While chatting upon one thing and another, Olivier noted all these overwhelming indications. He suffered, almost physically, as he remarked them, and â pang of agonizing pain shot through his heart, a pain that almost wrung a cry from him, at the idea that the caresses which had. left Pierre weary, and still intoxicated, had been lavished upon him by Ely.
With the passionate anxiety of a trembling friendship, of an awakening jealousy, of a longing that refuses to be calmed, of a curiosity that will not slumber, he continued his implacable and silent reasoning. Yes, Pierre had a mistress. And this mistress was a society woman, and not free. The proof of this was the hour fixed for their meeting, in the precautions taken, and, above all, in the strange pride in his beloved secret that the lover had in the depths of his eyes. To meet her he must have had to go through a thicket in some garden. Upon his return, Pierre had flung his soft hat that he had worn during his promenade upon the drawers. Little twigs of shrubbery still remained on the brim, and a faint green line bore witness to a passage through foliage pushed on one side with the head. The young man had placed his jewellery near the hat, and lying in close proximity to the watch and keys and purse, was the ring that Olivier had already noticed, the two serpents interlaced, with emerald heads. Du Prat rose from his chair under the pretext of walking about the room, in reality to take up the ring. It fascinated him with an unhealthy, irresistible attraction. As he passed before the commode, he took up the ring, mechanically and without ceasing to talk, and turned it about in his hand for a second with an indifferent air. He noticed an inscription engraved in tiny letters upon its inner surface. Ora e sempre, "Now and forever." It was a phrase that Prince Fregoso had used in speaking about Greek art, and, as a souvenir of their voyage to Genoa, Ely had had the idea of having the words engraved upon the love talisman she gave to Pierre upon their return. Olivier could not possibly divine the hidden meaning of this tender allusion to hours of ecstatic happiness. He laid down the ring again without any comment. But if any doubt had remained in his mind as to what was causing him such secret anxiety, it would have disappeared before his immediate relief. He found nothing in the ring to suggest, as he had expected, a present from Madame de Carlsberg. On the contrary, the words, in Italian, again suggested the idea that Pierre's mistress might just as easily be Madame Bonnacorsi as the Baroness Ely. He thought, "I am the horse galloping after its shadow once more." And, looking at his friend, who had again crimsoned under Olivier's brief scrutiny, he asked:—
"Is the Italian colony here very large?"
"I know the Marchesa Bonnacorsi and her brother, Navagero.—And I must admit the latter is a sort of Englishman much more English than all the Englishmen in Cannes!"
Hautefeuille reddened still more as he spoke of the Venetian. He guessed what association of ideas had suggested Olivier's question so quickly after having toyed with the ring and after having undoubtedly read the inscription. His friend thought the souvenir was the gift of some Italian. And who could this be if not the Marchesa Andryana? Any one else would have hailed with satisfaction the error that turned his friend's watchful perspicacity in a wrong direction. Hautefeuille, however, was too sensitive not to be pained by a mistake that compromised an irreproachable woman, to whose marriage he had even been a witness.
His embarrassment, his crimson cheeks, a slight hesitation in his voice, were only so many signs to Olivier that he was upon the right path. He felt remorse at having yielded to an almost instinctive impulse. He was afraid he had wounded his friend and he wished to ask his pardon. But to ask pardon for an indiscretion is sometimes only to be more indiscreet. All that he could do, all that he did, was to make up a little for the impression his sarcasm upon the day before must have made upon Hautefeuille if he was in love with the Venetian. Navagero's Anglomania served him as a pretext to caricature in a few words a snob of the same order whom he had met in Rome and he then said, in conclusion:—
"I was in a vile temper yesterday, and I must have appeared somewhat prudish in my fit of sepia.—I have often been amused by the motley society one meets in watering-places, and I have felt all the charm of the women from other countries!—I was younger then.—I remember even having been fond of Monte Carlo!—I am curious to see it again. Suppose we dine there to-day? It would amuse Berthe, and I don't think it would bore me."
He spoke truly. In such mental crises, purely imaginary, the first moments of relief are accompanied by a strange feeling of light-heartedness, which shows itself in an almost infantile gayety, often as unreasoning as the motives from which it springs. During the rest of the time until the train started for Nice Olivier astonished his wife and friend by the change in his temper and conversation, a change that was inexplicable for them. The Ora e sempre of the ring and its sentimentality; all his recollections of the simplicity, of the naïveté of Italians in love; the opulent beauty that Pierre had suggested in comparing Madame Bonnacorsi to a Veronese,—all gave him the idea that his friend was the lover of an indulgent and willing mistress, one who was both voluptuous and gentle. It pleased him to think of this happy passion. He felt as much satisfaction in contemplating it as he had suffered at the thought of the other possibility. And he believed in all good faith that his anxiety of the night before and of the morning had been solely prompted by his solicitude about Hautefeuille, and that his present content grew out of his reassured friendship.
A very simple incident shattered all this edifice of voluntary and involuntary illusions. At Golfe Juan Station, as Hautefeuille was leaning a little out of the window, a voice hailed him. Olivier recognized the indestructible accent of Corancez. The door opened and gave admittance to a lady, no other than the ex-Marchesa Bonnacorsi, escorted by the Southerner. When she saw that Pierre was not alone, Andryana could not help blushing to the roots of her beautiful blond hair, while Corancez, equal to every circumstance, always triumphant, beaming, smiling, performed the necessary introduction. The conjugal seducer had thought of everything, and before leaving for Genoa he had established a meeting-place in one of the villas at Golfe Juan in which to enjoy the prolongation of their secret honeymoon. Andryana had managed to cheat her brother's watchfulness and had gone to meet her husband upon the first day of his arrival. Her happiness began to give her the courage upon which the wily Southerner had counted to bring his enterprise to a successful conclusion, but he had not yet trained her to lie with grace. Hardly was she seated in the compartment when she said to Olivier and his wife, without waiting for any question:—
"I missed the last train, and as Monsieur de Corancez did the same, we decided to walk to Golfe Juan to take the next train instead of waiting wearily in the station at Cannes."