Felix, after an uneventful voyage, landed duly at Liverpool. To his amazement the first person he saw upon the quay was Mr. Sabin, leaning upon his stick and smoking a cigarette.
“Come, come, Felix!” he exclaimed. “Don’t look at me as though I were a ghost. You have very little confidence in me, after all, I see.”
“But—how did you get here?”
“The Campania, of course. I had plenty of time. It was easy enough for those fellows to arrest me, but they never had a chance of holding me.”
“But how did you get away in time?”
Mr. Sabin sighed.
“It was very simple,” he said. “One day, while one of those wonderful spies was sleeping on my doormat I slipped away and went over to Washington, saw the English Ambassador, convinced him of my bonafides, told him very nearly the whole truth. He promised if I wired him that I was arrested to take my case up at once. You sent the despatch, and he kept his word. I breakfasted on Saturday morning at the Waldorf, and though a great dray was driven into my carriage on the way to the boat, I escaped, as I always do—and here I am.”
“Unhurt!” Felix remarked with a smile, “as usual!”
Mr. Sabin nodded.
“The driver of my carriage was killed, and Duson had his arm broken,” he said. “I stepped out of the debris without a scratch. Come into the Customs House now and get your baggage through. I have taken a coupe on the special train and ordered lunch.”
Before long they were on the way to London. Mr. Sabin, whilst luncheon was being served, talked only of the lightest matters. But afterwards, when coffee was served and he had lit a cigarette, he leaned over towards Felix.
“Felix,” he said, “your sister is dear to you?”
“She is the only creature on earth,” Felix said, “whom I care for. She is very dear to me, indeed.”
“Am I right,” Mr. Sabin asked, “in assuming that the old enmity between us is dead, that the last few years has wiped away the old soreness.
“Yes,” Felix answered. “I know that she was happy with you. That is enough for me.”
“You and I,” Mr. Sabin continued, “must work out her salvation. Do not be afraid that I am going to ask you impossibilities. I know that our ways must lie apart. You can go to her at once. It may be many, many months before I can catch even a glimpse of her. Never mind. Let me feel that she has you within the circle, and I without, with our lives devoted to her.”
“You may rely upon that,” Felix answered. “Wherever she is I am going. I shall be there. I will watch over her.”
Mr. Sabin sighed.
“The more difficult task is mine,” he said, “but I have no fear of failure. I shall find her surrounded by spies, by those who are now my enemies. Still, they will find it hard to shake me off. It may be that they took her from me only out of revenge. If that be so my task will be easier. If there are other dangers which she is called upon to face, it is still possible that they might accept my service instead.”
“You would give it?” Felix exclaimed.
“To the last drop of blood in my body,” Mr. Sabin answered. “Save for my love for her I am a dead man upon the earth. I have no longer politics or ambition. So the past can easily be expunged. Those who must be her guiding influence shall be mine.”
“You will win her back,” Felix said. “I am sure of it.”
“I am willing to pay any price on earth,” Mr. Sabin answered. “If they can forget the past I can. I want you to remember this. I want her to know it. I want them to know it. That is all, Felix.”
Mr. Sabin leaned back in his seat. He had left this country last a stricken and defeated man, left it with the echoes of his ruined schemes crashing in his ears. He came back to it a man with one purpose only, and that such a purpose as never before had guided him—the love of a woman. Was it a sign of age, he wondered, this return to the humanities? His life had been full of great schemes, he had wielded often a gigantic influence, more than once he had made history. And now the love of these things had gone from him. Their fascination was powerless to quicken by a single beat his steady pulse. Monarchy or republic—what did he care? It was Lucille he wanted, the woman who had shown him how sweet even defeat might be, who had made these three years of his life so happy that they seemed to have passed in one delightful dream. Were they dead, annihilated, these old ambitions, the old love of great doings, or did they only slumber? He moved in his seat uneasily.
At Euston the two men separated with a silent handshake. Mr. Sabin drove to one of the largest and newest of the modern hotels de luxe. He entered his name as Mr. Sabin—the old exile’s hatred of using his title in a foreign country had become a confirmed habit with him—and mingled freely with the crowds who thronged into the restaurant at night. There were many faces which he remembered, there were a few who remembered him. He neither courted nor shunned observation. He sat at dinner-time at a retired table, and found himself watching the people with a stir of pleasure. Afterwards he went round to a famous club, of which he had once been made a life member, but towards midnight he was wearied of the dull decorum of his surroundings, and returning to the hotel, sought the restaurant once more. The stream of people coming in to supper was greater even than at dinner-time. He found a small table, and ordered some oysters. The sight of this bevy of pleasure-seekers, all apparently with multitudes of friends, might have engendered a sense of loneliness in a man of different disposition. To Mr. Sabin his isolation was a luxury. He had an uninterrupted opportunity of pursuing his favourite study.
There entered a party towards midnight, to meet whom the head-waiter himself came hurrying from the further end of the room, and whose arrival created a little buzz of interest. The woman who formed the central figure of the little group had for two years known no rival either at Court or in Society. She was the most beautiful woman in England, beautiful too with all the subtle grace of her royal descent. There were women upon the stage whose faces might have borne comparison with hers, but there was not one who in a room would not have sunk into insignificance by her side. Her movements, her carriage were incomparable—the inherited gifts of a race of women born in palaces.
Mr. Sabin, who neither shunned nor courted observation, watched her with a grim smile which was not devoid of bitterness. Suddenly she saw him. With a little cry of wonder she came towards him with outstretched hands.
“It is marvelous,” she exclaimed. “You? Really you?”
He bowed low over her hands.
“It is I, dear Helene,” he answered. “A moment ago I was dreaming. I thought that I was back once more at Versailles, and in the presence of my Queen.”
She laughed softly.
“There may be no Versailles,” she murmured, “but you will be a courtier to the end of your days.”
“At least,” he said, “believe me that my congratulations come from my heart. Your happiness is written in your face, and your husband must be the proudest man in England.”
He was standing now by her side, and he held out his hand to Mr. Sabin.
“I hope, sir,” he said pleasantly, “that you bear me no ill-will.”
“It would be madness,” Mr. Sabin answered. “To be the most beautiful peeress in England is perhaps for Helene a happier fate than to be the first queen of a new dynasty.”
“And you, uncle?” Helene said. “You are back from your exile then. How often I have felt disposed to smile when I thought of you, of all men, in America.”
“I went into exile,” Mr. Sabin answered, “and I found paradise. The three years which have passed since I saw you last have been the happiest of my life.”
“Lucille!” Helene exclaimed.
“Is my wife,” Mr. Sabin answered.
“Delightful!” Helene murmured. “She is with you then, I hope. Indeed, I felt sure that I saw her the other night at the opera.”
“At the opera!” Mr. Sabin for a moment was silent. He would have been ashamed to confess that his heart was beating strongly, that a crowd of eager questions trembled upon his lips. He recovered himself after a moment.
“Lucille is not with me for the moment,” he said in measured tones. “I am detaining you from your guests, Helene. If you will permit me I will call upon you.”
“Won’t you join us?” Lord Camperdown asked courteously. “We are only a small party—the Portuguese Ambassador and his wife, the Duke of Medchester, and Stanley Phillipson.”
Mr. Sabin rose at once.
“I shall be delighted,” he said.
Lord Camperdown hesitated for a moment.
“I present Monsieur le Due de Souspennier, I presume?” he remarked, smiling.
Mr. Sabin bowed.
“I am Mr. Sabin,” he said, “at the hotels and places where one travels. To my friends I have no longer an incognito. It is not necessary.”
It was a brilliant little supper party, and Mr. Sabin contributed at least his share to the general entertainment. Before they dispersed he had to bring out his tablets to make notes of his engagements. He stood on the top of the steps above the palm-court to wish them good-bye, leaning on his stick. Helene turned back and waved her hand.
“He is unchanged,” she murmured, “yet I fear that there must be trouble.”
“Why? He seemed cheerful enough,” her husband remarked.
She dropped her voice a little.
“Lucille is in London. She is staying at Dorset House.”
Mr. Sabin was deep in thought. He sat in an easy-chair with his back to the window, his hands crossed upon his stick, his eyes fixed upon the fire. Duson was moving noiselessly about the room, cutting the morning’s supply of newspapers and setting them out upon the table. His master was in a mood which he had been taught to respect. It was Mr. Sabin who broke the silence.
“Duson!”
“Your Grace!”
“I have always, as you know, ignored your somewhat anomalous position as the servant of one man and the slave of a society. The questions which I am about to ask you you can answer or not, according to your own apprehensions of what is due to each.”
“I thank your Grace!”
“My departure from America seemed to incite the most violent opposition on the part of your friends. As you know, it was with a certain amount of difficulty that I reached this country. Now, however, I am left altogether alone. I have not received a single warning letter. My comings and goings, although purposely devoid of the slightest secrecy, are absolutely undisturbed. Yet I have some reason to believe that your mistress is in London.”
“Your Grace will pardon me,” Duson said, “but there is outside a gentleman waiting to see you to whom you might address the same questions with better results, for compared with him I know nothing. It is Monsieur Felix.”
“Why have you kept him waiting?” Mr. Sabin asked.
“Your Grace was much absorbed,” Duson answered.
Felix was smoking a cigarette, and Mr. Sabin greeted him with a certain grim cordiality.
“Is this permitted—this visit?” he asked, himself selecting a cigarette and motioning his guest to a chair.
“It is even encouraged,” Felix answered.
“You have perhaps some message?”
“None.”
“I am glad to see you,” Mr. Sabin said. “Just now I am a little puzzled. I will put the matter to you. You shall answer or not, at your own discretion.”
“I am ready,” Felix declared.
“You know the difficulty with which I escaped from America,” Mr. Sabin continued. “Every means which ingenuity could suggest seemed brought to bear against me. And every movement was directed, if not from here, from some place in Europe. Well, I arrived here four days ago. I live quite openly, I have even abjured to some extent my incognito. Yet I have not received even a warning letter. I am left absolutely undisturbed.”
Felix looked at him thoughtfully.
“And what do you deduce from this?” he asked.
“I do not like it,” Mr. Sabin answered drily.
“After all,” Felix remarked, “it is to some extent natural. The very openness of your life here makes interference with you more difficult, and as to warning letters—well, you have proved the uselessness of them.”
“Perhaps,” Mr. Sabin answered. “At the same time, if I were a superstitious person I should consider this inaction ominous.”
“You must take account also,” Felix said, “of the difference in the countries. In England the police system, if not the most infallible in the world, is certainly the most incorruptible. There was never a country in which security of person and life was so keenly watched over as here. In America, up to a certain point, a man is expected to look after himself. The same feeling does not prevail here.”
Mr. Sabin assented.
“And therefore,” he remarked, “for the purposes of your friends I should consider this a difficult and unpromising country in which to work.”
“Other countries, other methods!” Felix remarked laconically.
“Exactly! It is the new methods which I am anxious to discover,” Mr. Sabin said. “No glimmering of them as yet has been vouchsafed to me. Yet I believe that I am right in assuming that for the moment London is the headquarters of your friends, and that Lucille is here?”
“If that is meant for a question,” Felix said, “I may not answer it.”
Mr. Sabin nodded.
“Yet,” he suggested, “your visit has an object. To discover my plans perhaps! You are welcome to them.”
Felix thoughtfully knocked the ashes off his cigarette.
“My visit had an object,” he admitted, “but it was a personal one. I am not actually concerned in the doings of those whom you have called my friends.”
“We are alone,” Mr. Sabin reminded him. “My time is yours.”
“You and I,” Felix said, “have had our periods of bitter enmity. With your marriage to Lucille these, so far as I am concerned, ended for ever. I will even admit that in my younger days I was prejudiced against you. That has passed away. You have been all your days a bold and unscrupulous schemer, but ends have at any rate been worthy ones. To-day I am able to regard you with feelings of friendliness. You are the husband of my dear sister, and for years I know that you made her very happy. I ask you, will you believe in this statement of my attitude towards you?”
“I do not for a single moment doubt it,” Mr. Sabin answered.
“You will regard the advice which I am going to offer as disinterested?”
“Certainly!”
“Then I offer it to you earnestly, and with my whole heart. Take the next steamer and go back to America.”
“And leave Lucille? Go without making any effort to see her?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Sabin was for a moment very serious indeed. The advice given in such a manner was full of forebodings to him. The lines from the corners of his mouth seemed graven into his face.
“Felix,” he said slowly, “I am sometimes conscious of the fact that I am passing into that period of life which we call old age. My ambitions are dead, my energies are weakened. For many years I have toiled—the time has come for rest. Of all the great passions which I have felt there remains but one—Lucille. Life without her is worth nothing to me. I am weary of solitude, I am weary of everything except Lucille. How then can I listen to such advice? For me it must be Lucille, or that little journey into the mists, from which one does not return.”
Felix was silent. The pathos of this thing touched him.
“I will not dispute the right of those who have taken her from me,” Mr. Sabin continued, “but I want her back. She is necessary to me. My purse, my life, my brains are there to be thrown into the scales. I will buy her, or fight for her, or rejoin their ranks myself. But I want her back.”
Still Felix was silent. He was looking steadfastly into the fire.
“You have heard me,” Mr. Sabin said.
“I have heard you,” Felix answered. “My advice stands.”
“I know now,” Mr. Sabin said, “that I have a hard task before me. They shall have me for a friend or an enemy. I can still make myself felt as either. You have nothing more to say?”
“Nothing!”
“Then let us part company,” Mr. Sabin said, “or talk of something more cheerful. You depress me, Felix. Let Duson bring us wine. You look like a death’s head.”
Felix roused himself.
“You will go your own way,” he said. “Now that you have chosen I will tell you this. I am glad. Yes, let Duson bring wine. I will drink to your health and to your success. There have been times when men have performed miracles. I shall drink to that miracle.”
Duson brought also a letter, which Mr. Sabin, with a nod towards Felix, opened. It was from Helene.
“15 Park Lane, London,“Thursday Morning.“My DEAR UNCLE,—“I want you to come to luncheon to-day. The Princess de Catelan ishere, and I am expecting also Mr. Brott, the Home Secretary—ourone great politician, you know. Many people say that he is themost interesting man in England, and must be our next Prime Minister.Such people interest you, I know. Do come.“Yours sincerely,“HELENE.”
Mr. Sabin repeated the name to himself as he stood for a moment with the letter in his hand.
“Brott! What a name for a statesman! Well, here is your health, Felix. I do not often drink wine in the morning, but—”
He broke off in the middle of his sentence. The glass which Felix had been in the act of raising to his lips lay shattered upon the floor, and a little stream of wine trickled across the carpet. Felix himself seemed scarcely conscious of the disaster. His cheeks were white, and he leaned across the table towards Mr. Sabin.
“What name did you say—what name?”
Mr. Sabin referred again to the letter which he held in his hand.
“Brott!” he repeated. “He is Home Secretary, I believe.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Nothing,” Mr. Sabin answered. “My niece, the Countess of Camperdown, asks me to meet him to-day at luncheon. Explain yourself, my young friend. There is a fresh glass by your side.”
Felix poured himself out a glass and drank it off. But he remained silent.
“Well?”
Felix picked up his gloves and stick.
“You are asked to meet Mr. Brott at luncheon to-day?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going?”
“Certainly!”
Felix nodded.
“Very good,” he said. “I should advise you to cultivate his acquaintance. He is a very extraordinary man.”
“Come, Felix,” Mr. Sabin said. “You owe me something more lucid in the way of explanations. Who is he?”
“A statesman—successful, ambitious. He expects to be Prime Minister.”
“And what have I to do with him, or he with me?” Mr. Sabin asked quietly.
Felix shook his head.
“I cannot tell you,” he said. “Yet I fancy that you and he may some time be drawn together.”
Mr. Sabin asked no more questions, but he promptly sat down and accepted his niece’s invitation. When he looked round Felix had gone. He rang the bell for Duson and handed him the note.
“My town clothes, Duson,” he ordered. “I am lunching out.”
The man bowed and withdrew. Mr. Sabin remained for a few moments in deep thought.
“Brott!” he repeated. “Brott! It is a singular name.”
So this was the man! Mr. Sabin did not neglect his luncheon, nor was he ever for a moment unmindful of the grey-headed princess who chatted away by his side with all the vivacity of her race and sex. But he watched Mr. Brott.
A man this! Mr. Sabin was a judge, and he appraised him rightly. He saw through that courteous geniality of tone and gesture; the ready-made smile, although it seemed natural enough, did not deceive him. Underneath was a man of iron, square-jawed, nervous, forceful. Mr. Brott was probably at that time the ablest politician of either party in the country. Mr. Sabin knew it. He found himself wondering exactly at what point of their lives this man and he would come into contact.
After luncheon Helene brought them together.
“I believe,” she said to Mr. Brott, “that you have never met my UNCLE. May I make you formally acquainted? UNCLE, this is Mr. Brott, whom you must know a great deal about even though you have been away for so long—the Duc de Souspennier.”
The two men bowed and Helene passed on. Mr. Sabin leaned upon his stick and watched keenly for any sign in the other’s face. If he expected to find it he was disappointed. Either this man had no knowledge of who he was, or those things which were to come between them were as yet unborn.
They strolled together after the other guests into the winter gardens, which were the envy of every hostess in London. Mr. Sabin lit a cigarette, Mr. Brott regretfully declined. He neither smoked nor drank wine. Yet he was disposed to be friendly, and selected a seat where they were a little apart from the other guests.
“You at least,” he remarked, in answer to an observation of Mr. Sabin’s, “are free from the tyranny of politics. I am assuming, of course, that your country under its present form of government has lost its hold upon you.”
Mr. Sabin smiled.
“It is a doubtful boon,” he said. “It is true that I am practically an exile. Republican France has no need of me. Had I been a soldier I could still have remained a patriot. But for one whose leanings were towards politics, neither my father before me nor I could be of service to our country. You should be thankful,” he continued with a slight smile, “that you are an Englishman. No constitution in the world can offer so much to the politician who is strong enough and fearless enough.”
Mr. Brott glanced towards his twinkling eyes.
“Do you happen to know what my politics are?” he asked.
Mr. Sabin hesitated.
“Your views, I know, are advanced,” he said. “For the rest I have been abroad for years. I have lost touch a little with affairs in this country.”
“I am afraid,” Mr. Brott said, “that I shall shock you. You are an aristocrat of the aristocrats, I a democrat of the democrats. The people are the only masters whom I own. They first sent me to Parliament.”
“Yet,” Mr. Sabin remarked, “you are, I understand, in the Cabinet.”
Mr. Brott glanced for a moment around. The Prime Minister was somewhere in the winter gardens.
“That,” he declared, “is an accident. I happened to be the only man available who could do the work when Lord Kilbrooke died. I am telling you only what is an open secret. But I am afraid I am boring you. Shall we join the others?”
“Not unless you yourself are anxious to,” Mr. Sabin begged. “It is scarcely fair to detain you talking to an old man when there are so many charming women here. But I should be sorry for you to think me hidebound in my prejudices. You must remember that the Revolution decimated my family. It was a long time ago, but the horror of it is still a live thing.”
“Yet it was the natural outcome,” Mr. Brott said, “of the things which went before. Such hideous misgovernment as generations of your countrymen had suffered was logically bound to bring its own reprisal.”
“There is truth in what you say,” Mr. Sabin admitted. He did not want to talk about the French Revolution.
“You are a stranger in London, are you not?” Mr. Brott asked.
“I feel myself one,” Mr. Sabin answered. “I have been away for a few years, and I do not think that there is a city in the world where social changes are so rapid. I should perhaps except the cities of the country from which I have come. But then America is a universe of itself.”
For an instant Mr. Brott gave signs of the man underneath. The air of polite interest had left his face. He glanced swiftly and keenly at his companion. Mr. Sabin’s expression was immutable. It was he who scored, for he marked the change, whilst Mr. Brott could not be sure whether he had noticed it or not.
“You have been living in America, then?”
“For several years—yes.”
“It is a country,” Mr. Brott said, “which I am particularly anxious to visit. I see my chances, however, grow fewer and fewer as the years go by.”
“For one like yourself,” Mr. Sabin said, “whose instincts and sympathies are wholly with the democracy, a few months in America would be very well spent.”
“And you,” Mr. Brott remarked, “how did you get on with the people?”
Mr. Sabin traced a pattern with his stick upon the marble floor.
“I lived in the country,” he said, “I played golf and read and rested.”
“Were you anywhere near New York?” Mr. Brott asked.
“A few hours’ journey only,” Mr. Sabin answered. “My home was in a very picturesque part, near Lenox.”
Mr. Brott leaned a little forward.
“You perhaps know then a lady who spent some time in that neighbourhood—a Mrs. James Peterson. Her husband was, I believe, the American consul in Vienna.”
Mr. Sabin smiled very faintly. His face betrayed no more than a natural and polite interest. There was nothing to indicate the fact that his heart was beating like the heart of a young man, that the blood was rushing hot through his veins.
“Yes,” he said, “I know her very well. Is she in London?”
Mr. Brott hesitated. He seemed a little uncertain how to continue.
“To tell you the truth,” he said, “I believe that she has reasons for desiring her present whereabouts to remain unknown. I should perhaps not have mentioned her name at all. It was, I fancy, indiscreet of me. The coincidence of hearing you mention the name of the place where I believe she resided surprised my question. With your permission we will abandon the subject.”
“You disappoint me,” Mr. Sabin said quietly. “It would have given me much pleasure to have resumed my acquaintance with the lady in question.”
“You will, without doubt, have an opportunity,” Mr. Brott said, glancing at his watch and suddenly rising. “Dear me, how the time goes.”
He rose to his feet. Mr. Sabin also rose.
“Must I understand,” he said in a low tone, “that you are not at liberty to give me Mrs. Peterson’s address?”
“I am not at liberty even,” Mr. Brott answered, with a frown, “to mention her name. It will give me great pleasure, Duke, to better my acquaintance with you. Will you dine with me at the House of Commons one night next week?”
“I shall be charmed,” Mr. Sabin answered. “My address for the next few days is at the Carlton. I am staying there under my family name of Sabin—Mr. Sabin. It is a fancy of mine—it has been ever since I became an alien—to use my title as little as possible.”
Mr. Brott looked for a moment puzzled.
“Your pseudonym,” he remarked thoughtfully, “seems very familiar to me.”
Mr. Sabin shrugged his shoulders.
“It is a family name,” he remarked, “but I flattered myself that it was at least uncommon.”
“Fancy, no doubt,” Mr. Brott remarked, turning to make his adieux to his hostess.
Mr. Sabin joined a fresh group of idlers under the palms. Mr. Brott lingered over his farewells.
“Your UNCLE, Lady Camperdown,” he said, “is delightful. I enjoy meeting new types, and he represents to me most perfectly the old order of French aristocracy.”
“I am glad,” Helene said, “that you found him interesting. I felt sure you would. In fact, I asked him especially to meet you.”
“You are the most thoughtful of hostesses,” he assured her. “By the bye, your UNCLE has just told me the name by which he is known at the hotel. Mr. Sabin! Sabin! It recalls something to my mind. I cannot exactly remember what.”
She smiled upon him. People generally forgot things when Helene smiled.
“It is an odd fancy of his to like his title so little,” she remarked. “At heart no one is prouder of their family and antecedents. I have heard him say, though, that an exile had better leave behind him even his name.”
“Sabin!” Mr. Brott repeated. “Sabin!”
“It is an old family name,” she murmured.
His face suddenly cleared. She knew that he had remembered. But he took his leave with no further reference to it.
“Sabin!” he repeated to himself when alone in his carriage. “That was the name of the man who was supposed to be selling plans to the German Government. Poor Renshaw was in a terrible stew about it. Sabin! An uncommon name.”
He had ordered the coachman to drive to the House of Commons. Suddenly he pulled the check-string.
“Call at Dorset House,” he directed.
Mr. Sabin lingered till nearly the last of the guests had gone. Then he led Helene once more into the winter gardens.
“May I detain you for one moment’s gossip?” he asked. “I see your carriage at the door.”
She laughed.
“It is nothing,” she declared. “I must drive in the Park for an hour. One sees one’s friends, and it is cool and refreshing after these heated rooms. But at any time. Talk to me as long as you will, and then I will drop you at the Carlton.”
“It is of Brott!” he remarked. “Ah, I thank you, I will smoke. Your husband’s taste in cigarettes is excellent.”
“Perhaps mine!” she laughed.
Mr. Sabin shrugged his shoulders.
“In either case I congratulate you. This man Brott. He interests me.”
“He interests every one. Why not? He is a great personality.”
“Politically,” Mr. Sabin said, “the gauge of his success is of course the measure of the man. But he himself—what manner of a man is he?”
She tapped with her fingers upon the little table by their side.
“He is rich,” she said, “and an uncommon mixture of the student and the man of society. He refuses many more invitations than he accepts, he entertains very seldom but very magnificently. He has never been known to pay marked attentions to any woman, even the scandal of the clubs has passed him by. What else can I say about him, I wonder?” she continued reflectively. “Nothing, I think, except this. He is a strong man. You know that that counts for much.”
Mr. Sabin was silent. Perhaps he was measuring his strength in some imagined encounter with this man. Something in his face alarmed Helene. She suddenly leaned forward and looked at him more closely.
“UNCLE,” she exclaimed in a low voice, “there is something on your mind. Do not tell me that once more you are in the maze, that again you have schemes against this country.”
He smiled at her sadly enough, but she was reassured.
“You need have no fear,” he told her. “With politics—I have finished. Why I am here, what I am here for I will tell you very soon. It is to find one whom I have lost—and who is dear to me. Forgive me if for to-day I say no more. Come, if you will you shall drive me to my hotel.”
He offered his arm with the courtly grace which he knew so well how to assume. Together they passed out to her carriage.
“After all,” Lady Carey sighed, throwing down a racing calendar and lighting a cigarette, “London is the only thoroughly civilized Anglo-Saxon capital in the world. Please don’t look at me like that, Duchess. I know—this is your holy of holies, but the Duke smokes here—I’ve seen him. My cigarettes are very tiny and very harmless.”
The Duchess, who wore gold-rimmed spectacles, and was a person of weight in the councils of the Primrose League, went calmly on with her knitting.
“My dear Muriel,” she said, “if my approval or disapproval was of the slightest moment to you, it is not your smoking of which I should first complain. I know, however, that you consider yourself a privileged person. Pray do exactly as you like, but don’t drop the ashes upon the carpet.”
Lady Carey laughed softly.
“I suppose I am rather a thorn in your side as a relative,” she remarked. “You must put it down to the roving blood of my ancestors. I could no more live the life of you other women than I could fly. I must have excitement, movement, all the time.”
A tall, heavily built man, who had been reading some letters at the other end of the room, came sauntering up to them.
“Well,” he said, “you assuredly live up to your principles, for you travel all over the world as though it were one vast playground.”
“And sometimes,” she remarked, “my journeys are not exactly successful. I know that that is what you are dying to say.”
“On the contrary,” he said, “I do not blame you at all for this last affair. You brought Lucille here, which was excellent. Your failure as regards Mr. Sabin is scarcely to be fastened upon you. It is Horser whom we hold responsible for that.”
She laughed.
“Poor Horser! It was rather rough to pit a creature like that against Souspennier.”
The man shrugged his shoulders.
“Horser,” he said, “may not be brilliant, but he had a great organisation at his back. Souspennier was without friends or influence. The contest should scarcely have been so one-sided. To tell you the truth, my dear Muriel, I am more surprised that you yourself should have found the task beyond you.”
Lady Carey’s face darkened.
“It was too soon after the loss of Lucille,” she said, “and besides, there was his vanity to be reckoned with. It was like a challenge to him, and he had taken up the glove before I returned to New York.”
The Duchess looked up from her work.
“Have you had any conversation with my husband, Prince?” she asked.
The Prince of Saxe Leinitzer twirled his heavy moustache and sank into a chair between the two women.
“I have had a long talk with him,” he announced. “And the result?” the Duchess asked.
“The result I fear you would scarcely consider satisfactory,” the Prince declared. “The moment that I hinted at the existence of—er—conditions of which you, Duchess, are aware, he showed alarm, and I had all that I could do to reassure him. I find it everywhere amongst your aristocracy—this stubborn confidence in the existence of the reigning order of things, this absolute detestation of anything approaching intrigue.”
“My dear man, I hope you don’t include me,” Lady Carey exclaimed.
“You, Lady Muriel,” he answered, with a slow smile, “are an exception to all rules. No, you are a rule by yourself.”
“To revert to the subject then for a moment,” the Duchess said stiffly. “You have made no progress with the Duke?”
“None whatever,” Saxe Leinitzer admitted. “He was sufficiently emphatic to inspire me with every caution. Even now I have doubts as to whether I have altogether reassured him. I really believe, dear Duchess, that we should be better off if you could persuade him to go and live upon his estates.”
The Duchess smiled grimly.
“Whilst the House of Lords exists,” she remarked, “you will never succeed in keeping Algernon away from London. He is always on the point of making a speech, although he never does it.”
“I have heard of that speech,” Lady Carey drawled, from her low seat. “It is to be a thoroughly enlightening affair. All the great social questions are to be permanently disposed of. The Prime Minister will come on his knees and beg Algernon to take his place.”
The Duchess looked up over her knitting.
“Algernon is at least in earnest,” she remarked drily. “And he has the good conscience of a clean living and honest man.”
“What an unpleasant possession it must be,” Lady Carey remarked sweetly. “I disposed of my conscience finally many years ago. I am not sure, but I believe that it was the Prince to whom I entrusted the burying of it. By the bye, Lucille will be here directly, I suppose. Is she to be told of Souspennier’s arrival in London?”
“I imagine,” the Prince said, with knitted brows, “that it will not be wise to keep it from her. It is impossible to conceal her whereabouts, and the papers will very shortly acquaint her with his.”
“And,” Lady Carey asked, “how does the little affair progress?”
“Admirably,” the Prince answered. “Already some of the Society papers are beginning to chatter about the friendship existing between a Cabinet Minister and a beautiful Hungarian lady of title, etc., etc. The fact of it is that Brott is in deadly earnest. He gives himself away every time. If Lucille has not lost old cleverness she will be able to twist him presently around her little finger.”
“If only some one would twist him on the rack,” the Duchess murmured vindictively. “I tried to read one of his speeches the other day. It was nothing more nor less than blasphemy. I do not think that I am naturally a cruel woman, but I would hand such men over to the public executioner with joy.”
Lucille came in, as beautiful as ever, but with tired lines under her full dark eyes. She sank into a low chair with listless grace.
“Reginald Brott again, I suppose,” she remarked curtly. “I wish the man had never existed.”
“That is a very cruel speech, Lucille,” the Prince said, with a languishing glance towards her, “for if it had not been for Brott we should never have dared to call you out from your seclusion.”
“Then more heartily than ever,” Lucille declared, “I wish the man had never been born. You cannot possibly flatter yourself, Prince, that your summons was a welcome one.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“I shall never, be able to believe,” he said, “that the Countess Radantz was able to do more than support existence in a small American town—without society, with no scope for her ambitions, detached altogether from the whole civilized world.”
“Which only goes to prove, Prince,” Lucille remarked contemptuously, “that you do not understand me in the least. As a place of residence Lenox would compare very favourably with—say Homburg, and for companionship you forget my husband. I never met the woman yet who did not prefer the company of one man, if only it were the right one, to the cosmopolitan throng we call society.”
“It sounds idyllic, but very gauche,” Lady Carey remarked drily. “In effect it is rather a blow on the cheek for you, Prince. Of course you know that the Prince is in love with you, Lucille?”
“I wish he were,” she answered, looking lazily out of the window.
He bent over her.
“Why?”
“I would persuade him to send me home again,” she answered coldly.
The Duchess looked up from her knitting. “Your husband has saved you the journey,” she remarked, “even if you were able to work upon the Prince’s good nature to such an extent.”
Lucille started round eagerly.
“What do you mean?” she cried.
“Your husband is in London,” the Duchess answered.
Lucille laughed with the gaiety of a child. Like magic the lines from beneath her eyes seemed to have vanished. Lady Carey watched her with pale cheeks and malevolent expression.
“Come, Prince,” she cried mockingly, “it was only a week ago that you assured me that my husband could not leave America. Already he is in London. I must go to see him. Oh, I insist upon it.”
Saxe Leinitzer glanced towards the Duchess. She laid down her knitting.
“My dear Countess,” she said firmly, “I beg that you will listen to me carefully. I speak to you for your own good, and I believe I may add, Prince, that I speak with authority.”
“With authority!” the Prince echoed.
“We all,” the Duchess continued, “look upon your husband’s arrival as inopportune and unfortunate. We are all agreed that you must be kept apart. Certain obligations have been laid upon you. You could not possibly fulfil them with a husband at your elbow. The matter will be put plainly before your husband, as I am now putting it before you. He will be warned not to attempt to see or communicate with you as your husband. If he or you disobey the consequences will be serious.”
Lucille shrugged her shoulders.
“It is easy to talk,” she said, “but you will not find it easy to keep Victor away when he has found out where I am.”
The Prince intervened.
“We have no objection to your meeting,” he said, “but it must be as acquaintances. There must be no intermission or slackening in your task, and that can only be properly carried out by the Countess Radantz and from Dorset House.”
Lucille smothered her disappointment.
“Dear me,” she said. “You will find Victor a little hard to persuade.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then the Prince spoke slowly, and watching carefully the effect of his words upon Lucille.
“Countess,” he said, “it has been our pleasure to make of your task so far as possible a holiday. Yet perhaps it is wiser to remind you that underneath the glove is an iron hand. We do not often threaten, but we brook no interference. We have the means to thwart it. I bear no ill-will to your husband, but to you I say this. If he should be so mad as to defy us, to incite you to disobedience, he must pay the penalty.”
A servant entered.
“Mr. Reginald Brott is in the small drawing-room, your Grace,” he announced. “He enquired for the Countess Radantz.”
Lucille rose. When the servant had disappeared she turned round for a moment, and faced the Prince. A spot of colour burned in her cheeks, her eyes were bright with anger.
“I shall remember your words, Prince,” she said. “So far from mine being, however, a holiday task, it is one of the most wearisome and unpleasant I ever undertook. And in return for your warnings let me tell you this. If you should bring any harm upon my husband you shall answer for it all your days to me. I will do my duty. Be careful that you do not exceed yours.”
She swept out of the room. Lady Carey laughed mockingly at the Prince.
“Poor Ferdinand!” she exclaimed.