The beautiful hazel eyes flashed smilingly on me under their lashes. (Those lashes tinted! Heaven forgive the malice of women!) She broke off a sprig of the clematis, with its long slender leaves and fragrant starry flowers, and gave it to me.
"Tenez, mon ami, if ever you see me again, show me that faded flower, and I shall remember this evening at Vicq d'Azyr. Nay, do not flatter yourself—do not thrust it in your breast; it is no gage d'amour! it is only a reward for loyal service, and a souvenir to refresh my own memory, which is treacherous sometimes, though not in gratitude to those who serve me. Adieu, mon Bayard—et bonsoir!"
But I retained the hand that had given me my clematis-spray.
"Meet you again! But will not that be to-morrow? If I am not to see you, as your words threaten, till the clematis be faded and myself forgotten, let me at least, I beseech you, know where, who, by what name——"
She drew her hand away with something of a proud, surprised gesture; then she laughed again that sweet, ringing, mocking laugh:
"No, no, Bayard, it is too much to ask! Leave the future to hazard; it is always the best philosophy. Au revoir! Adieu—perhaps for a day, perhaps for a century!"
And the bewitching mystery floated away from me and through the open window of her room. You will imagine that my "intuition" did not lead me to the conclusion to which Lady Maréchale's led her, or assuredly should I have followed the donor of the clematis, despite her prohibition. Even with my "intuition" pointing where it did, I am not sure what I might have done if, in her salon, I had not caught sight of a valet and a lady's maid in waiting with her coffee, and they are not such spectators as one generally selects.
The servants closed her windows and drew down their Venetian blinds, and I returned to my coffee. Whether the two ladies within had overheard her conversation as she had heard theirs, I cannot say, but they looked trebly refrigerated, had congealed themselves into the chilliest human ice that is imaginable, and comported themselves towards me fully as distantly as though I had brought a dozen ballet-girls in to dinner with them, or introduced them to my choicest acquaintance from the Château des Fleurs.
"A man's taste is so pitiably low!" remarked Lady Maréchale, in her favorite stage aside to Mrs. Protocol; to which that other lady responded, "Disgracefully so!"
Who was my lovely unknown with the bright falcon eyes and the charming laugh, with her strange freedom that yet was not, somehow, free, and her strange fascination? I bade my man ask Chanderlos her name—couriers know everything generally—but neither Mills nor Chanderlos gave me any information. The people of the house did not know, or said they did not; they only knew she had servants in attendance who came with her, who revealed nothing, and paid any price for the best of everything. Are impertinent questions ever asked where money is plentiful?