I sighed heavily. Yes, it was true that Ulrica was utterly heartless towards those who admired her. I had with regret noticed her careless attitude times without number. She was a smart woman who thought only of her own good looks, her own toilettes, her own conquests, and her own amusements. Men pleased her by their flattery, and she therefore tolerated them. She had told me this long ago with her own lips, and had urged me to follow her example.
"Ulrica," said I at last, "forgive me, forgive me, but I am so unhappy. Don't let us speak of him again. I will try and forget, indeed I will—I will try to regard him as dead. I forgot myself—forgive me, dear."
"Yes, forget him, there's a dear," she said, kissing me. "And now call Felicita, and let us dress. Gerald hates to be kept waiting, you know," and carelessly she began humming the refrain of the latest chanson:
"Mandoli, Mandoli, Mandola,
Viens par-ci, viens par-là, ma brune!
Laisse le vieux jaloux qui t'importune,
Mandoli, Mandoli, Mandola,
Le temps fuit et voilà la lune,
C'est l'heure des baisers au clair de lune."
CHAPTER V
DEALS WITH A MILLIONAIRE
One evening, about ten days later, we dined at old Benjamin Keppel's invitation at the Villa Fabron.
Visitors to Nice know the great white mansion well. High up above the sea, beyond the Magnan, it stands in the midst of extensive grounds, shaded by date palms, olives and oranges, approached by a fine eucalyptus avenue, and rendered light with flowers, its dazzlingly white walls relieved by the green persiennes, a residence magnificent even for Nice—the town of princes. Along the whole front of the great place there runs a broad marble terrace, from which are obtained marvellous views of Nice, with the gilt-domed Jetée Promenade jutting out into the azure bay, the old Château, Mont Boron, and the snow-capped Alps on the left, while on the right lies the valley of the Var, and that romantic chain of dark purple mountains which lie far away beyond Cannes, a panorama almost as magnificent as that from the higher Corniche.
The interior was, we found, the acme of luxury and comfort. Everywhere was displayed the fact that its owner was wealthy; none on entering so splendid a home would have believed him to be so simple in taste and so curiously eccentric in manner. Each winter he came to Nice in his splendid steam-yacht, the Vispera, which was now anchored as usual in Villefranche Harbour, and with his sister, a small, wizen-faced old lady, and Mr. Barnes, his secretary, he lived there from December until the end of April.
Ulrica had met him several times in London, and he greeted us both very affably. He was, I found, a queer old fellow. Report had certainly not lied about him, and I could hardly believe that this absent-minded, rather ordinary-looking old fellow, with disordered grey hair and beard and dark, deep-set eyes, was Gerald's father, the great Benjamin Keppel, late of Johannesburg.