"Come, girls! It's time for you to be dressing. The gentlemen are due
in half an hour."
The speech was made in a handsome apartment of the Hotel de Louvre, and
addressed to two young ladies, in elegant _dishabille_, one of them
seated in an easy chair, the other lying full length upon a sofa.
A negress, with chequered _toque_, was standing near the door, summoned
in to assist the young ladies in their toilet.
The reader may recognise Mrs Girdwood, daughter, niece, and servant.
It is months since we have met them. They have _done_ the European tour
up the Rhine, over the Alps, into Italy. They are returning by way of
Paris, into which capital they have but lately entered; and are still
engaged in its exploration.
"See Paris last," was the advice given them by a Parisian gentleman,
whose acquaintance they had made; and when Mrs Girdwood, who smattered
a little French, asked, _Pourquoi_? she was told that by seeing it first
she would care for nothing beyond.
She had taken the Frenchman's hint, and was now completing the
programme.
Though she had met German barons and Italian counts by the score, her
girls were still unengaged. Nothing suitable had offered itself in the
shape of a title. It remained to be seen what Paris would produce.
The gentlemen "due in half an hour" were old acquaintances; two of them
her countrymen, who, making the same tour, had turned up repeatedly on
the route, sometimes travelling in her company. They were Messrs. Lucas
and Spiller.
She thought nothing of these. But there was a third expected, and
looked for with more interest; one who had only called upon them the day
before, and whom they had not seen since the occasion of his having
dined with them in their Fifth Avenue house in New York.
It was the lost lord.
On his visit of yesterday everything had been explained; how he had been
detained in the States on diplomatic business; how he had arrived in
London after their departure for the Continent, with apologies for not
writing to them--ignorant of their whereabouts.
On Mr Swinton's part this last was a lie, as well as the first. In the
chronicles of the time he had full knowledge of where they might have
been found. He had studiously consulted the American newspaper
published in London, which registered the arrivals and departures of
transatlantic tourists, and knew to an hour when Mrs Girdwood and her
girls left Cologne, crossed the Alps, stood upon the Bridge of Sighs, or
climbed to the burning crater of Vesuvius.
And he had sighed and burned to be along with them, but could not.
There was something needed for the accomplishment of his wishes--cash.
It was only when he saw recorded the Girdwood arrival in Paris, that he
was at length enabled to scrape together sufficient for the expenses of
a passage to, and short sojourn in, the French capital; and this only
after a propitious adventure in which he had been assisted by the smiles
of the goddess Fortune, and the beauty of his beloved Fan. Fan had been
left behind in the London lodging. And by her own consent. She was
satisfied to stay, even with the slender stipend her husband could
afford to leave for her maintenance. In London the pretty horse-breaker
would be at home.
"You have only half an hour, my dears!" counselled Mrs Girdwood, to
stimulate the girls towards getting ready.
Cornelia, who occupied the chair, rose to her feet, laying aside the
crochet on which she had been engaged, and going off to be dressed by
Keziah.
Julia, on the sofa, simply yawned.
Only at a third admonition from her mother, she flung the French novel
she had been reading upon the floor, and sat up.
"Bother the gentlemen?" she exclaimed, repeating the yawn with arms
upraised. "I wish, ma, you hadn't asked them to come. I'd rather have
stayed in all day, and finished that beautiful story I've got into.
Heaven bless that dear Georges Sand! Woman that she is, she should have
been a man. She knows them as if she were one; their pretensions and
treachery. Oh, mother! when you were determined on having a child, why
did you make it a daughter? I'd give the world to have been your son!"
"Fie, fie, Jule! Don't let any one hear you talk in that silly way!"
"I don't care whether they do or not. I don't care if all Paris, all
France, all the world knows it. I want to be a man, and to have a man's
power."
"Pff, child! A man's power! There's no such thing in existence, only
in outward show. It has never been exerted, without a woman's will at
the back of it. That is the source of all power."
The storekeeper's relict was reasoning from experience. She knew whose
will had made her the mistress of a house in the Fifth Avenue; and given
her scores, hundreds, of other advantages, she had never credited to the
sagacity of her husband.
"To be a woman," she continued, "one who knows man and how to manage
him, that is enough for me. Ah! Jule, if I'd only had your
opportunities, I might this day have been anything."
"Opportunities! What are they?"
"Your beauty for one."
"Oh, ma! you had that. You still show it."
To Mrs Girdwood the reply was not unpleasant. She had not lost conceit
in that personal appearance that had subdued the heart of the rich
retailer; and, but for a disinheriting clause in his will, might have
thought of submitting her charms to a second market. But although this
restrained her from speculating on matrimony, she was still good for
flattery and flirtation.
"Well," she said, "if I had good looks, what mattered they without
money? You have both, my child."
"And both don't appear to help me to a husband--such as you want me to
have, mamma."
"It will be your own fault if they don't. His lordship would never have
renewed his acquaintance with us if he didn't mean something. From what
he hinted to me yesterday, I'm sure he has come to Paris on our account.
He almost said as much. It is you, Julia, it is you."
Julia came very near expressing a wish that his lordship was at the
bottom of the sea; but knowing how it would annoy her mother, she kept
the sentiment to herself. She had just time to get enrobed for the
street; as the gentleman was announced. He was still plain Mr Swinton,
still travelling _incognito_, on "seqwet diplomatic business for the
Bwitish Government." So had he stated in confidence to Mrs Girdwood.
Shortly after, Messrs. Lucas and Spiller made their appearance, and the
party was complete.
It was only to be a promenade on the Boulevards, to end in a little
dinner in the Cafe Riche, Royale, or the Maison Dore.
And with this simple programme, the six sallied forth from the Hotel de
Louvre.