“Why not?” Bertha asked, becoming more and more interested in the strange girl talking so confidentially to her.
“Why not?” Grace repeated. “That shows that you are not in it,—the swim, I mean. Don’t you know that few young men nowadays can afford to marry a poor girl and support her in her extravagance and laziness? She must have money to get any kind of a show, and that I haven’t,—nor beauty either, like you, whose face is worth a fortune. Don’t say it isn’t; don’t fib,” she continued, as Bertha tried to speak. “You know you are beautiful, with a grande-duchesse air which makes everybody turn to look at you, even the king. I saw him, and I’ve seen those Russians and Greeks, who are here with some high cockalorums, take off their hats when you came near them. Celine told me how they all stand up when you enter the salle-à-manger. I call that genuine homage, which I’d give a good deal to have.”
She had let go Bertha’s arm and was walking a little in advance, when she stopped suddenly, and, turning round, said, “I wonder what you will think of Rex Hallam.”
Bertha made no reply, and she went on: “I know I am talking queerly, but I must let myself out to some one. Rex is coming before long, and you will know then, if you don’t now, that mamma is moving heaven and earth to make a match between us; but she never will. I am not his style, and he is far more likely to marry you than me. I have known him for years, and could get up a real liking for him if it would be of any use, but it wouldn’t. He doesn’t want a washed-out, yellow-haired girl like me. Nobody does, unless it’s Jack Travis, old Lady Gresham’s grandson, with no prospects and only a hundred pounds a year and an orange grove in Florida, which he never saw, and which yields nothing, for want of proper attention. He says he would like to go out there and rough it; that he does not like being tied to his grandmother’s apron-strings; and that, give him a chance, he would gladly work. I have two hundred dollars a year more. Do you think we could live on that and the climate?”
They had been retracing their steps, and were near the hotel, where they met the young Englishman in question, evidently looking for Miss Haynes. He was a shambling, loose-jointed young man, but he had a good face, and there was a ring in his voice which Bertha liked, as he spoke first to Grace and then to herself, as Grace presented him to her. Knowing that as a third party she was in the way, Bertha left them and went into the hotel, while they went down into the town, where they stayed so long that Lady Gresham and Mrs. Haynes began to get anxious as to their whereabouts. Both ladies knew of the intimacy between the young people, and both heartily disapproved of it. Under some circumstances Mrs. Haynes would have been delighted to have for a son-in-law Lady Gresham’s grandson. But she prized money more than a title, and one hundred pounds a year with a doubtful orange grove in Florida did not commend themselves to her, while Lady Gresham, although very gracious to Mrs. Haynes, because it was not in her nature to be otherwise to any one, did not like the fast American girl, who wore her hair short, carried her hands in her pockets like a man, and believed in women’s rights. If Jack were insane enough to marry her she would wash her hands of him and send him off to that orange grove, where she had heard there was a little dilapidated house in which he could try to live on the climate and one hundred a year. Some such thoughts as these were passing through Lady Gresham’s mind, while Mrs. Haynes was thinking of Grace’s perversity in encouraging young Travis, and of Reginald Hallam, from whom Mrs. Hallam had that morning had a letter and who was coming to Aix earlier than he had intended doing. Nearly all his friends were out of town, he wrote, and the house was so lonely without his aunt that she might expect him within two or three weeks at the farthest. He did not say what steamer he should take, but, as ten days had elapsed since his letter was written, Mrs. Hallam said she should not be surprised to see him at any time, and her face wore an air of pleased expectancy at the prospect of having Rex with her once more. But a thought of Bertha brought a cloud upon it at once. She had intended removing her from the second-class salle-à-manger before Rex came, but did not know how to manage it.
“The girl seems contented enough,” she thought, “and I hear has a great deal of attention there,—in fact, is quite like a queen among her subjects; so I guess I’ll let it run, and if Rex flares up I’ll trust Mrs. Haynes to help me out of it, as she got me into it.”
CHAPTER XII.
THE NIGHT OF THE OPERA.
It was getting rather dull at the Hôtel Splendide. The novelty of having a king in their midst, who went about unattended in citizen’s dress, and bowed to all who looked as if they wished him to bow to them, was wearing off, and he could go in and out as often as he liked without being followed or stared at. The grand duchess, too, whose apartments were screened from the great unwashed, had had her Sunday dinner-party, with scions of French royalty in the Bourbon line for her guests, and a band of music outside. The woman from Chicago, who had flirted so outrageously with her eyes with the Russian, while his little wife sat by smiling placidly and suspecting no evil because the Chicagoan professed to speak no language but English, of which her husband did not understand a word, had departed for other fields. The French count, who had beaten his American bride of three weeks’ standing, had also gone, and the hotel had subsided into a state of great respectability and circumspection.
“Positively we are stagnating, with nothing to gossip about except Jack and myself, and nothing going on in town,” Grace Haynes said to Bertha, with whom she continued on the most friendly terms.
But the stagnation came to an end and the town woke up when it was known that Miss Sanderson from San Francisco was to appear in opera at the Casino. Everybody had heard of the young prima donna, and all were anxious to see her. Mrs. Hallam took a box for Mrs. Haynes, Grace, and herself, but, although there was plenty of room, Bertha was not included in the party. Nearly all the guests were going from the third floor, which would thus be left entirely to the servants, and Mrs. Hallam, who was always suspecting foreigners of pilfering from her, did not dare leave her rooms alone, so Bertha must stay and watch them. She had done this before when Mrs. Hallam was at the Casino, but to-night it seemed particularly hard, as she wished to see Miss Sanderson so much that she would willingly have stood in the rear seats near the door, where a crowd always congregated. But there was no help for it, and after seeing Mrs. Hallam and her party off she went into the salon, and, taking an easy-chair and a book, sat down to enjoy the quiet and the rest. She was very tired, for Mrs. Hallam had kept her unusually busy that day, arranging the dress she was going to wear, and sending her twice down the long, steep hill into the town in quest of something needed for her toilet. It was very still in and around the hotel, and at last, overcome by fatigue and drowsiness, Bertha’s book dropped into her lap and she fell asleep with her head thrown back against the cushioned chair and one hand resting on its arm. Had she tried she could not have chosen a more graceful position, or one which showed her face and figure to better advantage, and so thought Rex Hallam, when, fifteen or twenty minutes later, he stepped into the room and stood looking at her.