"Confound the impudence of such fellows!" said Colonel Carlyle, fretfully, as he entered his wife's morning-room.
It was a charming apartment with hangings of pale blue satin that made a perfect foil to the pearl-fair beauty of Bonnibel.
The chairs and sofas were upholstered in the same rich material; the carpet was white velvet, sprinkled over with blue forget-me-nots; the costly white lace curtains were draped over blue satin, and the bright fire burning in the silver grate shone upon expensive gilding and delicate bric-a-brac scattered profusely about the room.
A marble Flora, half buried in flowers, stood in a niche, and vases of delicate white lilies were on the marble mantel.
The young mistress of all this beauty and wealth so tastefully combined, as she sat near the fire with an open book, looked like a gem set in an appropriate shrine, so fair, and pure, and dainty, was her person and her apparel.
She looked up with a slight smile as her liege lord's fretful ejaculation fell upon her ears.
"What person has been so unfortunate as to incur your displeasure?" she inquired.
"The artist of whom I purchased that splendid picture for the drawing-room—the last one, you know."
"Yes," she said, languidly; "and what has he done now?"
"I wanted him to paint your portrait, you know."
"Excuse me, I did not know," she returned.
"Oh no; I believe you did not. I think I failed to mention the matter to you. Well, he is the greatest artist in Rome—people are raving over his pictures. They say he has the most brilliant genius of his time."
"Is that why you are angry with him?" she asked, with a slight smile.
"No; oh, no. But I wrote to him and asked him to paint your portrait. I even offered to take you to Rome if he would not come to Paris."
"Well?"
"He had the impertinence to send me a cool refusal," said the colonel, irately.
"He did—and why?" asked Bonnibel, just a little piqued at the unknown artist.
"He did not like to paint portraits, he said—he preferred the ideal world of art. Did you ever hear of such a cool excuse?"
"We have no right to feel angry with him. He is, of course, the master of his own actions, and has undoubted right to his preferences," said Bonnibel, calmly.
But though she spoke so quietly, her womanly vanity was piqued by the unknown artist's cold refusal "to hand her sweetness down to fame."
"Who is he? What is his name?" she asked.
The colonel considered a moment.
"I have a wonderful faculty for forgetting names," he said. "Favart has told me his name several times—let me see—I think—yes, I am sure—it is Deane!"
"I should like to see him," she said, "I have always taken a great deal of interest in artists."
"You will be very apt to see him," said the colonel; "he is in Paris now—taking a holiday, Favart says. People are making quite a fuss over him and his friend—the artist from whom I bought the other fine picture, you know. You will be sure to meet them in society."
"Do you think so?" she asked, twirling the leaves of her book nervously. The mention of artists and pictures always agitated her strangely. She could not forget the young artist who had gone to Rome to earn fame and fortune and died so soon. Her cheek paled with emotion, and her eyes darkened with sadness under their drooping lashes of golden-brown.
"Yes, there is not a doubt of it," he said. "In fact, I suppose we shall have to invite them, too, though I do not relish it after the fellow's incivility. But it is the privilege of greatness to be crusty, I believe. Anyway, the fashionables are all feting and lionizing him, so we cannot well slight him. I shall have Monsieur Favart bring him and his friend to our ball next week. What do you say, my dear?"
"Send him a card by all means," she answered, "I am quite curious to see him."
"Perhaps he may repent his refusal when he sees how beautiful you are, my darling," said the colonel, with a fond, proud glance into her face. "His ideal world of art, as he calls it, cannot contain anything more lovely than yourself."
"You flatter me, Colonel Carlyle," she said lightly, but in her heart she knew that he had spoken truly. She had been afloat on the whirling tide of fashionable life now for several months, and praises and adulation had followed her everywhere. The gay Parisians went mad over her pure blonde loveliness. They said she was the most beautiful and refined woman in Paris, as well as the most cold and pure. She had begun to take a certain pleasure in the gaieties of the world and in the homage that followed her wherever she moved. These were the empty husks on which she had to feed her heart's hunger, and she was trying to find them sweet.
Colonel Carlyle's baleful jealousy had lain dormant or concealed even since he had taken his wife from school.
True, his arch-enemy, Felise Herbert, was in Paris, but for some reason of her own she had not as yet laid any serious pitfall for his unwary feet.
Perhaps she was only playing with him as the cat does with the little mouse before she ruthlessly murders it; perhaps Bonnibel's icy-cold manner and studied reserve to all made it harder to excite the old soldier's ever ready suspicion.
Be that as it may, life flowed on calmly if not happily to the colonel and his young wife.
They met Mrs. Arnold and her daughter frequently in their fashionable rounds, they invited them to their house, and received invitations in return, but though the colonel was cordial, his wife was cold and proud to the two women who had been so cruel to her and driven her into this unhappy marriage with a man old enough to be her grandfather. She could not forgive them for that cruel deed.
"I bide my time," Felise said to her mother one day when they were discussing the Carlyles. "I am giving her a little taste of the world's pleasures. I want her to fall in love with this life she is leading here. She will be tempted by its enticements and forget her coldness and prudishness. Then I shall strike."
"She is very circumspect," said Mrs. Arnold. "They say she is a model of virtue and beautiful wifely obedience."
"The higher she soars now the lower her fall shall be!" exclaimed the relentless girl, with her low, reckless laugh, "mother, I shall not fail of my revenge!"
Ah! Felise Herbert! The coils of fate are tightening around you like a deadly serpent while you exult in your wickedness.