He found them in their sitting-room with their bonnets on, as if they
had just come in. Mr. Power was also present, reading a newspaper, but
Mrs. Goodman had gone out to a neighbouring shop, in the windows of
which she had seen something which attracted her fancy.
When De Stancy entered, Paula’s thoughts seemed to revert to Dare, for
almost at once she asked him in what direction the youth was travelling.
With some hesitation De Stancy replied that he believed Mr. Dare was
returning to England after a spring trip for the improvement of his
mind.
‘A very praiseworthy thing to do,’ said Paula. ‘What places has he
visited?’
‘Those which afford opportunities for the study of the old masters, I
believe,’ said De Stancy blandly. ‘He has also been to Turin, Genoa,
Marseilles, and so on.’ The captain spoke the more readily to her
questioning in that he divined her words to be dictated, not by any
suspicions of his relations with Dare, but by her knowledge of Dare as
the draughtsman employed by Somerset.
‘Has he been to Nice?’ she next demanded. ‘Did he go there in company
with my architect?’
‘I think not.’
‘Has he seen anything of him? My architect Somerset once employed him.
They know each other.’
‘I think he saw Somerset for a short time.’
Paula was silent. ‘Do you know where this young man Dare is at the
present moment?’ she asked quickly.
De Stancy said that Dare was staying at the same hotel with themselves,
and that he believed he was downstairs.
‘I think I can do no better than send for him,’ said she. ‘He may be
able to throw some light upon the matter of that telegram.’
She rang and despatched the waiter for the young man in question, De
Stancy almost visibly trembling for the result. But he opened the town
directory which was lying on a table, and affected to be engrossed in
the names.
Before Dare was shown in she said to her uncle, ‘Perhaps you will speak
to him for me?’
Mr. Power, looking up from the paper he was reading, assented to her
proposition. Dare appeared in the doorway, and the waiter retired. Dare
seemed a trifle startled out of his usual coolness, the message having
evidently been unexpected, and he came forward somewhat uneasily.
‘Mr. Dare, we are anxious to know something of Miss Power’s architect;
and Captain De Stancy tells us you have seen him lately,’ said Mr. Power
sonorously over the edge of his newspaper.
Not knowing whether danger menaced or no, or, if it menaced, from what
quarter it was to be expected, Dare felt that honesty was as good as
anything else for him, and replied boldly that he had seen Mr. Somerset,
De Stancy continuing to cream and mantle almost visibly, in anxiety at
the situation of the speaker.
‘And where did you see him?’ continued Mr. Power.
‘In the Casino at Monte Carlo.’
‘How long did you see him?’
‘Only for half an hour. I left him there.’
Paula’s interest got the better of her reserve, and she cut in upon her
uncle: ‘Did he seem in any unusual state, or in trouble?’
‘He was rather excited,’ said Dare.
‘And can you remember when that was?’
Dare considered, looked at his pocket-book, and said that it was on the
evening of April the twenty-second.
The answer had a significance for Paula, De Stancy, and Charlotte, to
which Abner Power was a stranger. The telegraphic request for money,
which had been kept a secret from him by his niece, because of his
already unfriendly tone towards Somerset, arrived on the morning of the
twenty-third--a date which neighboured with painfully suggestive nicety
upon that now given by Dare.
She seemed to be silenced, and asked no more questions. Dare having
furbished himself up to a gentlemanly appearance with some of his recent
winnings, was invited to stay on awhile by Paula’s uncle, who, as became
a travelled man, was not fastidious as to company. Being a youth of the
world, Dare made himself agreeable to that gentleman, and afterwards
tried to do the same with Miss De Stancy. At this the captain, to whom
the situation for some time had been amazingly uncomfortable, pleaded
some excuse for going out, and left the room.
Dare continued his endeavours to say a few polite nothings to Charlotte
De Stancy, in the course of which he drew from his pocket his new silk
handkerchief. By some chance a card came out with the handkerchief, and
fluttered downwards. His momentary instinct was to make a grasp at the
card and conceal it: but it had already tumbled to the floor, where it
lay face upward beside Charlotte De Stancy’s chair.
It was neither a visiting nor a playing card, but one bearing a
photographic portrait of a peculiar nature. It was what Dare had
characterized as his best joke in speaking on the subject to Captain De
Stancy: he had in the morning put it ready in his pocket to give to the
captain, and had in fact held it in waiting between his finger and thumb
while talking to him in the Platz, meaning that he should make use of it
against his rival whenever convenient. But his sharp conversation with
that soldier had dulled his zest for this final joke at Somerset’s
expense, had at least shown him that De Stancy would not adopt the joke
by accepting the photograph and using it himself, and determined him to
lay it aside till a more convenient time. So fully had he made up his
mind on this course, that when the photograph slipped out he did not at
first perceive the appositeness of the circumstance, in putting into his
own hands the role he had intended for De Stancy; though it was asserted
afterwards that the whole scene was deliberately planned. However, once
having seen the accident, he resolved to take the current as it served.
The card having fallen beside her, Miss De Stancy glanced over it, which
indeed she could not help doing. The smile that had previously hung upon
her lips was arrested as if by frost and she involuntarily uttered a
little distressed cry of ‘O!’ like one in bodily pain.
Paula, who had been talking to her uncle during this interlude, started
round, and wondering what had happened, inquiringly crossed the room
to poor Charlotte’s side, asking her what was the matter. Charlotte had
regained self-possession, though not enough to enable her to reply, and
Paula asked her a second time what had made her exclaim like that. Miss
De Stancy still seemed confused, whereupon Paula noticed that her eyes
were continually drawn as if by fascination towards the photograph on
the floor, which, contrary to his first impulse, Dare, as has been
said, now seemed in no hurry to regain. Surmising at last that the card,
whatever it was, had something to do with the exclamation, Paula picked
it up.
It was a portrait of Somerset; but by a device known in photography
the operator, though contriving to produce what seemed to be a perfect
likeness, had given it the distorted features and wild attitude of a man
advanced in intoxication. No woman, unless specially cognizant of such
possibilities, could have looked upon it and doubted that the photograph
was a genuine illustration of a customary phase in the young man’s
private life.
Paula observed it, thoroughly took it in; but the effect upon her was by
no means clear. Charlotte’s eyes at once forsook the portrait to dwell
on Paula’s face. It paled a little, and this was followed by a hot
blush--perceptibly a blush of shame. That was all. She flung the picture
down on the table, and moved away.
It was now Mr. Power’s turn. Anticipating Dare, who was advancing with
a deprecatory look to seize the photograph, he also grasped it. When he
saw whom it represented he seemed both amused and startled, and after
scanning it a while handed it to the young man with a queer smile.
‘I am very sorry,’ began Dare in a low voice to Mr. Power. ‘I fear I was
to blame for thoughtlessness in not destroying it. But I thought it was
rather funny that a man should permit such a thing to be done, and that
the humour would redeem the offence.’
‘In you, for purchasing it,’ said Paula with haughty quickness from the
other side of the room. ‘Though probably his friends, if he has any,
would say not in him.’
There was silence in the room after this, and Dare, finding himself
rather in the way, took his leave as unostentatiously as a cat that has
upset the family china, though he continued to say among his apologies
that he was not aware Mr. Somerset was a personal friend of the ladies.
Of all the thoughts which filled the minds of Paula and Charlotte De
Stancy, the thought that the photograph might have been a fabrication
was probably the last. To them that picture of Somerset had all the
cogency of direct vision. Paula’s experience, much less Charlotte’s, had
never lain in the fields of heliographic science, and they would as soon
have thought that the sun could again stand still upon Gibeon, as
that it could be made to falsify men’s characters in delineating their
features. What Abner Power thought he himself best knew. He might have
seen such pictures before; or he might never have heard of them.
While pretending to resume his reading he closely observed Paula, as did
also Charlotte De Stancy; but thanks to the self-management which
was Miss Power’s as much by nature as by art, she dissembled whatever
emotion was in her.
‘It is a pity a professional man should make himself so ludicrous,’ she
said with such careless intonation that it was almost impossible,
even for Charlotte, who knew her so well, to believe her indifference
feigned.
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Power, since Charlotte did not speak: ‘it is what I
scarcely should have expected.’
‘O, I am not surprised!’ said Paula quickly. ‘You don’t know all.’ The
inference was, indeed, inevitable that if her uncle were made aware of
the telegram he would see nothing unlikely in the picture. ‘Well, you
are very silent!’ continued Paula petulantly, when she found that nobody
went on talking. ‘What made you cry out “O,” Charlotte, when Mr. Dare
dropped that horrid photograph?’
‘I don’t know; I suppose it frightened me,’ stammered the girl.
‘It was a stupid fuss to make before such a person. One would think you
were in love with Mr. Somerset.’
‘What did you say, Paula?’ inquired her uncle, looking up from the
newspaper which he had again resumed.
‘Nothing, Uncle Abner.’ She walked to the window, and, as if to tide
over what was plainly passing in their minds about her, she began to
make remarks on objects in the street. ‘What a quaint being--look,
Charlotte!’ It was an old woman sitting by a stall on the opposite side
of the way, which seemed suddenly to hit Paula’s sense of the humorous,
though beyond the fact that the dame was old and poor, and wore a white
handkerchief over her head, there was really nothing noteworthy about
her.
Paula seemed to be more hurt by what the silence of her companions
implied--a suspicion that the discovery of Somerset’s depravity was
wounding her heart--than by the wound itself. The ostensible ease with
which she drew them into a bye conversation had perhaps the defect
of proving too much: though her tacit contention that no love was in
question was not incredible on the supposition that affronted pride
alone caused her embarrassment. The chief symptom of her heart being
really tender towards Somerset consisted in her apparent blindness to
Charlotte’s secret, so obviously suggested by her momentary agitation.