"With women like yourself for teachers is that a matter of wonder, madame?"
"Now you are sarcastic, and that is horrid. Why, Count, I do believe you are jealous of my pretty boy! I thought you were wiser than that."
And laughing her soft, amused laughter, she passes on into the card-room, leaving him standing there with the mellow lamplight on his dark, passionate face, and shining in the lurid depths of his eyes. At that moment he hates her and himself, and hates tenfold more the man he has chosen to consider as his rival.
It had been true, as he had said, that he had deemed himself above all such weaknesses, until the fascination of this woman had entered into his life and fired his soul with a passion, sudden, wild, fierce, and absorbing even as it was revengeful. To win her he would have done much. He was not a poor man, though far from being rich, as Lady Jean counted riches. Still he was of good birth, and boasted of pure Magyar descent, and had noble and ancient estates in Hungary, and thought himself no ill match for the daughter of a poor Irish Earl. But that Lady Jean should encourage his homage and then ridicule it, filled him with fierce anger.
He leaves her room that night with a cold farewell, and for two days does not approach her at all.
Lady Jean is amused. It is what she expected, and she does not resent it. She sees Keith daily now—in fact, takes care that she shall see him, for she is not desirous that he should escape her toils.
Against his judgment, against his better reason, Keith Athelstone submits to her caprices and permits her to draw him to her presence. He is unfortunately in that state of mind in which a man is easily influenced by a woman if she is sympathetic, friendly, and appears interested in him. At present nothing seems of much consequence or account. The fierce suffering of the last two years has been lulled into a sort of quiescence. The good resolutions formed during that period of languor and convalescence have taken just sufficient root to strengthen him as far as Lauraine is concerned, and with that self-sacrifice they end.
Life looks very monotonous, very dreary at present, and there is just a little fillip given to its monotony by Lady Jean. It is not that he likes her—it is not that he respects her, but he drifts into a sort of intimacy before he really knows it, and she is always at hand to sustain her influence. And it so happens that all this comes to the ears of Lauraine, filtered through the letters of mutual friends, put in as spice to various gossip detailed to her from Paris.
At first she cannot believe it. It seems too horrible; but unfortunately a letter comes from Lady Etwynde, radiant in the flush and glory of her matronly honours, and revelling in Paris delights with her handsome husband; and that letter mentions casually the same thing. "Keith Athelstone has been driving in the Bois with Lady Jean;" "I have met Keith, and asked him to dinner, but he excused himself on the plea of a previous engagement with Lady Jean," etc., etc.
Lady Etwynde tells her this, thinking it may really keep her from brooding over the idea that she has ruined her young lover's life; but had she known the torture it would have inflicted, she would have been silent on the subject.