“It is her heart, poor lady! I am afraid she cannot live long.” She seated herself in one of the straight chairs. “Sit down, Mr. Ritchie,” she said; “I am glad you waited. I wanted to talk with you.”
“I thought that you might, Madame la Vicomtesse,” I answered.
She made no gesture, either of surprise or displeasure.
“So you knew,” she said quietly.
“I knew you the moment you appeared in the doorway,” I replied. It was not just what I meant to say.
There flashed over her face that expression of the miniature, the mouth repressing the laughter in the brown eyes.
“Montméry is one of my husband's places,” she said. “When Antoinette asked me to come here and watch over Mrs. Temple, I chose the name.”
“And Mrs. Temple has never suspected you?”
“I think not. She thinks I came at Mr. Clark's request. And being a lady, she does not ask questions. She accepts me for what I appear to be.”
It seemed so strange to me to be talking here in New Orleans, in this little Spanish house, with a French vicomtesse brought up near the court of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette; nay, with Hélène de St. Gré, whose portrait had twice come into my life by a kind of strange fatality (and was at that moment in my pocket), that I could scarce maintain my self-possession in her presence. I had given the portrait, too, attributes and a character, and I found myself watching the lady with a breathless interest lest she should fail in any of these. In the intimacy of the little room I felt as if I had known her always, and again, that she was as distant from me and my life as the court from which she had come. I found myself glancing continually at her face, on which the candle-light shone. The Vicomtesse might have been four and twenty. Save for the soberer gown she wore, she seemed scarce older than the young girl in the miniature who had the presence of a woman of the world. Suddenly I discovered with a flush that she was looking at me intently, without embarrassment, but with an expression that seemed to hint of humor in the situation. To my astonishment, she laughed a little.