"_Perfide_!" adding with a disdainful toss of the head, such as only the
dames of the _demi-monde_ know how to give, "Keep your secret! What
care I?" Then changing tone, "_Mon Dieu_! France--dear France! Why
did I ever leave you?"
"Because your dear France became too dear to live in."
"Clever _double entendre_! No doubt you think it witty! Dear, or not,
better a garret there--a room in its humblest _entresol_ than this. I'd
rather serve in a cigar shop--keep a _gargot_ in the Faubourg
Montmartre--than lead such a _triste_ life as we're now doing. Living
in this wretched kennel of a house, that threatens to tumble on our
heads!"
"How would you like to live in that over yonder?"
He nods towards Llangorren Court.
"You are merry, Monsieur. But your jests are out of place--in presence
of the misery around us."
"You may some day," he goes on, without heeding her observation.
"Yes; when the sky falls we may catch larks. You seem to forget that
Mademoiselle Wynn is younger than either of us, and by the natural laws
of life will outlive both. Must, unless she break her neck in the
hunting field, get drowned out of a boat, or meet _some other
mischance_."
She pronounces the last three words slowly and with marked emphasis,
pausing after she has spoken them, and looking fixedly in his face, as
if to note their effect.
Taking the meerschaum from his mouth, he returns her look--almost
shuddering as his eyes meet hers, and he reads in them a glance such as
might have been given by Messalina, or the murderess of Duncan.
Hardened as his conscience has become through a long career of sin, it
is yet tender in comparison with hers. And he knows it, knowing her
history, or enough of it--her nature as well--to make him think her
capable of anything, even the crime her speech seems to point to--
neither more nor less than--
He dares not think, let alone pronounce, the word. He is not yet up to
that; though day by day, as his desperate fortunes press upon him, his
thoughts are being familiarised with something akin to it--a dread, dark
design, still vague, but needing not much to assume shape, and tempt to
execution. And that the tempter is by his side he is more than half
conscious. It is not the first time for him to listen to fell speech
from those fair lips.
To-day he would rather shun allusion to a subject so grave, yet so
delicate. He has spent part of the preceding night at the Welsh Harp--
the tavern spoken of by Wingate--and his nerves are unstrung, yet not
recovered from the revelry. Instead of asking her what she means by
"some other mischance," he but remarks, with an air of careless
indifference,--
"True, Olympe; unless something of that sort were to happen, there seems
no help for us but to resign ourselves to patience, and live on
expectations."
"Starve on them, you mean?" This in a tone, and with a shrug, which
seem to convey reproach for its weakness.
"Well, _cherie_;" he rejoins, "we can at least feast our eyes on the
source whence our fine fortunes are to come. And a pretty sight it is,
isn't it? _Un coup d'oeil charmant_!"
He again turns his eyes upon Llangorren, as also she, and for some time
both are silent.
Attractive at any time, the Court is unusually so on this same summer's
day. For the sun, lighting up the verdant lawn, also shines upon a
large white tent there erected--a marquee--from whose ribbed roof
projects a signal staff, with flag floating at its peak. They have had
no direct information of what all this is for--since to Lewin Murdock
and his wife the society of Herefordshire is tabooed. But they can
guess from the symbols that it is to be a garden party, or something of
the sort, there often given. While they are still gazing its special
kind is declared, by figures appearing upon the lawn and taking stand in
groups before the tent. There are ladies gaily attired--in the distance
looking like bright butterflies--some dressed _a la Diane_, with bows in
hand, and quivers slung by their sides, the feathered shafts showing
over their shoulders; a proportionate number of gentlemen attendant;
while liveried servants stride to and fro erecting the ringed targets.
Murdock himself cares little for such things. He has had his surfeit of
fashionable life; not only sipped its sweets, but drank its dregs of
bitterness. He regards Llangorren with something in his mind more
substantial than its sports and pastimes.
With different thoughts looks the Parisian upon them--in her heart a
chagrin only known to those whose zest for the world's pleasure is of
keenest edge, yet checked and baffled from indulgence--ambitions
uncontrollable, but never to be attained. As Satan gazed back when
hurled out of the Garden of Eden, so she at that scene upon the lawn of
Llangorren. No _jardin_ of Paris--not the Bois itself--ever seemed to
her so attractive as those grounds, with that aristocratic gathering--a
heaven none of her kind can enter, and but few of her country.
After long regarding it with envy in her eyes, and spleen in her soul--
tantalised, almost to torture--she faces towards her husband, saying--
"And you've told me, between all that and us, there's but one life--"
"Two!" interrupts a voice--not his. Both turning, startled,
behold--_Father Rogier_!
Volume One, Chapter XII.