Miss Gaisford had found a quiet nook in the lower grounds of the hotel, well out of view from the windows, where there was little likelihood of being disturbed by the ordinary run of visitors. Now and then, a newly married couple, or a pair of turtle-doves who were not yet married, but hoped to be before long, would invade her solitude; but such momentary interruptions served rather to amuse her than otherwise. ‘Here comes another peripatetic romance,’ she would remark to herself. ‘Now, if those two young people would only come and sit down beside me, and tell me all about it, first one telling me a bit and then the other, till I knew their story by heart, they would do me a real kindness, and save me a lot of invention. All newly married couples ought to be compelled to write their Love Memoirs, which should afterwards be bound in volumes (calf), and kept in a sort of Record Office, where we poor story-tellers could have access to them whenever we happened to be hard up for a plot.’
To this sheltered nook a table and chair had been brought from the hotel, and here, on this Friday forenoon, Miss Gaisford was busy writing. But she laid down her pen more frequently than was usual with her when so employed, and had little fits of musing between times.
‘I’m not i’ the mood this morning, that’s certain,’ she said at last. ‘My thoughts seem all in a muddle. I can’t get Mora out of my head. She puzzles me and makes me uneasy. It’s mental illness, not bodily, that keeps her to her room. Colonel Woodruffe had a long talk with her on Wednesday, and then drove her back to the hotel, which he would scarcely have done, I think, if he had been decisively and finally rejected. There’s a mystery somewhere; but Mora is a woman whom one cannot question. I have no doubt she will tell me all about it when she feels herself at liberty to do so. Meanwhile, it’s a good lesson in curbing that curiosity which certain cynical moralists of the inferior sex have had the unblushing effrontery to affirm to be the bane of ours.—But this is frivolity.’ She dipped her pen in the inkstand, and running her eyes over the few lines last written, read them half aloud:
‘“Next moment, Montblazon’s equipage, which was drawn by six coal-black steeds, and preceded by two outriders in livery, drew up at the palace gates. As the Duc alighted from his chariot, a woman, young and beautiful, though in rags, pressed through the crowd till she was almost near enough to have touched him. ‘For the love of heaven, monseigneur!’ she cried in piteous accents. A gorgeously attired lackey would have thrust her back, but an imperious gesture of Montblazon’s jewelled hand arrested him. There was something in the expression of the woman’s face which struck him as though it were a face seen in a dream long ago. Montblazon, who knew not what it was to carry money about his person, extracted from the pocket of his embroidered vest a diamond—one of a handful which he was in the habit of carrying loose about him to give away as whim or charity dictated—and dropped it into the woman’s extended palm. Then without waiting for her thanks, he strode forward up the palace stairs, and a few moments later found himself in a saloon which was lighted by myriads of perfumed wax tapers set in sconces of burnished silver. Montblazon, who towered a head taller than any one there, gazed round him with a lurid smile.”’
‘Yes, I think that will do,’ said Miss Pen as she took another dip of ink. ‘“Lurid smile” is not amiss.’
She was interrupted by the sound of footsteps. She looked up, and as she did so, a shade of annoyance flitted across her face. ‘I thought that I was safe from her here. I wonder how she has found me out,’ she said to herself.
The object of these remarks was none other than Lady Renshaw. It was quite by accident that she had discovered Miss Gaisford. The news told her by Mr Etheridge had excited her in no common degree; there was no one in the hotel that she cared to talk to; so, finding it impossible to stay indoors, she had sought relief in the open air. She was expecting Bella and Mr Golightly back every minute; meanwhile, she was wandering aimlessly about the grounds, and brightened up at the sight of Miss Penelope. Here at least was some one she knew—some one to talk to. She advanced smilingly. ‘What a number of correspondents you must have, dear Miss Gaisford,’ said her ladyship after a few words of greeting. ‘You seem to spend half your time in writing.’ She was glancing sharply at Miss Pen’s closely covered sheets of manuscript.
‘Yes, I do write a good deal,’ answered the latter as she began to put her sheets in order. ‘I rather like it. Between you and me, when Septimus is busy other ways, or is enjoying his holiday, I sometimes try my hand at writing a sermon for him.’
‘Really now! And do the congregation never detect the difference between your discourses and his?’
‘I don’t think they trouble their heads a bit about it. So long as we don’t make use of too many hard words, and get the sermon well over in twenty minutes, they are perfectly satisfied.’