And at that moment old Jules reappeared with the plate of tempting hors d’oeuvres and the carafe of vin-blanc ordinaire.
Edmond Valentin, the avocat, who struggled hard and fought for small fees in that most palatial Palais de Justice in the world, sat for a few moments gazing thoughtfully across the broad sunlit Meuse, where, on the opposite bank, a train, looking like a small toy, was following the bend of the river on its way to France, leaving a long trail of white smoke behind. He was thinking—thinking of something he knew—a secret—and as it arose in his mind his strong hands clenched themselves tightly beneath the table.
The girl, watching his countenance, wondered when she saw that strange expression of fierce hatred flit across his broad brow. But next second it had vanished, and smiling upon her, he began to help her to the anchovies and salad which the bald-headed waiter had placed before them.
They were truly a striking pair, she pretty and dainty, with a soft, sweet expression that men always found so charming, while he was particularly smart and handsome, without the slightest trace of foreign effeminacy, a fine, well-set-up fellow, who, but for the depth and largeness of his eyes, might easily have been mistaken for an Englishman. Yet their social positions were wide as the poles. She was the only child of Baron Henri de Neuville, the great financier, whose money controlled railways and tramways in half a dozen countries in Europe, and whose splendid old Château de Sévérac, higher up the river, was one of the show-places of Belgium. Ex-Minister of Finance and a member of the Senate, his position gave his wife, the Baroness, and her daughter, the entrée to the Court circle in Brussels, hence Aimée moved in the most exclusive set.
Her companion, however, was the son of the late Burgomaster of Ghent, an estimable man, who had amassed a considerable fortune and possessed much land around Antwerp, but who had, with hundreds of others, been completely ruined by dabbling in a wild-cat scheme on the Congo, and who had died penniless, save for the little pittance which his son Edmond could afford him.
Love, however, laughs at money-bags, and Aimée, while she was passionately fond of the man before her, detested that thin-faced, black-haired, narrow-eyed man, Monsieur Rigaux, whose praises the Baron was so constantly singing when they sat at table together. There was an indescribable look in the financier’s eyes which had, for the past four years—ever since she returned from school at Roedean—always frightened her. It was an expression which, though with her woman’s intuition she distrusted, yet she could neither describe it, nor the feeling which it always aroused within her. What we too often term natural antipathy, is a silent, mysterious warning which springs from our innermost conscience, and surely should never be dismissed.
The little cloud which had descended between the pair had quickly lifted, and as they sat eating their déjeuner, childishly happy in each other’s love, two officers of the 8th Chasseurs, in their braided tunics and undress caps, came along the terrasse, and, seeing a lady, saluted as they passed, and took seats at a little table at the farther end.
“My old regiment!” Edmond remarked. “Sometimes, Aimée, I regret that I resigned to take up law,” he added, with a sigh and a wistful look as he glanced at the two men in uniform.
“But you are making a name at the Courts,” the girl declared. “I read in the paper yesterday a case in which you are defending—the Affaire of the Rue du Trône, they call it—a murder-mystery.”
“Yes,” the man answered, with a touch of bitterness in his voice. “I am defending the man Sigart, though I myself am convinced of his guilt.”