CHAPTER XI.
PAUL DESFRAYNE’S WIFE.
Lady Quaintree did not let excitement interfere with her usual plans and daily arrangements. She had settled that they should go on Saturday—the day after that one so memorable in Lois’ life—to the Zoological Gardens to hear the band play; and, accordingly, at about four o’clock, she set off with Lois and her son in the carriage.
To Lois it all appeared as a dream. Everything was the same, yet how different! Only a week ago had she attended her patroness to this gay scene, then as her paid if esteemed and indulged dependent. Now how was everything altered! Her very attire proclaimed that the tide of events had swept over her. She thought to keep her head steady, to stand unchanged, but it was difficult. It is as dangerous looking over an abyss clothed with all the flowers of spring, illumined by the golden rays of the morning sun, as to peer down from the black, beetling brow of a precipice, jagged and repellent.
“Heaven!” she cried, half-shudderingly, in the depths of her heart, “keep my soul pure and unspotted. Help me to do my duty now, even if I have failed in the days gone by.”
It was but too sweet for a beautiful girl of eighteen to be suddenly paid so much court, to be coaxed to drink so many a cup of nectar-tinctured flattery.
Great was the wonderment among the large circle of Lady Quaintree’s friends and acquaintances at the magic change in Miss Turquand’s status in society. No one knew the stipulations in the old man’s will. It was only known that she was now the happy possessor of a large fortune, in lieu of being a penniless toiler in the world’s hive.
That day Lois Turquand might have commanded a dozen offers, some good, some bad, some indifferently good. Many people speculated as to what would happen next.
“She was sure to marry at once,” everybody said. “Her beauty, her money, and her romantic little history would surely obtain for her the vivid interest of some more or less eligible individual.”
The majority decided she would marry Gerald Danvers.
Lady Quaintree had mentioned the projected visit to the Zoo, in the hearing of Frank Amberley, and he was haunting the gates when the little party arrived.
Poor fellow! He could not resist coming, fluttering about the flame that might end by consuming him.
Gerald objected to his company, now that he had resolved on appropriating the beautiful Lois himself. Hitherto he had never really noticed how often or how long Frank lingered by Miss Turquand. To-day he swelled and fumed like some ruffled turkey-cock, as Frank persisted in walking by the young girl’s left hand, as he displayed the grace and elegance of his irreproachably dressed person on her right.
Lady Quaintree had meant to keep Lois near her own side, but was obliged to loiter behind the three young people, while a dowager friend poured some matronly confidence into her unwilling ear.
It was a lovely afternoon, and the sun glittered down his smiles on the gay throng, sitting in flowerlike groups, or lingering over the sward.
The stroll was not a very lively one for the three somewhat ill-matched companions. Frank Amberley’s heart was full of despairing love and pain. Gerald Danvers was in a downright rage. Lois felt worried and distrait. The two young men wished each other at Jericho, or the Arctic regions, and Miss Turquand would not have been sorry to see herself quit of their uncongenial company.
At a sudden turn they came upon Captain Desfrayne, who had just entered the gardens. He met them so unexpectedly that Lois was taken by surprise, and so was he. They stood for a moment staring at one another, then Paul Desfrayne recollected himself, and lifted his hat. Miss Turquand went through the conventional obeisance.
A few words—what they were neither knew. Captain Desfrayne exchanged courtesies for a brief moment withFrank Amberley, and bowed to Lady Quaintree, who was only a short way in arrear. Then he vanished as quickly as he had appeared.
The faint tinge of rose color on Lois Turquand’s cheeks deepened visibly as she hurriedly passed on. A strange kind of resentment rose up in her breast, and made her eyes glitter with anger. At a second reflection, however, reason came to her aid.
“It was not his fault,” she argued to herself, “that the kind old man to whom I owe my good fortune made an arrangement which is probably as distasteful to him as it is to me. I must not blame him. In fact, I am very much obliged to him, for I feel I should only be rude to him if he tried to talk to me. I don’t believe I ever could like him. He seems, though, to have pleasant, kindly eyes, from the hasty glance I had.”
Paul Desfrayne moved away as if from the vicinity of the plague.
“Confound it!” he muttered, going he hardly knew whither. “What bewitchingly lovely eyes that girl has, though she is so cold and formal; what magnificent hair, and the grace of a queen! I wish her better luck. Why couldn’t the old man have left his money rationally, and not make such a silly, preposterous, aggravating muddle behind him! Well, after all, I have nobody to blame but myself. My sins be on my own head; only I wish nobody else had been dragged in. If it were not for my mother, I should not care so much. Yet, after all, why need I linger in this life of misery? Would it not be better—better to stable my white elephant in the neighboring mews, and so let my fatal secret out at once?”
He laughed aloud, cynically, bitterly.
Having escaped from the neighborhood of Lady Quaintree’s party, he took a turn to ascertain if his mother was in the gardens, for she had sent him a pressing message to ask him to meet her; but finding that she had not, apparently, arrived, he walked listlessly away at random.
Attracted by the solitary aspect of the quarter, he roamed toward the place where the lions and tigers lay, strode to and fro with stealthy step, or sat with magisterial gravity.
Paul Desfrayne had walked literally into the lion’s den.
A woman, young, strikingly handsome, dressed to perfection, was standing in front of the center compartment.
Madam Lucia Guiscardini!
Had any one of the brutes strolled out of its den, and held out a paw of greeting, the young man’s face could scarcely have worn an expression of greater dismay.
Had it been possible, he would have retreated. But the first sound of his firm, light step, made the superb Italian turn.
A heavy frown darkened her perfectly beautiful countenance, and she steadfastly gazed upon Captain Desfrayne with much the same look as the dangerous animals at her elbow had.
Paul Desfrayne raised his hat mechanically.
Madam Guiscardini took her small hands from off the railing, where they had been placed with an odd sort of grasp, and swept a curtsy almost ironical in its suavity.
The young man was obliged to advance, while Madam Guiscardini would not move an inch from the spot where she stood, continuing to gaze at him with that disagreeable, mesmeric expression which so painfully resembled the look of the wild beasts that made so suggestive a background.
“Good morning, Madam Guiscardini,” said Paul Desfrayne, folding his arms, as if to prepare himself for a stormy interview.
“Did you come here to seek me, Paul Desfrayne?” she inquired, regarding him with a baleful light in her splendid eyes, defiance in every tone and gesture.
“To seek you!” bitterly repeated the young man. “I would go to the end of the world to avoid you—you who——”
“Come. It is a long time since we have met, and we may be interrupted at any moment. If you have anything to say to me, I am willing to go home now, and either wait for you, or let you precede me. We have not met since——”
“Since our wedding-morning,” Paul Desfrayne said, as she paused. “Not for three years. I suppose you have never seen me from that day until this moment?”
“I have never seen or heard of you,” she angrily retorted, her eyes flashing ominously with premonitory lightning. “I did not wish to see you. I did not care to hear of you. I never asked a question about you. I should not care if we never met again; and I should be glad—thankfulto hear you were dead.”
“I thank you,” said Paul Desfrayne, again lifting his hat. “If care, if regret, if bitter self-reproaches could have killed, I should not have troubled you to-day. It was, indeed, by no voluntary movement that I happened to see you this afternoon. But I believe I must have sought you ere long, to make some endeavor to arrive at a state of things somewhat less wearying, somewhat less wretched. My life is becoming a burden almost too heavy to be borne.”
“You can see me any day you please to appoint,” Madam Guiscardini said angrily. “I have no desire either to seek or to avoid you. But I do not see what good can come of talking. Nothing can undo what has been done; nothing could roll back the waves of that pitiless time that has swept over you and over me.”
“It remains to be seen what can be done, Madam Guiscardini,” Captain Desfrayne answered, moving quite close to her, and looking intently into her eyes. “Do you happen ever to have seen, heard of, or personally known, a man of the name of Gilardoni?”
The color faded completely from the cheeks, lips, almost from the eyes, of the beautiful prima donna.