Just then the woman of substance sailed up, and hoped with a deference that astounded the new visitor that she was rested after her journey, and recounted a whole Odyssey of her private misadventures during yesterday's ascent—how her chaise positively broke down under her, and she had to be taken aside into a dreadful little smelly cottage, or rather the outside of it, under the vines, lest she should be trampled by the procession of donkeys and mules coming behind; and how those wretched foreigners did nothing but laugh and make faces and address impertinent remarks to her in an unknown tongue, that her husband said was neither French nor Italian, nor any civilized speech; and how finally her porters were doubled, and a sort of basket or tub was brought, and she was forced into it, and slung and jolted on four broomsticks by her four porters, at the peril of all five lives, to the present eminence, on which she supposed she must end her days, unless a proper road could be made before her time came.
Ermengarde listened with a sympathetic face and proper interjections, wondering if the rounded softness of that passionately dark blue sea-rim, so much less sharply edged than paler seas—if that came from the clear and vapourless air, through which one saw so far over the very slope of the world; and presently, when the Odyssey came to a pause, she made some reference to the romance and charm of Provence.
"Provence," mused the woman of substance. "H'm, yes; Provence roses. Never was there in my life. But I dare say you have travelled a good deal."
"But surely you came by the Train de Luxe yesterday?"
"Oh yes. Mr. Robinson's extravagance—quite unnecessary——"
"Then you were in Provence yesterday," murmured Ermengarde drowsily, quite sure now that she saw over the earth-slope, and the woman of substance, coupling this obviously inaccurate statement with the unaccountable excursions into foreign languages of the previous day, looked curiously at her, and wondered if it was drink or incipient insanity.
"So young, too!" she reflected mournfully, turning away to find a comfortable and yet substantial seat, but turning once again to look at the figure extended in the sun among the flowers in the dish-cover hat, the uncompromising dowdiness of which conveyed comforting assurance of respectability to her motherly soul. Vice and that hat could never be companions, she was sure.
Once again Ermengarde made a feeble effort at correspondence. Arthur would expect letters, though absent from home and without definite address. It was quite easy to write "Dear Arthur," but how to go on was the difficulty. Of the misadventures and discomforts of the journey it was inadvisable to write, lest the joy of "I told you so" should make him exult; neither was it politic to dilate upon the probable criminality of the woman of mystery, and on her complicity and secret understanding with the Anarchist. Of the latter, as a source of terror and danger to the community at large, she wrote much, not without some gentle complacence in her own perspicacity in detecting, and courage in braving, by dauntless but insupportable glances, the villainy and scheming of this truculent being.
"The power of the human eye, especially over beasts of prey and hardened criminals," she wrote, "has not been exaggerated. One honest, fearless, straightforward look will unmask the vilest and most cunning, and cause the blackest heart to quail, as that creature's invariably did—at least, his eyes did—before mine." And this sentence, like all referring to the man, when after many days it reached him, filled the recipient of the letter with peculiar and ecstatic joy, producing explosions of mirth unutterable.
But of this same Anarchist she could get but the scantiest information—even from M. Isidore. No one appeared to have observed the presence of any such person at dinner the night before, or to have seen him come and go at Les Oliviers. After much meditation, M. Isidore supposed she must refer to a foreigner, presumably a Pole, since his name ended in ski, who had dined there, or lunched, or both, on the preceding day. As to whether he had slept there, or was likely to return, M. Isidore was unable to give any information. No one apparently had seen him at breakfast, or luncheon, or about the place, that morning. Neither had anyone observed his arrival; he had come and gone like a phantom, or a suspicion. He was an absolute mystery. She began to suspect that she must have dreamt him.