“Is she still in Lyons, I wonder?”
“Probably. About seven o’clock this morning Dad sent an express message to somebody. He called a waiter, and I heard him give the letter, with instructions that it was to be sent at once.”
I said nothing, but half an hour later, by the judicious application of half a louis to the floor waiter, I ascertained that the note had been sent to a Madame Trelawnay, at the Hôtel du Globe, in the Place Bellecour.
Trelawnay was, I recollected, one of the names used by the pseudo Lady Lettice Lancaster. Therefore, after my café au lait I excused myself, stepped over to the hotel, and there ascertained that Madame, who had been there for two days, had received the note, packed hurriedly, and an hour later had left the Perrache Station by the Paris express.
On returning I told Asta this, and at eleven o’clock we were again on the white dusty highway—that beautiful road through deep valleys and over blue mountains, the Route d’Italie, which runs from Lyons, through quiet old Chambéry, to Modane and the Alpine frontier. In Chambéry, however, we turned to the left, and ere long found ourselves in that scrupulously clean and picturesque summer resort of the wealthy, Aix-les-Bains.
Shaw, who was in the best of spirits, had laughed heartily over Asta’s adventure with the rat, and as we arrived at our destination he turned to me, expressing a hope that we all three would enjoy “a real good time.”
I had been in Aix several years before, and knew the life—the bains, the casino, the Villa des Fleurs, the fêtes and the boating on the Lac du Bourget, that never-ending round of gaiety amid which the wealthy idler may pass the days of warm sunshine.
And certainly the three weeks we spent at the old-fashioned Europe—in preference to a newer and more garish hotel—were most delightful. I found myself ever at Asta’s side, and noted that her beauty was everywhere remarked. She was always smartly but neatly dressed—for Shaw was apparently most generous in the matter of gowns, some of which had come from a well-known dressmaker in the Place Vendôme.
I wondered sometimes, as we sat together in the big salle à manger or idled together under the trees in the pretty garden, whether she still thought of poor Guy Nicholson—or whether she was really pleased when alone with me. One fact was quite plain—that the visit had wrought a beneficial change in her. Her large dark eyes were again full of life and sparkle, and her lips smiled deliciously, showing how she enjoyed the brightness and gaiety of life.
Shaw had met accidentally at the Grand Cercle a Frenchman he knew named Count d’Auray, who had a château on the edge of the Lake, and one day he went over to visit him, leaving us to have luncheon together alone.