"I have taken your good luck away," said the girl remorsefully. Wethermill put his arm through hers.
"You’ll have to take yourself away before you can do that," he answered, and the couple walked together out of Ricardo’s hearing.
Ricardo was left to wonder about Celia. She was just one of those problems which made Aix-les-Bains so unfailingly attractive to him. She dwelt in some street of Bohemia; so much was clear. The frankness of her pleasure, of her excitement, and even of her distress proved it. She passed from one to the other while you could deal a pack of cards. She was at no pains to wear a mask. Moreover, she was a young girl of nineteen or twenty, running about those rooms alone, as unembarrassed as if she had been at home. There was the free use, too, of Christian names. Certainly she dwelt in Bohemia. But it seemed to Ricardo that she could pass in any company and yet not be overpassed. She would look a little more picturesque than most girls of her age, and she was certainly a good deal more soignee than many, and she had the Frenchwoman’s knack of putting on her clothes. But those would be all the differences, leaving out the frankness. Ricardo wondered in what street of Bohemia she dwelt. He wondered still more when he saw her again half an hour afterwards at the entrance to the Villa des Fleurs. She came down the long hall with Harry Wethermill at her side. The couple were walking slowly, and talking as they walked with so complete an absorption in each other that they were unaware of their surroundings. At the bottom of the steps a stout woman of fifty-five over-jewelled, and over-dressed and raddled with paint, watched their approach with a smile of good-humoured amusement. When they came near enough to hear she said in French:
"Well, Celie, are you ready to go home?"
The girl looked up with a start.
"Of course, madame," she said, with a certain submissiveness which surprised Ricardo. "I hope I have not kept you waiting."
She ran to the cloak-room, and came back again with her cloak.
"Good-bye, Harry," she said, dwelling upon his name and looking out upon him with soft and smiling eyes.
"I shall see you tomorrow evening," he said, holding her hand. Again she let it stay within his keeping, but she frowned, and a sudden gravity settled like a cloud upon her face. She turned to the elder woman with a sort of appeal.
"No, I do not think we shall be here, tomorrow, shall we, madame?" she said reluctantly.