“I have not displeased him, I hope, in any way?” Diana said, a little anxiously. “I felt so ‘at home,’ as it were, that I’m afraid I spoke a little too frankly as a stranger——”
“You spoke charmingly!” Madame assured her—“Brightly, and with perfect independence, which we admire. And need I say how much both my son and I appreciated your quickness of perception and tact?”
She laid a slight emphasis on the last word. Diana smiled and understood.
“People are very inquisitive,” went on Madame. “And it is better to let them think you are a friend and guest of ours than the person for whom my son has been advertising. That advertisement of his caused a great deal of comment and curiosity,—and now that he has said he has withdrawn it and that he does not expect to be suited, the gossip will gradually die down. But if any idea had got about that you were the result of his search for an assistant, you would find yourself in an embarrassing position. You would be asked no end of questions, and our charming Baroness Rousillon would be one of the first to make mischief—but thanks to your admirable self-control she is silenced.”
“Will anything silence her?” and Dimitrius, entering, stood for a moment looking at his mother and Diana with a smile. “I doubt it! But Miss May is not at all the kind of woman the Baroness would take as suitable for a scientific doctor’s assistant,—fortunately. She is not old enough.”
“Not old enough?” and Diana laughed. “Why, what age ought I to be?”
“Sixty at least!” and he laughed with her. “The Baroness is a great deal older than you are, but she still subjugates the fancy of some men. Her idea of a doctor’s private secretary or assistant is a kind of Macbeth’s witch, too severely schooled in the virtues of ugliness to wear rose-coloured chiffon!”
Diana flushed a little as he gave a meaning glance at her graceful draperies,—then he added:
“Come out for a moment in the loggia,—moonlight is often talked about and written about, but it seldom gives such an impression of itself as on an early autumn night in Switzerland. Come!”
She obeyed,—and as she followed him to the marble loggia where the fountains were still playing, an irresistible soft cry of rapture broke from her lips. The scene she looked upon was one of fairy-like enchantment,—the moonlight, pearly pure, was spread in long broad wings of white radiance over the lawns in front of the Château, and reaching out through the shadows of trees, touched into silver the misty, scarcely discernible peaks of snow-mountains far beyond. A deep silence reigned everywhere—that strange silence so frequently felt in the vicinity of mountains,—so that when the bell of the chiming clock set in the turret of the Château struck eleven, its sound was almost startling.