THE arrival in Paris, where she was to pass some months,
of a friend of Damier's, Lady Surfex, a charming, capable woman whose
husband was his nearest friend, was the means of casting a further and
still more lurid light upon Claire's character and Madame Vicaud's past.
Damier wished to bring Madame Vicaud and Lady Surfex together. He had
plans, and was vastly amused to realize that they were of a quite
paternal character. These plans did not go beyond the thought that a
widening of Claire's life might be an excellent thing for her, and, as a
result, a happy thing for her mother. To see Claire well, safely,
happily married, would not this be the lifting of a problem from the
mother's heart? As yet he had not gone further and told himself that it
would leave the mother's heart freer for the contemplation of other
problems. Now Claire's chances of a prosperous marriage would certainly
be multiplied if he could bring around her and her mother a few such
friends as Lady Surfex. He spoke to her, on his first visit to her, of
the Vicauds, and of his wish that they might meet. "The charming Clara
Chanfrey!" Lady Surfex said. (With what a chime all allusions to Clara
Chanfrey always began, to end with such funereal tolling!) "Ah, you make
me feel how old I am becoming, for how often in my girlhood I heard my
mother speak of her! She always spoke severely. Mother belonged to the
old régime, you know--saw things steadily, and saw them whole, perhaps,
but rather narrowly, and only one thing at a time. She couldn't take in,
as it were, the extenuations of circumstance. And she was a great friend
of Lady Chanfrey's. Lady Chanfrey infected all her allies with her own
bitterness. But the memory of the daughter's charm came through it. She
was like her father, not like her mother. I never liked the little I
remember of Lady Chanfrey. But I have heard of Madame Vicaud since I
used to hear of her from mother, and, I am sorry to say, more and more
sadly."
"All I hear of her is sad," said Damier. "Every echo from her past is a
groan!"
"Poor woman!" Lady Surfex mused. "First the awful husband, and then the,
to say the least of it, trying daughter."