Late in the evening the opportunity came.
I had taken refuge from the terrible bravura singing of the Major’s strident prima donna in the back drawing-room. As I had hoped and anticipated, after a while Lady Clarinda (missing me from the group around the piano) came in search of me. She seated herself by my side, out of sight and out of hearing of our friends in the front room; and, to my infinite relief and delight, touched on the subject of Miserrimus Dexter of her own accord. Something I had said of him, when his name had been accidentally mentioned at dinner, remained in her memory, and led us, by perfectly natural gradations, into speaking of Mrs. Beauly. “At last,” I thought to myself, “the Major’s little dinner will bring me my reward!”
And what a reward it was, when it came! My heart sinks in me again—as it sank on that never-to-be-forgotten evening—while I sit at my desk thinking of it.
“So Dexter really spoke to you of Mrs. Beauly!” exclaimed Lady Clarinda. “You have no idea how you surprise me.”
“May I ask why?”
“He hates her! The last time I saw him he wouldn’t allow me to mention her name. It is one of his innumerable oddities. If any such feeling as sympathy is a possible feeling in such a nature as his, he ought to like Helena Beauly. She is the most completely unconventional person I know. When she does break out, poor dear, she says things and does things which are almost reckless enough to be worthy of Dexter himself. I wonder whether you would like her?”
“You have kindly asked me to visit you, Lady Clarinda. Perhaps I may meet her at your house?”
“I hope you will not wait until that is likely to happen,” she said. “Helena’s last whim is to fancy that she has got—the gout, of all the maladies in the world! She is away at some wonderful baths in Hungary or Bohemia (I don’t remember which)—and where she will go, or what she will do next, it is perfectly impossible to say.—Dear Mrs. Woodville! is the heat of the fire too much for you? You are looking quite pale.”
I felt that I was looking pale. The discovery of Mrs. Beauly’s absence from England was a shock for which I was quite unprepared. For a moment it unnerved me.
“Shall we go into the other room?” asked Lady Clarinda.