"Miss Lambert is rather tired; I think she has gone in. Good-night,—thanks, I have a cigar."
[CHAPTER II.]
PLAYING WITH FIRE.
When Glynn woke next morning to broad day, the noise of the busy street, and the consciousness of an early business appointment, last night, with its music and moonlight, seemed to him dream-like and unreal. It was all very pleasant while it lasted, but in a few days he would quit Paris, and probably never see Lambert or that wonderfully charming daughter of his again. What would be the destiny of such a woman so placed? Not happiness, he feared, if she were all she seemed. Yet how devoted that queer fish Lambert was to her. So far as he could take care of her he would; but what perceptions could he have of what was right and suitable for a delicate, sensitive girl!
However, Glynn had other things to think of just then, and soon hastened away to hold high council on money matters with a sharp but soft-spoken German Jew, whose oiliness had not a soothing effect on the cool, clear-sighted Englishman.
Business hours are earlier in Paris than in London. Glynn found himself on the Boulevard des Italiens, and free, while it was still early enough to pay a visit. With a vague curiosity, arising from very mixed motives, he directed his steps to the hotel where Mr. and Lady Frances Deering lodged, and found that lady at tea with her son—a pale, delicate, deformed boy—and a gentleman of middle height, with a frank, sun-burnt face, and a certain easy looseness about his well-made clothes.
"You are just in time for tea, Mr. Glynn," said Lady Frances, in a soft but monotonous voice. "Do you know my cousin, Captain Verner?"
Yes, the gentlemen had met before, and they exchanged a few civil words.
"Is this your first visit to Paris?" asked Glynn, kindly, as he drew his chair beside the sofa on which the boy was lying.
"Yes, the very first."