“There was nobody occupying his house, and she had not seen any one at the window, he answered rather curtly; but Anna knew she had, and dreamed that night of the large black eyes which had peered at her so curiously from the house on Belgrave Square. She could not be ignorant of the fact, either, that her husband, while paying her marked attention, especially in the parks and at table, was restless, and nervous, and very anxious to hurry away from London, and very impatient on account of the slight illness which kept them there a week longer than he wished to stay.
“Once, just before their marriage, he had asked her whether she would rather go to Scotland first or France, and she had answered Scotland, preferring Southern France later in the autumn, when she hoped to see Nice and Mentone, before settling down for the winter at Chateau d’Or. ‘Then to Scotland we will go,’ he had replied, and she had greatly anticipated her visit to Scotland, and her trip through the Trosachs, and across the beautiful Lakes Lomond and Katrine, but all this was to be given up; her master had changed his mind, and without a word of explanation told her they were going at once to Paris.
“‘You can attend to your dressmaking better there than elsewhere, and you know you are fond of satins, and laces, and jewelry,’ he said, and there was a gleam in his eye from which Anna would have shrunk had she noticed it; but she did not. She was thinking of Paris and its gayeties, and she packed her trunks without a word of dissent, and was soon established in a handsome suite of rooms, at the Grand Hotel, with permission to buy whatever she wanted, irrespective of expense.
“‘I’d like you to have morning dresses, and dinner dresses, and evening dresses, and riding dresses, and walking dresses, and everything necessary to a lady’s wardrobe,’ he said; and poor unsuspecting Anna thought, ‘How much society he must expect me to see, and how glad I shall be of it!’”
Anna was beginning to feel a good deal bored with no company but that of her husband, for though he sometimes bowed to ladies on the Boulevards, no one came to see her, and as their meals were served in their parlor, she had but little chance to cultivate the acquaintance of the people staying at the hotel, so that, with the exception of her milliner and dressmaker, both of whom spoke English, and a few clerks at the different stores, she could talk with no one in all the great, gay city, and there gradually settled down upon her a feeling of loneliness and homesickness, for which all her costly dresses and jewelry could not make amends. But this would be changed when they were at Nice or Mentone, or even at the chateau, which her husband told her was frequently full of guests during the autumn months. Oh, how many pictures she drew of that chateau, with its turrets and towers overlooking the surrounding country, its beautiful grounds, its elegantly furnished rooms, its troops of servants, and herself mistress of it all, with a new dress for every day in the month if she liked, for it almost amounted to that before her shopping was done, and when at last they left Paris, the porters counted fourteen trunks which they had brought down from No. —, all the property of the pretty little lady, whose traveling-dress of gray silk was a marvel of puffs, and ruffles, and plaitings, and sashes, as she took her seat in the carriage, and was driven away through the streets of Paris to the Lyons Station.
“They were going to the chateau first, her husband told her, adding that he hoped the arrangement suited her.
“‘Oh, certainly,’ she replied. ‘I shall be so glad to see one of my new homes. I know I shall like it and perhaps be so happy there that I shall not care to leave it for a long time. I am getting a little tired.’
“They were alone in the railway carriage, and as Anna said this she leaned her head against his arm as if she were really tired and wanted rest. It was the first voluntary demonstration of the kind she had ever made toward him, and there came a sudden flush into his face and a light into his eyes, but he did not pass his arm around the drooping little figure—he merely suffered the bright head to rest upon his shoulder, while he gazed gloomily out upon the country they were passing, not thinking of the dreary landscape, the barren hills, and gray mountain tops, but rather of the diabolical purpose from which he had never swerved an hour since the moment it was formed.
CHAPTER II.
CHATEAU D’OR.
