She smiled, but rather wanly. “You are very kind, sir. I do not feel that I have any right to accept what I can only regard as a sacrifice, but my situation is desperate, and I do accept it.”
He bowed. “I shall endeavour to make you comfortable, ma’am. We must now decide what were best to do. Will you not be seated?”
“You are breakfasting, sir, are you not?”
“Pray do not regard it, ma’am; I have had all I need.”
Miss Challoner’s eyes twinkled. “I, sir, on the other hand, am fasting.”
He slightly pressed her hand. “Believe me, I perfectly understand that food at this moment is repugnant to you. Let us be seated by the fire.”
Miss Challoner said meekly: “Food is by no means repugnant to me, Mr. Comyn. Pray allow me to share your breakfast. I am very hungry.”
He looked rather surprised, but at once handed her to a chair by the table. “Why, certainly, ma’am! I will send to procure you a clean cup and plate.” He went to the door and nearly fell over the serving-maid, who had not yet abandoned hope of catching a phrase spoken in her own tongue. His command of the French language being what it was, he was unable to deliver a rebuke, but he managed to ask for a cup and plate.
When these were brought Miss Challoner poured herself out some coffee, and spread butter on a roll. She proceeded to make a hearty meal. Mr. Comyn was assiduous in plying her with food, but he could not help feeling in a dim way that her attitude in face of a dramatic situation was a trifle mundane. Miss Challoner, biting a crust with her little white teeth, had also her private thoughts, and remembered other meals partaken in the company of a gentleman. This gave her a heartache, and since she had no notion of indulging in such a weakness, she said briskly: “Where are we to be married, sir? How soon can we leave Paris?”
Mr. Comyn poured her out another cup of coffee. “I have considered the matter, ma’am, and I have two plans to submit to you. It must, of course, be as you wish. We can, if you like, return to England, where I apprehend there will be no difficulty in arranging our immediate nuptials. I should point out to you, however, that in England our marriage must necessarily give occasion for comment The alternative is to travel to Dijon, and there to find the English divine, whose direction was given to me by Lord Vidal. Should you choose this course, ma’am, I suggest that following upon the ceremony we should journey into Italy for a space. Against this scheme must be set my natural scruples, which urge me not to make use of the information provided by his lordship.”
“I don’t think that need trouble you,” said Miss Challoner matter-of-factly. “Which of these plans do you prefer?”
“It is entirely for you to decide, ma’am.”
“But really, sir—”
“Whatever you choose will be agreeable to me,” said Mr.
Comyn.
Miss Challoner, feeling that the argument might be interminable if embarked on, gave her vote for Dijon. She had no desire to return to England until comment had died down. Mr. Comyn then found several points in favour of her choice, and promised that they should set forward before noon. Miss Challoner informed him that she would need to buy herself some few necessities, as she had nothing but the clothes she stood in. Mr. Comyn was quite shocked, and asked her very delicately whether she had sufficient money for her needs. She assured him that she had, and while he went to order a post-chaise, she sallied forth to the nearest shops. Pride had forbidden her to bring any of the clothes of the Marquis’s providing. She had, perforce, worn them at the Hôtel de Charbonne, but they were all carefully packed away now; gowns of tiffany with blonde scallops, gowns of taffetas, of dimity, of brocaded satin, cloaks richly trimmed with black lace, négligées so soft and fine they slid through the fingers; lawn shifts, point-lace tuckers, Turkey handkerchiefs—all the fineries of a lady of fashion, or—she thought, with a wry smile—of a light-of-love. She would not keep so much as one comb or haresfoot.
Shortly before noon they set forth on their journey. Both were rather silent, and until the chaise drew out of Paris they sat looking absently out of the windows, each one thinking sadly of the might-have-been.
Mr. Comyn roused himself at last from his abstraction to say: “I think it only right to tell you, ma’am, that I left a billet to be delivered to my Lord Vidal.” Miss Challoner sat bolt upright. “What, sir?”
“I could not but consider that I owed it to him to inform him of your safety and my intentions.”
“Oh, you should never have done that!” Miss Challoner said, horrified. “Good God, what a fatal mistake!”
“I regret that you should disapprove, but I remembered that his lordship had made himself responsible for your well-being, and I could not reconcile it with my conscience to make this journey without apprising him of our contract.” Miss Challoner struck her hands together. “But don’t you see, sir, that we shall have him hard on our heels? Oh, I would not have had you tell him for the world!”
“I beg you will not distress yourself, ma’am. Much as I dislike the least appearance of secretiveness I thought it advisable to write nothing of our destination to his lordship.” She was only partly reassured, and begged him to order the postillions to drive faster. He pointed out to her that greater speed would court disaster, but when she insisted he obediently let down the window, and shouted to the postillions. Not immediately understanding what he called to them these worthies drew up. Miss Challoner then assumed the direction of affairs, and whatever doubts the postillions had had concerning the nature of the journey were set at rest. Upon the chaise resuming its progress Mr. Comyn, pulling up the window, said gravely that he feared the men now suspected an elopement. Miss Challoner agreed that this was probably true, but maintained that it did not signify. Mr. Comyn said with a touch of severity that by informing the men, as well as he could, that he was her brother he had hoped to avert the least suspicion of impropriety.
Miss Challoner’s ever lively sense of humour was aroused by this, and she slightly disconcerted Mr. Comyn by chuckling. She explained apologetically that after the events of the past week considerations of propriety seemed absurd. He pressed her hand, saying with feeling: “I believe you have suffered, ma’am. To a delicately nurtured female Lord Vidal’s habits and manners must have caused infinite alarm and disgust.”
Her steady grey eyes met his unwaveringly. “Neither, sir, I do assure you. I don’t desire to pose as a wronged and misused creature. I brought it all on myself, and his lordship behaved to me with more consideration than perhaps I deserved.”
He seemed to be at a loss. “Is that so, ma’am? I had supposed, I confess, that you had suffered incivility—even brutality—at his hands. Consideration for others would hardly appear to be one of his lordship’s virtues.”
She smiled reminiscently. “I think he could be very kind,” she said, half to herself. “I am indebted to him for several marks of thoughtfulness.” Her smile grew, though her eyes were misty. “You would scarcely credit it in one so ruthless, sir, but his lordship, though excessively angry with me at the tune, was moved to provide me with a basin on board his yacht. I was never more glad of anything in my life.”
Mr. Comyn was shocked. “It must have been vastly disagreeable to you, ma’am, to be—ah—unwell and without a female companion.”
“It was quite the most disagreeable part of the whole adventure,” agreed Miss Challoner. She added candidly: “I was vilely sick, and really I believe I should have died had his lordship not forced brandy down my throat in the nick of tune.”
“The situation,” said Mr. Comyn austerely, “seems to have been sordid in the extreme.”
Miss Challoner perceived that she had offended his sensibilities, and relapsed into a disheartened silence. She began to understand that Mr. Comyn, for all his prosaic bearing, cherished a love for the romantic, which Lord Vidal, a very figure of romance, quite lacked.
The journey occupied three days, and neither the gentleman nor the lady enjoyed it. Miss Challoner, of nece
ssity the spokesman at every halt on the route, found herself comparing this flight with her previous journey to Paris, when the best rooms at all the inns were prepared for her, and she had nothing to do but obey my lord’s commands. Mr. Comyn, in his turn, could not but feel that his companion behaved with a matter-of-factness quite out of keeping with the circumstances. She seemed more concerned with the ordering of meals at the inns, and the airing of sheets which she declared to be damp, than with the unconventional daring of the whole expedition. A natural female agitation would have given his chivalry more scope, but Miss Challoner remained maddeningly calm, and, far from betraying weakness or nervous fears, assumed the direction of the journey. The only betrayal of uneasiness which she permitted herself was her continual plea to travel faster. Mr. Comyn, who did not at all care to be bumped and jolted over bad roads, and who thought, moreover, that such a feverish pace made their progress appear like an undignified flight, several times remonstrated with her. But when he condemned the speed as dangerous, Miss Challoner laughed, and told him that if he had ever travelled with the Marquis he would not consider himself to be moving fast now.
This remark, and various others which had all to do with his lordship, at last induced Mr. Comyn to observe, not without a touch of asperity, that Miss Challoner did not seem to have disliked her late abduction so much as he had supposed. “I confess, ma’am,” he said, “that I had imagined you desperate in the power of one whose merciless violence is, alas, too well know. Apparently I was mistaken, and from your present conversation I am led to assume that his lordship behaved with a respect and amiability astonishing in one of his reputation.”
Her eyes twinkled a little. “Respect and amiability ...” she repeated. “N-no, sir. His lordship was peremptory, overbearing, excessively quick-tempered, and imperious.”
“And yet, ma’am, not repugnant to you.”
“No. Not repugnant to me,” she said quietly.
“Forgive me,” said Mr. Comyn, “but I think you cherish a warmer feeling for Lord Vidal than I was aware of.”
She looked gravely at him. “I thought, from something you said to me, that you had guessed I was not—indifferent to him.”
“I did not know, ma’am, that it had gone so deep. If it is so indeed, I do not immediately perceive why you were so urgent to be quit of him.”
“He does not care for me, sir,” said Miss Challoner simply.
“Nor am i of his world. Conceive the yery natural dismay that must visit his parents were he to ally himself with me. Fathers have been known to disinherit their sons for such offences.”
Mr. Comyn was greatly moved. “Madam, the nobility of your nature is such that I can only say, I honour you.”
“Nonsense!” said Miss Challoner sharply
Chapter XIV
miss marling partook of chocolate very late on the morning after the ball at the Hotel Saint-Vire. It was after eleven when she awoke, and she did not look as though the long sleep had at all refreshed her. Her abigail noticed how woebegone was the little face under the night-cap of point-lace, and drew her own conclusions. Miss Marling was pettish over the choice of a morning wrapper, and complained that her chocolate was too sweet. She demanded to know whether any note had been left for her, or if anyone had called to see her, and on being told that she had neither a note nor a visitor, she pushed her chocolate away, and said she could not drink the stuff, it was so vile.
She was still in bed trying to make up her mind whether or no to write to Mr. Comyn, when a message was brought to her that the Marquis of Vidal was below, and wanted to see her immediately.
She was so disappointed that the visitor was not Mr. Comyn, as she had at first been sure it must be, that tears rose to her eyes, and she said in a tight, hard voice: “I can’t see him. I’m in bed, and I have the headache.”
The lackey’s footsteps retreated down the stairs, and in two minutes a far quicker step sounded, and a peremptory rap fell on the door. “Let me in, Ju; I must see you,” said Vidal’s voice.
“Oh, very well!” answered Juliana crossly.
The Marquis came in, much to the abigail’s disapproval, and signed to that damsel to leave the room. She went, sniffing loudly, and Vidal strode over to the big bed, and stood looking grimly down at Juliana. “The servants tell me Mary Challoner left the house early this morning, and is not yet returned,” he said, without preamble. “Where is she?”
“Good gracious, how should I know?” said Juliana indignantly. She hitched one of her lace-edged pillows up higher. “I dare say she has run away sooner than marry you, and I vow I don’t blame her, if you are in the habit of bursting in on ladies abed in this horrid way.”
“Oh, don’t be missish, Ju!” said his lordship, with an impatient frown. “I left her in your care.”
“Well, and what if you did? I can’t be for ever with her. She wouldn’t have me, I’ll be bound.”
Vidal looked at her rather sharply. “Oh? Have you quarrelled?”
“Pray do not imagine everyone to be like yourself and for ever being in a quarrel!” besought Miss Marling. “If people are only kind to me I’m sure I am the last person to quarrel with anyone.”
His lordship sat down on the edge of the bed. “Now come along, my girl: out with it!” he said. “What has happened between you?”
“Nothing at all!” snapped Juliana. “Though I’ve little doubt Mary thinks me as odious as she thinks you—not that I care a fig for what she or anyone else thinks.”
“I’ll shake you in a minute,” threatened the Marquis. “What’s between you two?”
Miss Marling raised herself on her elbow. “I won’t be bullied by you, Vidal, so pray don’t think it! I think men are the most hateful, cruel wretches imaginable, and I wish you would go away and find your provoking Mary yourself.”
There was a distinct break in her voice, and Vidal, who had a soft corner for her, put his arms round her, and said with unwonted cajolery: “Don’t cry, child. What’s to do?”
Miss Marling’s rigidity left her. She buried her face in Vidal’s blue coat, and said in muffled accents: “I want to go home! Everything is horrid in Paris, and I hope to heaven I never come here again!”
Vidal carefully removed his lace ruffle from her clutching fingers. “Quarrelled with Comyn, have you? You’re a fool, Ju. Stop crying! Has he gone off? Shall I bring him back to you?”
Miss Marling declined this offer with every evidence of loathing, and releasing his lordship, hunted under her pillow for a handkerchief, and fiercely blew her small nose.
“I wonder ...” Vidal stopped, and sat staring at the bedpost somewhat ominously.
Observing the darkling look in his eyes, Juliana said quickly: “What do you wonder? Please do not put on that murderous face, Dominic! It frightens me.”
He glanced down at her. “I wonder whether Mr. Frederick Comyn has anything to do with Mary’s disappearance?” he said.
“What a stupid notion!” commented Juliana. “Why in the world should he help Mary to escape?”
“From damned officiousness, belike,” said Vidal, scowling. “I found the fellow here last night—mighty friendly with Mary.”
“What!” Miss Marling stiffened. “Here? With Mary? What was he doing?”
“Holding her hands, curse his impudence.”
“Oh!” Miss Marling turned quite pale with indignation. “The wicked, deceitful creature! She never breathed a word of it to me! And then to dare to scold me for quarrelling with Frederick! Oh, I could kill them both! Holding her hands at that hour of night! And then to turn jealous because I like to dance with Bertrand! Oh, it beats anything I have ever heard! I’ll never forgive either of them.”
Vidal got up. “I’m going round to Comyn’s lodging,” he said, and walked to the door.
“Don’t kill him, Dominic, I implore you!” shrieked his cousin.
“For God’s sake, dont be such a damned little fool, Juliana!” said the Marquis irritably, and departed.
> The owner of Mr. Comyn’s lodgings, a retired valet, opened the door to the Marquis, and admitted him into a narrow hall. On being asked for the English gentleman he said that M. Comyn had paid his shot, and left by coach a bare hour since.
“Left, has he? Alone?” demanded the Marquis.
The valet cast down his eyes. “The Englishwoman who came to see him—oh, but at a very strange hour, m’sieur!—was with him.”
He stole a sly look upwards at the Marquis, and was startled by the expression on that dark face. “She was, eh?” said Vidal through his teeth. He smiled, and the valet retreated a pace, quite involuntarily. “Where have they gone? Do you know?”
“But no, m’sieur, how should I tell? The lady had no baggage, but M. Comyn took all of his. He said to me that he will not return, and he gave to me a letter to deliver in the Rue St. Honore.”
Light flashed in the Marquis’s sombre eyes. “Where in the Rue St. HonorS, my man?”
“It was a letter to an English Marquis, m’sieur, at the Hotel Avon.”
“Was it, by God!” said Vidal, and promptly went off home.
The letter, addressed in Mr. Comyn’s neat handwriting, was lying on the table in the wide hall. Vidal broke the seal, and ran his eye down the single sheet.
“My lord,” wrote Mr. Comyn, “I have to inform your lordship that my betrothal to Miss Juliana Marling being at an end, I have made bold to offer my hand in marriage to the lady lately travelling under your lordship’s protection. I think it only proper to apprise your lordship of this step, since your lordship was good enough to take me into your confidence. Miss Challoner having been so obliging as to accept of my offer, we are leaving Paris immediately. Miss Challoner, while sensible of the honour your lordship does her in proposing for her hand, is highly averse from a marriage which she deems unsuitable, and from the outset doomed to un-happiness. Since I apprehend that this aversion is known to your lordship, it will be unnecessary (I am assured) to request your lordship to relinquish the pretensions which have become a menace to Miss Challoner’s peace of mind.
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