Then he went into the hall and out of the house door.
“Quel ours!” said Cecile, with her nose in the air. She liked gentlemen like the foreign diplomatist who had gone to see the Battersea birds.
Mr. Mason shook his head in a melancholy manner.
“I think we had better all of us leave,” he said gloomily. “The Miser’s got the purse-strings now and the duchess aren’t anywhere.”
“Moi, j’ resterai,” said the Swiss woman. “She does hit one with the hairbrush sometimes and pretty hard too, but she is first-rate fun, and always leaves her letters about, and never knows what she has or she hasn’t. Take my word for it, Mr. Mason, she will always live in clover.”
“I dare say she will,” said the more virtuous Mason. “But it won’t be correct, now Cocky’s gone; and myself I shall give her the go-by.”
Their mistress meanwhile was walking up and down her morning-room, a prey to many torturing and conflicting thoughts. She knew that she had done an unwise and an ill-bred thing in sending that message by Cecile to her brother, but her rage had outstripped her prudence. Ronald was the best friend she had, and she had proved it a thousand times; but an ungovernable hatred seethed within her against him. He and Harry—she did not know which she hated the more, which of the two had insulted her the more infamously. A woman may lose all title to respect, but that is no reason why she does not retain every pretension to it.
Nothing could ever have persuaded her that she had lost her right to have everyone hold her in the highest esteem. Nevertheless, she had sense enough to be aware that she was in a very odious position, and that she might very easily be in one which would be absolute disgrace, one which would place her on the level with those poor simpletons whom she had always scorned so immeasurably, women who had lost their natural position and were nowhere at home, and could only get received at Florence tea-tables and Homburg picnics and Monaco supper parties. She had always thought that she would sooner die than be put in the basket with the pêches à quinze series. For she was intensely proud, and had made many a poor woman who had been compromised feel the weight of her disdain and the sting of her cruelty. She always intended to enjoy herself, to do exactly whatever she pleased, but she never intended to lose her right to present Boo ten years hence at the Drawing-room. People who did lose their place were idiots. So she had always thought, but at the present moment she was obliged to feel that she might very easily lose her place herself.
Beaumont had frightened her, but he had not frightened her so intensely as had her brother; and, as he had given her six months’ time, she had with her usual happy insouciance almost dismissed the peril from her mind. But she knew her brother’s character and she knew that he would send the men from the bank at the time fixed as punctually as the clock would strike eleven. And then from the bank he would send the jewels to Hunt and Roskell, and that admirable imitation of the roc’s egg, which would deceive the unaided eye of anyone, would be detected in its falseness by their acids or their wheels or whatever the things were with which jewelers tested diamonds. And then he, despite his unsuspicious stupidity, would know, without any further proof, that she had pawned or sold the original.
“I am at home to no one,” she said to her footman, and continued to walk up and down the room in nervous agitation.