Tea of the perfect quality a brief experience leads the traveller to expect in the better French restaurants, with dainty but appallingly rich cakes, was before her, though how procured it was impossible to conjecture, every table, chair, and waiter having been appropriated or promised two deep a moment before—unless, as appeared probable, M. Isidore exercised some mysterious influence over the harried waiters, who fled at his nod and contrived to produce, and perhaps manufacture on the instant, hitherto non-existent tea-tables and seats in suddenly improvised corners. Her bag had been replenished with small coin by the same enchanter, who gracefully accepted an invitation to share the tea, and spiced it with much useful local information and many bright and apposite remarks and condolences upon the unfortunate experiences in the Casino.
"Fancy having tea in public with a hotel-manager at home," she reflected complacently, forgetting that it is quite as possible to be found out abroad as at home, and agreeably conscious of a slight flavour of impropriety, or at least unconventionality, in the adventure. Her spirits rose; she drew a pathetic picture of her anguish at the loss of the white serge costume that brought tears of laughter from M. Isidore's eyes. After two cups of tea and several cream buns in the sweet air, perfumed by a great bush covered with clusters of tea-roses overhanging this cosy corner, the Casino mischance acquired a new aspect—it became a positive joy; it was part of the game. After all, it was seeing life. It behoved the mother of Charlie to know life—real life. This was very real.
To leave off with a pile of winnings and buy the frock next day would have been too obvious and commonplace. But to win so splendidly and lose so fatally was to acquire a new thrill. The inconvenience of having lost more than a fortnight of the holiday by this financial mischance could be reserved for future consideration and—reparation.
And this was the woman who had been severe on the poor painted countess and her cavalier for daring to speak of their "sordid vices" in that first mountain sunset, and had even looked down upon the thin man's little innocent five franc flutters!
M. Isidore, on his part, was anything but depressed. Of course, he was delighted with the luck of turning up just in time to be of service to Madame. It was singular that he had chosen that particular afternoon to call on friends staying in this place. The lady Madame had been so kind as to compliment upon her chic appearance was, in effect, the cause of his visit; she was his sister.
Ermengarde's eyes widened. His sister? An early prejudice regarding the veracity of foreigners, together with a memory of Olympian leniency towards falsity on certain topics, led her to condone this flagrant mis-statement of fact, and pass quickly to other subjects. M. Isidore was a man of singular charm; his eyes were liquid and soft, like a gazelle's. He could not even explain that the vulgar atrocity of flaring white masonry, that formed the centre of every picture of the mountains behind Monte Carlo, was neither a prison nor a half-finished barrack, but only the Riviera Palace Hotel, without some delicately allusive pleasantry, some unavowed tribute to the fascination of her presence.
It was just when Mrs. Allonby had arrived at these favourable conclusions respecting M. Isidore's eyes and conversation that the Anarchist happened to pass the crowd of tables outside the café, and Ermengarde, smiling softly and not untenderly upon the Frenchman, happened to look up and meet the blazing ferocity of that baleful person's eyes, with a start of apprehension and astonishment that caused his truculent gaze to blanch before hers.
"That dreadful man again—he never can look me straight in the face! That is the man I asked about the first day. Who is he?" she cried.
"Celui-la, l'homme à la barbe bleue? Ah! the Pole? Of him I know nothing. He was at Les Oliviers, that is all, Madame. My friend, I have done you no wrong that you should look pistol shots at me, though my position is doubtless one to crack the heart with envy. He would like my blood in a cup to drink, Madame, hein?"
"Perhaps he has the evil eye," she suggested, crimsoning with a sudden ghastly suspicion that the Anarchist, in his dark and dreadful fashion, might be in love with her; a suspicion chiefly based, it is to be feared, upon the malevolence with which this mysterious man glared upon M. Isidore, who appeared to enjoy it amazingly, and twirled his moustache and flashed his eyes at the Pole with a taunting insolence no Englishman can command. And dreadful as the notion of being the object of the Anarchist's passion was, it still held substantial compensation in the implied idea of being suspected of a flirtation with a young and handsome foreigner of dubious social status and admitted charm. It gave the proper Bohemian spice to the whole adventure. This, she recognized with a thrill, certainly was real life; the bon-bons M. Isidore offered her with an air of respectful gallantry tinged with despair had the zest of forbidden fruit.