The young cuirassier did not recognize his correspondent in this mood; but he was simple and sentimental by temperament, and he was in love. He put the note in his pocket with a photograph of her which he had carried for three months next his heart, and went to the golfing-ground. He could not resist speaking of her there to a cousin, a very big cousin, no less a person than the gentleman with the glassy eyes whom Katherine Massarene once had snubbed.
“Is it not good of her?” he said enthusiastically to this very big cousin.
“Extremely good,” replied that gentleman. “So very good, indeed, that I have difficulty in picturing the duchess in such a rôle. But women are protean.”
Wuffie pondered on the reply and failed to understand it.
She, meanwhile, of whom the great personage spoke so irreverently, was rushing swiftly across Central France, her strength sustained by a well-filled tea-basket of the latest invention, and most extensive resources. With her traveled the dead man’s papers. She was alone nearly all the way; at that season everyone was coming southward, few were going northward, except some English members leaving Monte Carlo play and pigeon-shooting for the opening of Parliament, rueful and gloomy at their lot.
Her mind was filled with unformed plans and conflicting projects. She formed a fresh one every minute. She could not decide what would be the surest wisdom, and she felt so afraid of her own indecision that Paris was reached all too soon for her.
She went to her favorite hotel and had a night’s rest. There was snow in Paris and on the surrounding country. The temperature seemed very low after that of the Alpes Maritimes, and her spirits sank with the mercury. But in the morning she had herself dressed becomingly with sable furs which enhanced the beauty and delicacy of her complexion and the golden gleam of her hair, and went out of the Cour d’honneur of the great caravanserai on foot. It was not very far from the end of the Rue de Rivoli in which there was situated the vast and imposing building called the Maison Vanderlin, where ministers were suppliants and kings were debtors. Her heart quaked within her as she ascended its broad white steps.
Even yet she had not decided what it would be best to say; but inside her muff were the documents which she had taken from the despatch-box.
“Is M. Vanderlin in Paris?” she asked the stately functionary who waited beside the inner glass doors.
“Yes, madame,” he answered.