XXIII
In few days Margaret was able to be afoot, although still lame; but René had no chance to see her. She was not to be caught alone, and would go on a long-promised visit to Merion. Thus February passed, and March, and April came, when personal and political matters abruptly broke up for a time their peaceful household.
Margaret had been long at home again, but still with a woman's wit she avoided her lover. Aunt Gainor, ever busy, came and went, always with a dozen things to do.
Her attentions to Madame de Courval lessened when that lady no longer needed her kindness and, as soon happened, ceased to be interesting. She would not gamble, and the two women had little in common. Miss Gainor's regard for René was more lasting. He was well-built and handsome, and all her life she had had a fancy for good looks in men. He had, too, the virile qualities she liked and a certain steadiness of purpose which took small account of obstacles and reminded her of her nephew Hugh Wynne. Above all, he had been successful, and she despised people who failed and too often regarded success as a proof of the right to succeed, even when the means employed were less creditable than those by which René had made his way. Moreover, had he not told her once that her French was wonderful? Miss Gainor changed her favorites often, but René kept in her good graces and was blamed only because he did not give her as much of his time as she desired; for after she heard his history from Schmidt, he won a place in her esteem which few men had ever held. She had set her heart at last on his winning Margaret, and the lifelong game of gambling with other folks' fortunes and an honest idolatry for the heroic, inclined her to forgive a lack of attention due in a measure to his increasing occupations.
To keep her eager hands off this promising bit of match-making had been rather a trial, but Schmidt was one of the few people of whom she had any fear, and she had promised not to meddle. At present she had begun to think that the two human pawns in the game she loved were becoming indifferent, and to let things alone was something to which she had never been inclined. Had she become aware of the German's mild treachery that night on the ice, she would in all likelihood have been angry at first and then pleased or annoyed not to have had a hand in the matter.
Mistress Wynne, even in the great war, rarely allowed her violent politics to interfere with piquet, and now Mr. Dallas had asked leave to bring Fauchet, the new French minister, to call upon her. He was gay, amusing, talked no politics, played piquet nearly as well as she, and was enchanted, as he assured her, to hear French spoken without accent. If to De la Forêt, the consul-general, he made merry concerning his travels in China, as he called her drawing-room, saying it was perilously over-populous with strange gods, she did not hear it, nor would she have cared so long as she won the money of the French republic.
One evening in early April, after a long series of games, he said: "I wish I could have brought here my secretary Carteaux. He did play to perfection, but now, poor devil, the wound he received has palsied his right arm, and he will never hold cards again—or, what he thinks worse, a foil. It was a strange attack."
"Does he suffer? I have heard about him."