Next afternoon Liane and Zertho strolled up to Cimiez together to pay a call upon a Parisian family named Bertholet, who lived in one of those fine white houses high up on the Boulevard de Cimiez, and who had recently accepted the Prince’s hospitality.
As they turned from the dusty Boulevard Carabacel, and commenced the long ascent where the tree-lined road runs straight up to the glaring white façade of the Excelsior Regina Hotel, Zertho expressed a fear that she would be fatigued ere they reached their destination, and urged her to take a cab.
“I’m not at all tired,” she assured him, nevertheless halting a second, flushed and warm, to regain breath. “The day is so beautiful that a walk will do me no end of good.”
“It’s a dreadful bore to have to toil up and call on these people, but I suppose I must be polite to them. They are worth knowing. Bertholet is, I hear, a well-known banker in Paris.”
Liane smiled. The patronising air with which her companion spoke of his newly-found friends always amused her.
“Besides,” he added, “we must now make the best of the time we have in Nice. We leave to-morrow, or the day after.”
“So sudden!” she exclaimed, surprised. “I thought we should remain for another fortnight or three weeks. The weather is so delightful.”
“I have arranged it with the Captain,” he said briefly. “Do you regret leaving?”
“How can I regret?” she asked, glancing at him and raising her brows slightly. “How can I regret when the place, so fair in itself, is to me so hateful? No, I’m glad for several reasons that we are leaving.”
She recollected at that moment what George had told her. Mariette Lepage was near them. She remembered, too, the fierce expression of hatred in that pair of angry eyes shining through the mask.