The widowed duchess could not see her Parisian creditor at her own house. It would be known that he came there, and would look very odd at such a time, and might awaken her brother’s suspicions. She ordered him to meet her at the house of a famous Court dressmaker, a woman who had been often useful to her in more agreeable appointments and more interesting embarrassments. She went out alone on foot, ostensibly to church, deeply veiled of course, at ten o’clock on the Sunday morning which followed her husband’s funeral. The Court dressmaker lived in a private house in Green Street, and she had not far to go. There, in a perfectly safe seclusion, she awaited the arrival of her creditor.
She was in a pretty room on the first floor. It had rose blinds and heavy curtains, and had been furnished in subdued and artistic style by a famous firm of decorators; she knew the room well, and it had always been at her disposition. Her heart had throbbed more agreeably, but never so nervously, there, as it did this Sunday morning whilst the church bells jangled and boomed in her ears, and the warm steam of a calorifère heating a foggy atmosphere, made her feel sick and faint. In a few moments the jeweler was announced—a slender, frail, fair man of some sixty-five years old, who saluted her gracefully, and in return had a haughty stare which revealed to him forcibly that he was a tradesman and she was a gentlewoman. Beaumont, who was accustomed to different treatment, said to himself that she wanted a lesson. Nothing costs us so dear in this world as our pride, and if we cannot afford to purchase the privilege of its indulgence the world will make us smart for claiming so great a luxury.
The deep black of her attire, so trying to most of her sex, only made fairer her skin, made brighter her hair and her eyes, and lent a richer rose to her lips; she looked extremely well, though she looked cross and anxious as she saw the jeweler enter.
“Good morning, Beaumont!” she said sharply. “Have you brought the jewels?”
He smiled: the question seemed to him of an extraordinary naïveté for a lady who knew the world so well.
“I do not carry jewels in my pocket, madame,” he replied. “I am here to speak of yours.”
“Didn’t you get my letter?”
“Yes, madame; am I not here by your appointment?”
“But I ordered you to bring the diamonds?” she asked with that brusque authority which was part of her being.
“I came to speak of the transaction, madame,” he repeated and smiled.