawns of Seton Park less than a year ago? He glanced helplessly around. Marguerite’s white silhouette detached itself against the lemon-wood paneling of the great salle-de-concert, and toward Marguerite he went instinctively, like all those who needed comfort, or followed the search of the ideal.
CHAPTER VI
Persuade him—he is but a man—
When you have swung the lash above,
Annoyed and hurt him all you can,
That it was done for love.
In the brougham taking them home at the stately speed of their Orloffs, neither Basil nor Laurence spoke. The distance was short, and in a few minutes the “Porte s’il vous plâit” of their imposing coachman resounded before the escutcheoned portals. The equipage turned into a closed court, stopped beneath the glass marquise, and the footman jumped to the carriage door at the precise moment that a Suisse of heroic proportions and dazzling baldric gave notice of their coming, by three short strokes of his halberd on the tessellated floor of the entrance.
Basil assisted his wife up the marble steps and, gently retaining her hand in his own, crossed the hall and ascended the great staircase with her. A double hedge of white lilac and narcissus lined the porphyry balustrade on either side, and somehow or other Laurence felt suddenly as if their heady perfume made her dizzy. She foresaw some sort of explanation between Basil and herself; she knew that her tone and manner had been unjustifiable, and false pride rose in her at the thought of being even ever so gently called to account.
Nevertheless, she let him accompany her to her own apartments without a word, and it was only when the door of the salon d’entrée had shut behind them that she at last opened her mouth.
“It was abominably warm at the Hôtel Plenhöel,” she said, disengaging her hand and walking ahead of him into the adjoining boudoir, where she sat herself down in closest possible proximity to the brightly burning pine-cone fire.
Basil did not comment upon this curious inconsequence, but, bending, he deftly unfastened the clasp of her long blue-fox cloak, and let it fall in a heap on the back of her arm-chair. In spite of herself Laurence was ill at ease. She gave a little laugh, and began to unbutton her left glove.
“They are so old-fashioned, the Plenhöels,” she said, without looking up. “One really thinks one is attending a reception at Versailles under Louis-Seize. Did you see the way that Duchesse de Montemare wears her hair? I really believe it must be rolled upon a cushion, like our great-grandmothers’, and I’d swear it was powdered!”
Basil, leaning against the tall chimneypiece, was looking straight into the dancing pink flames.