But Lydie d'Aumont had not gone five paces before she heard a quick, sharp call, followed by the rustle of silk on the marble floor.
The next moment she felt a firm, hot grip on her wrist, and her left hand was forcibly drawn away from her face, whilst an eager voice spoke quick, vehement words, the purport of which failed at first to reach her brain.
"You shall not go, Mlle. d'Aumont," were the first coherent words which she seemed to understand—"you cannot—it is not just, not fair until you have heard!"
"There is nothing which I need hear," interrupted Lydie coldly, the moment she realized that it was Irène de Saint Romans who was addressing her; "and I pray you to let me go."
"Nay! but you shall hear, you must!" rejoined the other without releasing her grasp on the young girl's wrist. Her hand was hot, and her fingers had the strength of intense excitement. Lydie could not free herself, strive how she might.
"Do you not see that this is most unfair?" continued Irène with great volubility. "Am I to be snubbed like some kitchen wench caught kissing behind doorways? Look at milady Eglinton and her ill-natured sneer. I'll not tolerate it, nor your looks of proud contempt! I'll not—I'll not! Gaston! Gaston!" she now exclaimed, turning to de Stainville, who was standing, silent and sullen, whilst he saw his wife gradually lashing herself into wrathful agitation at his own indifference and Lydie's cold disdain. "If you have a spark of courage left in you, tell that malicious intrigante and this scornful minx that if I were to spend the whole evening in the boudoir en tête-à-tête with you, aye! and behind closed doors if I chose who shall have a word to say, when I am in the company of my own husband?"
"Your husband!"
The ejaculation came from Lady Eglinton's astonished lips. Lydie had not stirred. She did not seem to have heard, and certainly Irène's triumphant announcement left her as cold, as impassive as before. What did it matter, after all, what special form Gaston's lies to her had assumed? Nothing that he or Irène said or did could add to his baseness and infamy.
"Aye, my husband, milady!" continued the other more calmly, as she finally released Lydie's wrist and cast it, laughing, from her. "I am called Mme. la Comtesse de Stainville, and will be called so in the future openly. Now you may rejoin your guests, Mlle. d'Aumont; my reputation stands as far beyond reproach as did your own before you spent a mysterious half hour with my husband behind the curtains of an alcove."
She turned to de Stainville, who, in spite of his wife's provocative attitude, had remained silent, cursing the evil fate which had played him this trick, cursing the three women who were both the cause and the witnesses of his discomfiture.
"Your arm, Gaston!" she said peremptorily; "and you, Benedict, call your master's coach and my chair. Mlle. d'Aumont, your servant. If I have been the means of dissipating a happy illusion, you may curse me now, but you will bless me to-morrow. Gaston has been false to you—he is not over true to me—but he is my husband, and as such I must claim him. For the sake of his schemes, of his ambitions, I kept our marriage a secret so that he might rise to higher places than I had the power to give him. When your disdainful looks classed me with a flirty kitchen-wench I rebelled at last. I trust that you are proud enough not to vent your disappointment on Gaston; but if you do, 'tis no matter; I'll find means of consoling him."
She made the young girl a low and sweeping curtesy in the most approved style demanded by the elabourate etiquette of the time. There was a gleam of mocking triumph in her eyes, which she did not attempt to conceal, and which suddenly stung Lydie's pride to the quick.
It is strange indeed that often at a moment when a woman's whole happiness is destroyed with one blow, when a gigantic cataclysm revolutionises with one fell swoop her entire mode of thought, dispels all her dreams and shatters her illusions, it is always the tiny final pin-prick which causes her the most acute pain and influences the whole of her subsequent conduct.
It was Irène's mocking curtsey which roused Lydie from her mental torpor, because it brought her—as it were—in actual physical contact with all that she would have to endure openly in the future, as apart from the hidden misery of her heart.
Gaston's shamed face was no longer the only image which seared her eyes and brain. The world, her own social world, seemed all at once to reawaken before her. That world would sneer even as Irène de Stainville sneered; it would laugh at and enjoy her own discomfiture. She—Lydie d'Aumont—the proud and influential daughter of the Prime Minister of France, whom flatterers and sycophants approached mentally on bended knees, for whom suitors hardly dared even to sigh, she had been tricked and fooled like any silly country mouse whose vanity had led to her own abasement.
Half an hour ago in the fullness of her newly-found happiness she had flaunted her pride and her love before those who hated and envied her. To-morrow—nay, within an hour—this humiliating scene would be the talk of Paris and Versailles. Lydie's burning ears seemed even now to hear the Pompadour retailing it with many embellishments, which would bring a coarse laugh to the lips of the King and an ill-natured jest to those of her admirers; she could hear the jabbering crowd, could feel the looks of compassion or sarcasm aimed at her as soon at this tit-bit of society scandal had been bruited abroad.
The scene itself had become real and vivid to her; the marble corridor, the flickering candles, the flunkey's impassive face; she understood that the beautiful woman before her was in fact and deed the wife of Gaston de Stainville. She even contrived to perceive the humour of Lady Eglinton's completely bewildered expression, the blank astonishment of her round, bulgy eyes, and close to her she saw "le petit Anglais," self-effaced as usual, and looking almost as guilty, as shamefaced as Gaston.
Lydie turned to him and placed a cool, steady hand upon his sleeve.
"Madame la Comtesse de Stainville," she then said with perfect calm, "I fear me I must beg of your courtesy to tarry awhile longer, whilst I offer you an explanation to which I feel you are entitled. Just now I was somewhat surprised because your news was sudden—and it is my turn to ask your pardon, although my fault—if fault there be—rests on a misapprehension. M. le Comte de Stainville's amours or his marriage are no concern of mine. True, he begged for my influence and fawned upon my favour just now, for his ambition soared to the post of High Controller of the Finances of France. That appointment rests with the Duc, my father, who no doubt will bestow it on him whom he thinks most worthy. But it were not fair to me, if you left me now thinking that the announcement of your union with a gentleman whose father was the friend of mine could give me aught but pleasure. Permit me to congratulate you, Madame, on the choice of a lord and master, a helpmeet no doubt. You are indeed well matched. I am all the more eager to offer you my good wishes as I have been honoured to-night with a proposal which has greatly flattered me. My lord the Marquis of Eglinton has asked me to be his wife!"
Once more she turned her head toward the young Englishman and challenged a straight look from his eyes. He did not waver and she was satisfied. Her instinct had not misled her, for he expressed no astonishment, only a sort of dog-like gratitude and joy as, having returned her gaze quite firmly, he now slowly raised his arm bringing her hand on a level with his lips.
Lady Eglinton also displayed sufficient presence of mind not to show any surprise. She perhaps alone of all those present fully realized that Lydie had been wounded to the innermost depths of her heart, and that she herself owed her own and her son's present triumph to the revolt of mortified pride.
What Gaston thought and felt exactly it were difficult to say. He held women in such slight esteem, and his own vanity was receiving so severe a blow, that, no doubt, he preferred to think that Lydie, like himself, had no power of affection and merely bestowed her heart there where self-interest called.
Irène, on the other hand, heaved a sigh of relief; the jealous suspicions which had embittered the last few days were at last dispelled. Hers was a simple, shallow nature that did not care to look beyond the obvious. She certainly appeared quite pleased at Lydie's announcement, and if remorse at her precipitancy did for one brief second mar the fullness of her joy, she quickly cast it from her, not having yet had time to understand the future and more serious consequences of her impulsive avowal.
She wanted to go up to Lydie and to offer her vapid expressions of goodwill, but Gaston, heartily tired of the prolongation of this scene, dragged her somewhat roughly away.
From the far distance there came the cry of the flunkeys.
"The chair of Mlle. de Saint Romans!"
"The coach of M. le Comte de Stainville!"
M. Bénédict, resplendent in purple and white, reappeared at the end of the corridor, with Irène's hood and cloak. Gaston, with his wife on his arm, turned on his heel and quickly walked down the corridor.
Milady, puzzled, bewildered, boundlessly overjoyed yet fearing to trust her luck too far, had just a sufficient modicum of tact left in her to retire discreetly within the boudoir.
Lydie suddenly found herself alone in this wide corridor with the man whom she had so impulsively dragged into her life. She looked round her somewhat helplessly, and her eyes encountered those of her future lord fixed upon hers with that same air of dog-like gentleness which she knew so well and which always irritated her.
"Milor," she said very coldly, "I must thank you for your kind coöperation just now. That you expressed neither surprise nor resentment does infinite credit to your chivalry."
"If I was a little surprised, Mademoiselle," he said, haltingly, "I was too overjoyed to show it, and—and I certainly felt no resentment."
He came a step nearer to her. But for this she was not prepared, and drew back with a quick movement and a sudden stiffening of her figure.
"I hope you quite understood milor, that there is no desire on my part to hold you to this bond," she said icily. "I am infinitely grateful to you for the kind way in which you humoured my impulse to-night, and if you will have patience with me but a very little while, I promise you that I will find an opportunity for breaking, without too great a loss of dignity, these bonds which already must be very irksome to you."
"Nay, Mademoiselle," he said gently, "you are under a misapprehension. Believe me, you would find it well-nigh impossible to—to—er—to alter your plans now without loss of dignity, and—er—er—I assure you that the bonds are not irksome to me."
"You would hold me to this bargain, then?"
"For your sake, Mademoiselle, as well as mine, we must now both be held to it."
"It seems unfair on you, milor."
"On me, Mademoiselle?"
"Yes, on you," she repeated, with a thought more gentleness in her voice; "you are young, milor; you are rich—soon you will regret the sense of honour which ties you to a woman who has only yielded her hand to you out of pique! Nay, I'll not deceive you," she added quickly, noting the sudden quiver of the kind little face at her stinging words. "I have no love for you, milor—all that was young and fresh, womanly and tender in my heart was buried just here to-night."
And with a mournful look she glanced round at the cold marble of the walls, the open door to that boudoir beyond, the gilded sconces which supported the dimly-burning candles. Then, smitten with sudden remorse, she said eagerly, with one of those girlish impulses which rendered her domineering nature so peculiarly attractive:
"But if I can give you no love, milor, Heaven and my father's indulgence have given me something which I know men hold far greater of importance than a woman's heart. I have influence, boundless influence, as you know—the State appointed Controller of Finance will be the virtual ruler of France, his position will give him power beyond the dreams of any man's ambition. My father will gladly give the post to my husband and—"
But here a somewhat trembling hand was held deprecatingly toward her.
"Mademoiselle, I entreat you," said Lord Eglinton softly, "for the sake of your own dignity and—and mine, do not allow your mind to dwell on such matters. Believe me, I am fully conscious of the honour which you did me just now in deigning to place your trust in me. That I have—have loved you, Mlle. Lydie," he added, with a nervous quiver in his young voice, "ever since I first saw you at this Court I—I cannot deny; but"—and here he spoke more firmly, seeing that once again she seemed to draw away from him, to stiffen at his approach, "but that simple and natural fact need not trouble you. I could not help loving you, for you are more beautiful than anything on earth, and you cannot deem my adoration an offence, though you are as cold and pure as the goddess of chastity herself. I have seen Catholics kneeling at the shrine of the Virgin Mary; their eyes were fixed up to her radiant image, their lips murmured an invocation or sometimes a hymn of praise. But their hands were clasped together; they never even raised them once toward that shrine which they had built for her, and from which she smiled whilst listening coldly to their prayers. Mlle. d'Aumont, you need have no mistrust of my deep respect for you; you are the Madonna and I the humblest of your worshippers. I am proud to think that the name I bear will be the shrine wherein your pride will remain enthroned. If you have need of me in the future you must command me, but though the law of France will call me your husband and your lord, I will be your bondsman and serve you on my knees; and though my very soul aches for the mere touch of your hand, my lips will never pollute even the hem of your gown." His trembling voice had sunk down to a whisper. If she heard or not he could not say. From far away there came to his ears the tender melancholy drone of the instruments playing the slow movement of the gavotte. His Madonna had not stirred, only her hand which he so longed to touch trembled a little as she toyed with her fan.
And, like the worshippers at the Virgin's shrine, he bent his knee and knelt at her feet.