Her Grace of Flintshire looked ravishing with her curly fair hair entirely free from powder, and Lady Betty Draitune's waist seemed to be nestling under her arm-pits. Of course Lady Blakeney wore the very latest thing in striped silks and gossamer-like muslin and lace, and it was hard to enumerate all the pretty débutantes and young brides who fluttered about the Assembly Rooms this night.
And gliding through that motley throng, bright-plumaged like a swarm of butterflies, there were a few figures dressed in sober blacks and greys—the émigrés over from France—men, women, young girls and gilded youth from out that seething cauldron of revolutionary France—who had shaken the dust of that rampant demagogism from off their buckled shoes, taking away with them little else but their lives. Mostly chary of speech, grave in their demeanour, bearing upon their wan faces traces of that horror which had seized them when they saw all the traditions of their past tottering around them, the proletariat whom they had despised turning against them with all the fury of caged beasts let loose, their kindred and friends massacred, their King and Queen murdered. The shelter and security which hospitable England had extended to them, had not altogether removed from their hearts the awful sense of terror and of gloom.
Many of them had come to Bath because the more genial climate of the West of England consoled them for the inclemencies of London's fogs. Received with open[81] arms and with that lavish hospitality which the refugees and the oppressed had already learned to look for in England, they had gradually allowed themselves to be drawn into the fashionable life of the gay little city. The Comtesse de Tournai was here and her daughter, Lady Ffoulkes, Sir Andrew's charming and happy bride, and M. Paul Déroulède and his wife—beautiful Juliette Déroulède with the strange, haunted look in her large eyes, as of one who has looked closely on death; and M. le duc de Kernogan with his exquisite daughter, whose pretty air of seriousness and of repose sat so quaintly upon her young face. But every one remarked as soon as M. le duc entered the rooms that M. Martin-Roget was not in attendance upon Mademoiselle, which was quite against the order of things; also that M. le duc appeared to keep a more sharp eye than usual upon his daughter in consequence, and that he asked somewhat anxiously if milor Anthony Dewhurst was in the room, and looked obviously relieved when the reply was in the negative.
At which trifling incident every one who was in the know smiled and whispered, for M. le duc made it no secret that he favoured his own compatriot's suit for Mademoiselle Yvonne's hand rather than that of my lord Tony—which—as old Euclid has it—is absurd.
III
But with the arrival of the royal party M. de Kernogan's troubles began. To begin with, though M. Martin-Roget had not arrived, my lord Tony undoubtedly had. He had come in, in the wake of Lady Blakeney, but very soon he began wandering round the room obviously in search of[82] some one. Immediately there appeared to be quite a conspiracy among the young folk in the ball-room to keep both Lord Tony's and Mlle. Yvonne's movements hidden from the prying eyes of M. le duc: and anon His Royal Highness, after a comprehensive survey of the ball-room and a few gracious words to his more intimate circle, wandered away to the card-room, and as luck would have it he claimed M. le duc de Kernogan for a partner at faro.
Now M. le duc was a courtier of the old régime: to have disobeyed the royal summons would in his eyes have been nothing short of a crime. He followed the royal party to the card-room, and on his way thither had one gleam of comfort in that he saw Lady Blakeney sitting on a sofa in the octagon hall engaged in conversation with his daughter, whilst Lord Anthony Dewhurst was nowhere in sight.
However, the gleam of comfort was very brief, for less than a quarter of an hour after he had sat down at His Highness' table, Lady Blakeney came into the card-room and stood thereafter for some little while close beside the Prince's chair. The next hour after that was one of special martyrdom for the anxious father, for he knew that his daughter was in all probability sitting out in a specially secluded corner in the company of my lord Tony.
If only Martin-Roget were here!
IV
Martin-Roget with the eagle eyes and the airs of an accredited suitor would surely have intervened when my lord Tony in the face of the whole brilliant assembly in the ball-room, drew Mlle. de Kernogan into the seclusion of the recess underneath the gallery.[83]
My lord Tony was never very glib of tongue. That peculiar dignified shyness which is one of the chief characteristics of well-bred Englishmen caused him to be tongue-tied when he had most to say. It was just with gesture and an appealing pressure of his hand upon her arm that he persuaded Yvonne de Kernogan to sit down beside him on the sofa in the remotest and darkest corner of the recess, and there she remained beside him silent and grave for a moment or two, and stole timid glances from time to time through the veil of her lashes at the finely-chiselled, expressive face of her young English lover.
He was pining to put a question to her, and so great was his excitement that his tongue refused him service, and she, knowing what was hovering on his lips, would not help him out, but a humorous twinkle in her dark eyes, and a faint smile round her lips lit up the habitual seriousness of her young face.
"Mademoiselle ..." he managed to stammer at last. "Mademoiselle Yvonne ... you have seen Lady Blakeney?"
"Yes," she replied demurely, "I have seen Lady Blakeney."
"And ... and ... she told you?"
"Yes. Lady Blakeney told me many things."
"She told you that ... that.... In God's name, Mademoiselle Yvonne," he added desperately, "do help me out—it is cruel to tease me! Can't you see that I'm nearly crazy with anxiety?"
Then she looked up at him, her dark eyes glowing and brilliant, her face shining with the light of a great tenderness.
"Nay, milor," she said earnestly, "I had no wish to tease you. But you will own 'tis a grave and serious step[84] which Lady Blakeney suggested that I should take. I have had no time to think ... as yet."
"But there is no time for thinking, Mademoiselle Yvonne," he said naïvely. "If you will consent.... Oh! you will consent, will you not?" he pleaded.
She made no immediate reply, but gradually her hand which rested upon the sofa stole nearer and then nearer to his; and with a quiver of exquisite happiness his hand closed upon hers. The tips of his fingers touched the smooth warm palm and poor Lord Tony had to close his eyes for a moment as his sense of superlative ecstasy threatened to make him faint. Slowly he lifted that soft white hand to his lips.
"Upon my word, Yvonne," he said with quiet fervour, "you will never have cause to regret that you have trusted me."
"I know that well, milor," she replied demurely.
She settled down a shade or two closer to him still.
They were now like two birds in a cosy nest—secluded from the rest of the assembly, who appeared to them like dream-figures flitting in some other world that had nothing to do with their happiness. The strains of the orchestra who had struck the measure of the first figure of a contredanse sounded like fairy-music, distant, unreal in their ears. Only their love was real, their joy in one another's company, their hands clasped closely together!
"Tell me," she said after awhile, "how it all came about. It is all so terribly sudden ... so exquisitely sudden. I was prepared of course ... but not so soon ... and certainly not to-night. Tell me just how it happened."
She spoke English quite fluently, with just a charming slight accent, which he thought the most adorable thing he had ever heard.[85]
"You see, dear heart," he replied, and there was a quiver of intense feeling in his voice as he spoke, "there is a man who not only is the friend whom I love best in all the world, but is also the one whom I trust absolutely, more than myself. Two hours ago he sent for me and told me that grave danger threatened you—threatened our love and our happiness, and he begged me to urge you to consent to a secret marriage ... at once ... to-night."
"And you think this ... this friend knew?"
"I know," he replied earnest
ly, "that he knew, or he would not have spoken to me as he did. He knows that my whole life is in your exquisite hands—he knows that our happiness is somehow threatened by that man Martin-Roget. How he obtained that information I could not guess ... he had not the time or the inclination to tell me. I flew to make all arrangements for our marriage to-night and prayed to God—as I have never prayed in my life before—that you, dear heart, would deign to consent."
"How could I refuse when Lady Blakeney advised? She is the kindest and dearest friend I possess. She and your friend ought to know one another. Will you not tell me who he is?"
"I will present him to you, dear heart, as soon as we are married," he replied with awkward evasiveness. Then suddenly he exclaimed with boyish enthusiasm: "I can't believe it! I can't believe it! It is the most extraordinary thing in the world...."
"What is that, milor?" she asked.
"That you should have cared for me at all. For of course you must care, or you wouldn't be sitting here with me now ... you would not have consented ... would you?"[86]
"You know that I do care, milor," she said in her grave quiet way. "How could it be otherwise?"
"But I am so stupid and so slow," he said naïvely. "Why! look at me now. My heart is simply bursting with all that I want to say to you, but I just can't find the words, and I do nothing but talk rubbish and feel how you must despise me."
Once more that humorous little smile played for a moment round Yvonne de Kernogan's serious mouth. She didn't say anything just then, but her delicate fingers gave his hand an expressive squeeze.
"You are not frightened?" he asked abruptly.
"Frightened? Of what?" she rejoined.
"At the step you are going to take?"
"Would I take it," she retorted gently, "if I had any misgivings?"
"Oh! if you had.... Do you know that even now ..." he continued clumsily and haltingly, "now that I have realised just what it will mean to have you ... and just what it would mean to me, God help me—if I were to lose you ... well!... that even now I would rather go through that hell than that you should feel the least bit doubtful or unhappy about it all."
Again she smiled, gently, tenderly up into his eager, boyish face.
"The only unhappiness," she said gravely, "that could ever overtake me in the future would be parting from you, milor."
"Oh! God bless you for that, my dear! God bless you for that! But for pity's sake turn your dear eyes away from me or I vow I shall go crazy with joy. Men do go crazy with joy sometimes, you know, and I feel that in another moment I shall stand up and shout at the top of[87] my voice to all the people in the room that within the next few hours the loveliest girl in all the world is going to be my wife."
"She certainly won't be that, if you do shout it at the top of your voice, milor, for father would hear you and there would be an end to our beautiful adventure."
"It will be a beautiful adventure, won't it?" he sighed with unconcealed ecstasy.
"So beautiful, my dear lord," she replied with gentle earnestness, "so perfect, in fact, that I am almost afraid something must happen presently to upset it all."
"Nothing can happen," he assured her. "M. Martin-Roget is not here, and His Royal Highness is even now monopolising M. le duc de Kernogan so that he cannot get away."
"Your friend must be very clever to manipulate so many strings on our behalf!"
"It is long past midnight now, sweetheart," he said with sudden irrelevance.
"Yes, I know. I have been watching the time: and I have already thought everything out for the best. I very often go home from balls and routs in the company of Lady Ffoulkes and sleep in her house those nights. Father is always quite satisfied, when I do that, and to-night he will be doubly satisfied feeling that I shall be taken away from your society. Lady Ffoulkes is in the secret, of course, so Lady Blakeney told me, and she will be ready for me in a few minutes now: she'll take me home with her and there I will change my dress and rest for awhile, waiting for the happy hour. She will come to the church with me and then ... oh then! Oh! my dear milor!" she added suddenly with a deep sigh whilst her whole face became irradiated with a light of intense happiness, "as you say[88] it is the most wonderful thing in all the world—this—our beautiful adventure together."
"The parson will be ready at half-past six, dear heart, it was the earliest hour that I could secure ... after that we go at once to your church and the priest will tie up any loose threads which our English parson failed to make tight. After those two ceremonies we shall be very much married, shan't we?... and nothing can come between us, dear heart, can it?" he queried with a look of intense anxiety on his young face.
"Nothing," she replied. Then she added with a short sigh: "Poor father!"
"Dear heart, he will only fret for a little while. I don't believe he can really want you to marry that man Martin-Roget. It is just obstinacy on his part. He can't have anything against me really ... save of course that I am not clever and that I shall never do anything very big in the world ... except to love you, Yvonne, with my whole heart and soul and with every fibre and muscle in me.... Oh! I'll do that," he added with boyish enthusiasm, "better than anyone else in all the world could do! And your father will, I'll be bound, forgive me for stealing you, when he sees that you are happy, and contented, and have everything you want and ... and...."
As usual Lord Tony's eloquence was not equal to all that it should have expressed. He blushed furiously and with a quaint, shy gesture, passed his large, well-shaped hand over his smooth, brown hair. "I am not much, I know," he continued with a winning air of self-deprecation, "and you are far above me as the stars—you are so wonderful, so clever, so accomplished and I am nothing at all ... but ... but I have plenty of high-born connexions, and I have plenty of money and influential friends[89] ... and ... and Sir Percy Blakeney, who is the most accomplished and finest gentleman in England, calls me his friend."
She smiled at his eagerness. She loved him for his clumsy little ways, his halting speech, that big loving heart of his which was too full of fine and noble feelings to find vent in mere words.
"Have you ever met a finer man in all the world?" he added enthusiastically.
Yvonne de Kernogan smiled once more. Her recollections of Sir Percy Blakeney showed her an elegant man of the world, whose mind seemed chiefly occupied on the devising and the wearing of exquisite clothes, in the uttering of lively witticisms for the entertainment of his royal friend and the ladies of his entourage: it showed her a man of great wealth and vast possessions who seemed willing to spend both in the mere pursuit of pleasures. She liked Sir Percy Blakeney well enough, but she could not understand clever and charming Marguerite Blakeney's adoration for her inane and foppish husband, nor the whole-hearted admiration openly lavished upon him by men like Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, my lord Hastings, and others. She would gladly have seen her own dear milor choose a more sober and intellectual friend. But then she loved him for his marvellous power of whole-hearted friendship, for his loyalty to those he cared for, for everything in fact that made up the sum total of his winning personality, and she pinned her faith on that other mysterious friend whose individuality vastly intrigued her.
"I am more interested in your anonymous friend," she said quaintly, "than in Sir Percy Blakeney. But he too is kindness itself and Lady Blakeney is an angel. I like[90] to think that the happiest days of my life—our honeymoon, my dear lord—will be spent in their house."
"Blakeney has lent me Combwich Hall for as long as we like to stay there. We'll drive thither directly after the service, dear heart, and then we'll send a courier to your father and ask for his blessing and his forgiveness."
"Poor father!" sighed Yvonne again. But evidently compassion for the father whom she had elected to deceive did not weigh over heavily in the balance of her happiness. Her little hand once more stole like a timid and confiding bird into the shelter of his firm grasp.
V
In the card-room at His Highness' ta
ble Sir Percy Blakeney was holding the bank and seemingly luck was dead against him. Around the various tables the ladies stood about, chattering and hindering the players. Nothing appeared serious to-night, not even the capricious chances of hazard.
His Royal Highness was in rare good humour, for he was winning prodigiously.
Her Grace of Flintshire placed her perfumed and beringed hand upon Sir Percy Blakeney's shoulder; she stood behind his chair, chattering incessantly in a high flutey treble just like a canary. Blakeney vowed that she was so ravishing that she had put Dame Fortune to flight.
"You have not yet told us, Sir Percy," she said roguishly, "how you came to arrive so late at the ball."
"Alas, madam," he sighed dolefully, "'twas the fault of my cravat."
"Your cravat?"[91]
"Aye indeed! You see I spent the whole of to-day in perfecting my new method for tying a butterfly bow, so as to give the neck an appearance of utmost elegance with a minimum of discomfort. Lady Blakeney will bear me out when I say that I set my whole mind to my task. Was I not busy all day m'dear?" he added, making a formal appeal to Marguerite, who stood immediately behind His Highness' chair, and with her luminous eyes, full of merriment and shining with happiness fixed upon her husband.
"You certainly spent a considerable time in front of the looking-glass," she said gaily, "with two valets in attendance and my lord Tony an interested spectator in the proceedings."
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