The Hon. Harold Dartmouth was bored. He had been in Paris three months
and it was his third winter. He was young. He possessed a liberal
allowance of good looks, money, and family prestige. Combining these
three conditions, he had managed to pretty thoroughly exhaust the
pleasures of the capital. At all events he believed he had exhausted
them, and he wanted a new sensation. He had "done" his London until it
was more flavorless than Paris, and he had dawdled more or less in the
various Courts of Europe. While in St. Petersburg he had inserted
a too curious finger into the Terrorist pie, and had come very
near making a prolonged acquaintance with the House of Preventative
Detention; but after being whisked safely out of the country under
cover of a friend's passport, he had announced himself cured of
further interest in revolutionary politics. The affair had made him
quite famous for a time, however; Krapotkin had sought him out and
warmly thanked him for his interest in the Russian Geysers, and begged
him to induce his father to abjure his peace policy and lend his hand
to the laudable breaking of Czarism's back. But Lord Cardingham, who
was not altogether ruled by his younger son, had declined to expend
his seductions upon Mr. Gladstone in the cause of a possible laying of
too heavy a rod upon England's back, and had recommended his erratic
son to let the barbarism of absolutism alone in the future, and try
his genius upon that of democracy. Dartmouth, accordingly, had spent
a winter in Washington as Secretary of Legation, and had entertained
himself by doling out such allowance of diplomatic love to the fair
American dames as had won him much biographical honor in the press
of the great republic. Upon his father's private admonition, that it
would be as well to generously resign his position in favor of some
more needy applicant, with a less complex heart-line and a slight
acquaintance with international law, he had, after a summer at
Newport, returned to Europe and again devoted himself to winning a
fame not altogether political. And now there was nothing left, and he
felt that fate had used him scurrilously. He was twenty-eight, and had
exhausted life. He had nothing left but to yawn through weary years
and wish he had never been born.
He clasped his hands behind his head and looked out on the brilliant
crowd from his chair in the Café de la Cascade in the Bois. He was
handsome, this blasé young Englishman, with a shapely head, poised
strongly upon a muscular throat. Neither beard nor moustache hid the
strong lines of the face. A high type, in spite of his career, his
face was a good deal more suggestive of passion than of sensuality.
He was tall, slight, and sinewy, and carried himself with the indolent
hauteur of a man of many grandfathers. And indeed, unless, perhaps,
that this plaything, the world, was too small, he had little to
complain of. Although a younger son, he had a large fortune in his own
right, left him by an adoring grandmother who had died shortly before
he had come of age, and with whom he had lived from infancy as adopted
son and heir. This grandmother was the one woman who had ever shone
upon his horizon whose disappearance he regretted; and he was wont
to remark that he never again expected to find anything beneath
a coiffure at once so brilliant, so fascinating, so clever, so
altogether "filling" as his lamented relative. If he ever did he would
marry and settle down as a highly respectable member of society, and
become an M.P. and the owner of a winner of the Derby; but until then
he would sigh away his tired life at the feet of beauty, Bacchus, or
chance.
"What is the matter, Hal?" asked Bective Hollington, coming up behind
him. "Yawning so early in the day?"
"Bored," replied Dartmouth, briefly. "Don't expect me to talk to you.
I haven't an idea left."
"My dear Harold, do not flatter yourself that I came to you in search
of ideas. I venture to break upon your sulky meditations in the cause
of friendship alone. If you will rouse yourself and walk to the window
you may enrich your sterile mind with an idea, possibly with ideas.
Miss Penrhyn will pass in a moment."
"The devil!"
"No, not the devil; Miss Penrhyn."
"And who the devil is Miss Penrhyn?"
"The new English, or rather, Welsh beauty, Weir Penrhyn," replied
Hollington. "She came out last season in London, and the Queen
pronounced her the most beautiful girl who had been presented at Court
for twenty years. Such a relief from the blue-eyed and 'golden-bronze'
professional! She will pass in a moment. Do rouse yourself."
Dartmouth got up languidly and walked to the window. After all, a new
face and a pretty one was something; one degree, perhaps, better than
nothing. "Which is she?" he asked. "The one in the next carriage, with
Lady Langdon, talking to Bolton."
The carriage passed them, and Harold's eyes met for a moment those
of a girl who was lying back chatting idly with a man who rode on
horseback beside her. She was a beautiful creature, truly, with a
rich, dark skin, and eyes like a tropical animal's. A youthful face,
striking and unconventional.
"Well?" queried Hollington.
"Yes, a very handsome girl," said Dartmouth. "I have seen her before,
somewhere."
"What! you have seen that woman before and not remembered her?
Impossible! And then you have not been in England for a year."
"I am sure I have seen her before," said Dartmouth. "Where could it
have been?"
"Her father is a Welsh baronet, and your estates are in the North, so
you could hardly have known her as a child. She was educated in the
utmost seclusion at home; no one ever saw her or heard of her until
the fag end of the last London season, and she only arrived in Paris
two days ago, and made her first appearance in public last night at
the opera, where you were not. So where could you have seen her?"
"I cannot imagine," said Dartmouth, meditatively. "But her face is
dimly familiar, and it is a most unusual one. Tell me something about
her;" and he resumed his seat.
"She is the daughter of Sir Iltyd-ap-Penrhyn," said Hollington,
craning his neck to catch a last glimpse of the disappearing beauty.
"Awfully poor, but dates back to before Chaos. Looks down with scorn
upon Sir Watkin Wynn, who hangs up the flood on the middle branch of
his family tree. They live in a dilapitated old castle on the coast,
and there Sir Iltyd brought up this tropical bird--she is an only
child--and educated her himself. Her mother died when she was very
young, and her father, with the proverbial constancy of mankind, has
never been known to smile since. Lively for the tropical bird, was
it not? Lady Langdon, who was in Wales last year, and who was an old
friend of the girl's mother, called on her and saw the professional
possibilities, so to speak. She gave the old gentleman no peace
until he told her she could take the girl to London, which she did
forthwith, before he had time to change his mind. She has made a
rousing sensation, but she is a downright beauty and no mistake. Lady
Langdon evidently intends to hold on to her, for I see she has her
still."
"I could not have known her, of course; I have never put my foot in
Wales. But I suppose I shall meet her now. Is she to be at the Russian
Legation to-night?"
"Yes; I have it from the best authority--herself. You had better go.
She is worth knowing, I can tell you."
"Well, I'll think of it," said Dartmouth. "I must be off now; I have
no end of letters to write. I'll rely upon you to do the honors if I
go!" and he took up his hat and sauntered out.
He went directly to his apartments on the Avenue Champs Élysées, and
wrote a few epistles to his impatient and much-enduring relatives in
Britain; then, lighting a cigar, he flung himself upon the sofa. The
room accorded with the man. Art and negligence were hand-in-hand.
The hangings were of dusky-gold plush, embroidered with designs which
breathed the fervent spirit of Decorative Art, and the floor was
covered with the oldest and oddest of Persian rugs. There were
cabinets of antique medallions, cameos, and enamels; low brass
book-cases, filled with volumes bound in Russian leather, whose
pungent odor filled the room; a varied collection of pipes; a case of
valuable ceramics, one of the collection having a pedigree which
no uncelestial mind had ever pretended to grasp, and which had been
presented to Lord Cardingham, while minister to China, by the Emperor.
That his younger son had unblushingly pilfered it he had but recently
discovered, but demands for its return had as yet availed not. There
were a few valuable paintings, a case of rare old plates, many with
the coats of arms of sovereigns upon them, strangely carved chairs,
each with a history, all crowded together and making a charming nest
for the listless, somewhat morbid, and disgusted young man stretched
out upon a couch, covered with a rug of ostrich feathers brought from
the Straits of Magellan. Over the onyx mantel was a portrait of his
grandmother, a handsome old lady with high-piled, snow-white hair, and
eyes whose brilliancy age had not dimmed. The lines about the mouth
were hard, but the face was full of intelligence, and the man at her
feet had never seen anything of the hardness of her nature. She had
blindly idolized him.
"I wish she were here now," thought Dartmouth regretfully, as he
contemplated the picture through the rings of smoke; "I could talk
over things with her, and she could hit off people with that tongue of
hers. Gods! how it could cut! Poor old lady! I wonder if I shall ever
find her equal." After which, he fell asleep and forgot his sorrows
until his valet awakened him and told him it was time to dress for
dinner.