Presently a silvery-grey cloud gathered over the Tête du Chien, and suddenly the whole shadowed hill-cup holding Monte Carlo, with Monaco sitting on the steep rock beneath it in the sea, flashed out, clear-cut and distinct in every detail. The broad hollow of the gorge, up to the very crags almost, seemed full of white buildings set in rich dark verdure, and crowding down to the water's edge. Fleets of tiny fishing-vessels cruised about round Monaco, and yachts, both white-sailed and steam-funnelled, flitted over the paling sea and rode at anchor in the harbour, the whole composing a picture of loveliness beyond imagining.
The thin man was in despair. He was an impressionist; and having had his painting things and himself conveyed hither and set down among the rosemary and lentisk, on purpose to record impressions, was so stunned and bewildered by the multitudes that rushed crowding in every variety of loveliness upon him, that he could only sit on his camp-stool with his easel before him, and hold his head in his hands and groan.
"Seize Monte Carlo!" Ermengarde shouted to him from her distant boulder when it flashed out, one glorious pearl, under the silvery cloud, and he seized and painted it with a trembling hand before it vanished and the great hill-cup was again a mass of purple shadow. The impression was faint, but the thin man was eternally grateful to Ermengarde for that, and for her further command to snap up Mentone, majestically enthroned above a glowing sapphire sea, and framed by wind-twisted pines, which threw ruddy stems and blue-black crowns from the low shore across it. And though another injunction to impress the long hill-spur running down to Bordighera, when it changed from indigo to warm deep violet with heliotrope shadings, plunged Mr. Welbourne back to despair, his gratitude broke out in a generous impulse.
"Let us go to Monte Carlo to-morrow," he cried. "Give me the pleasure of your company, Mrs. Allonby, since you don't care to go alone. It is not as terrible as you suppose."
"Well, why not? Only don't speak of it, or Miss Boundrish will manage to nip in again."
The thin man was really very handy on occasion; he made a respectable and entirely biddable escort, and, knowing so many people of Mrs. Allonby's acquaintance and being cousin to most of them, seemed more like an elderly relative than a chance acquaintance. He knew many things, and well knew how to talk; his old-fashioned pedantry and fulness of phrase was forgiven, as being in character with his neutral-tinted, old-bachelor personality; he impressed Ermengarde as a sort of social sofa-cushion, restful, harmless, and very useful in travelling.
"The success of any ramble, picnic, excursion, or small party," he added pensively, "depends entirely on arithmetic. No matter of what elements the party be composed, the addition or subtraction of one may spoil all," a pronouncement heartily endorsed by Ermengarde, as expressing her own feelings on the subject, though she had not guessed at what person's subtraction he was obscurely hinting as ruinous to his enjoyment. Nor did she for a moment suspect that, in arranging the Monte Carlo afternoon for two performers only, she had sadly diminished poor Mr. Welbourne's pleasure. Since the Carnival, the woman of mystery had not been asked to accompany Mrs. Allonby anywhere, nor had the two ladies once helped each other to dress or exchanged small talk from their adjoining rooms, which communicated by a door. A woman who received jewellery from one mask and letters from another, and held conversations and clandestine meetings with at least two suspicious male characters, was not a desirable acquaintance for a grass widow and a mother of unimpeachable respectability. Yet Ermengarde's heart misgave her when she met the silent question of Agatha's melancholy eyes at any approach to companionship on her part meeting with repulse. She hated herself especially the morning after the Cap Martin excursion when, with the full intention of spending the afternoon at Monte Carlo, she declined a mountain walk with Agatha on the ground that it was less tiring to bask in the sunny garden at home.
"Then I think I will run down to Mentone," Agatha said, in a confidence untouched by suspicion. "I have an invalid friend in the place who likes me to come in to luncheon sometimes."
After all, could there be anything more restful than these quiet lounges by train from spacious halls of leisure, called Gares in that country? the thin man and Ermengarde wondered, as they sauntered about the clean and airy emptiness of Mentone Station, and chanced to take seats in a train that happened to be strolling in the direction of France, and was entirely composed of first-class carriages, well-cushioned, and provided with antimacassars of spotless crochet-work. Other people as casually strolled over and rested, as if by happy chance, in the clean and comfortable carriages, and after some time, enjoyably spent with a prospect of sea and mountain and near view of palm and garden and sunny street, it seemed to occur to the person lounging upon the engine to propel the string of carriages gently in the direction of France, and they glided through the now familiar but never-lessening enchantment of rich scenery between mountain and sea, always plunging into the tunnelled darkness whenever a fairy headland ran out into blue and foam-fringed bays.
But what talk they heard on this fairy progress! The tongues were many, but the subject one alone. For example—