To-night it had, more speciously than usual, the aspect of a simple village inn: a hush prevailed; its waiters moved about on list, and spoke in whispers; le Pompadour écossais dined en prince upstairs with a merry company, in a chamber upon which the whole attention of the house was concentrated, from M. le Gerant down to the meanest kitchen scullion, for the evening’s entertainment was upon a scale of reckless cost. Nothing would satisfy this wonderful man to-night but curious foods far-borne from foreign lands, strange rare beverages, golden vessels that had only once or twice been used in the Tuileries in the last days of the Empire. If diamonds could be crushed and turned by some miracle of alchemy into a palatable bouillon, he, or properly his secretary, would have cheerfully paid the cost. In an alcove screened by palms a string quartette played the most sensuous music, so exquisitely modulated that it seemed deliberately designed to harmonise with rallies of wit and peals of laughter.
Mathilde, who sat to the right of the host, and by her saintly aspect seemed at times incongruous with that company of fashion’s fools, was for once silent, thoughtful, and demure.
“You have not told me yet if I may hope,” said the Pompadour to her in a tender undertone, “and we disperse in less than twenty minutes.”
“Hush!” she interrupted, with an impetuous jewelled hand upon his knee; “your friend has his eye on us! That man makes me afraid—he looks so cold, so supercilious! I hate to have a man regard me so who is convulsed with inside laughter, as you say; he looks—more like a conscience than a human secretary!”
Le Pompadour cast a glance across the room to the chair from which his secretary was at the moment summoned by a whispered message from the manager of the restaurant.
“He is a student of life and men,” said he. “It is his humour to put the follies of fashion underneath the microscope of a mind as searchingly analytical as a lens.”
“I’m glad all Scots are not like that,” said the lady fervently. “Now, you have the real French temperament, and the means to entertain it; your secretary, were he as rich as you, I’m sure would be a skinflint.”
“There, I can swear, you misjudge him,” said the Pompadour,—“a man born unhappy, and spoiled for any useful purpose, I am sorry for him.”
“Get rid of him—get rid of him!” said the lady, with a cleverly simulated shudder.
“What!” said the Pompadour, regarding her with surprise, seeing for the first time cruelty in the mild Madonna eyes. “Upon the secretary’s stipend there depend, you know, the comforts of a poor old Scottish lady—”