Red Masquerade Part 8

"The counterfeit jewels of a t.i.tled adventuress!"

An interruption brusque enough to silence her; or else it was its innuendo that struck the princess dumb with indignation. Lanyard's laugh offered amends for the rudeness, as if he said: "Sorry--but you asked for it, you know." He stepped aside, caught up a handful of her jewels that had been left, a tempting heap, openly exposed on her dressing-table (as much her own carelessness as anybody's, Sofia admitted) and tossed them lightly upon the face of the fraudulent canvas.

"Birds of a feather," was his comment, whimsical; "coals to Newcastle!"

"My jewels!" The princess gathered them up tenderly and faced him, blazing with resentment. He returned a twisted smile, an apologetic shrug.

"Madame la princesse didn't know? I'm so sorry."

"How dare you say they're paste?"

"I'm sorry," he repeated; "but somebody seems to have taken advantage of madame's confidence. Excellent imitations, I grant you, but articles de Paris none the less."

"It isn't true!" she stormed, near to tears.

"But really, you must believe me. A knowledge of jewels is one of my hobbies: I _know!_"

She looked down in consternation at the exquisite trinkets he had condemned so bluntly. Then in a fit of temper she flung them from her with all her might, threw herself upon the chaise-longue, and wept pa.s.sionately into its cus.h.i.+ons. Then the young man proved himself tolerably instructed in the ways of womankind. He said nothing more, made no offer to comfort her by those futile and empty pats on the shoulder which are instinctive with man on such occasions, but simply sat him down and waited.

In time the tempest pa.s.sed, Sofia sat up and dabbled her eyes with a web of lace and linen. Then she looked round with a tentative smile that was wholly captivating. She was one of those rare women who can afford to cry.

"It's so humiliating!" she protested with racial ingenuousness--one of her most compelling charms. "But it's ridiculous, too. I was so sure no one would ever know."

"No one but an expert ever would, madame."

"You see"--apparently she had forgotten that Lanyard was anything but a lifelong friend--"I needed money so badly, I had them reproduced and sold the originals."

"Madame la princesse--if she will permit--commands my profound sympathy."

"But," she remembered, drying her eyes, "you called me an adventuress, too!"

"But," he contended, gravely, "you had already called me the Lone Wolf."

"But what do you expect, monsieur, when I find you in my rooms--?"

"But what does madame la princesse expect when I find she had been to mine--and brought something valuable away with her, too!"

"I had a reason--"

"So had I."

"What was it?"

"Perhaps it was to see madame la princesse alone--secretly--without exciting the jealousy, which I understand is supernormal, of monsieur le prince."

"But why should you wish to see me alone?" she demanded, with widening eyes.

"Perhaps to beg madame's permission to offer her what may possibly prove some slight consolation."

She weighed his words in dark distrust. What was this consolation? What his game? His att.i.tude remained consistently too deferential and punctilious for one to suspect that by consolation he meant love-making.

"But how did you get in?"

"By the front door, madame. I find it ajar--one a.s.sumes, through oversight on the part of one of the servants--it opens to a touch, I walk in--et voila!"

His levity was infectious. In spite of herself, she smiled in sympathy.

"And what, pray, is this wonderful consolation you would offer me?"

He produced from a pocket a packet of papers.

"I think madame la princesse is interested in these," he said. "If she will be so amiable as to accept them from me, with my compliments and one little word of advice...."

"Ah, monsieur!" Look and tone thanked him more than words could ever. "You are too kind! And your advice--?"

"They tell too much, madame, those letters. And I see you have a fire in the grate ..."

"Monsieur has reason...."

She rose, went to the fireplace and, half kneeling, thrust the letters one by one into the incandescent bed of coals. A ceremony of sentiment at any other time, but not now: her thoughts were far from the man with whose memory these letters were linked, they were in fact not wholly articulate.

Just what was pa.s.sing through her mind she herself would have found it hard to define; she was mainly conscious of a flooding emotion of grat.i.tude to Lanyard; but there was something more, a feeling not unakin to tenderness....

The reaction of her vital young body from a desperate physical conflict, the rapid play of her pa.s.sions from anger and despair through triumph and delight to gratification and content, from the bitterest sense of frustration and peril to one of security; the uprush of those strange instincts which had lain dormant till roused by the knowledge that she was free at length from the maddening stupidity of social life, together with her recent, implicit self-dedication to a life in all things its converse: these influences were working upon her so strongly as to render her mood more dangerous than she guessed.

Disturbed in her formless reverie, an aimless groping through a bewildering maze of emotions but vaguely apprehended, she started up, faced round and saw Lanyard, topcoat over arm and hat in hand, about to open the door.

"Monsieur!"

He looked back, coolly quizzical. "Madame?"

"What are you doing?"

"Taking my un.o.btrusive departure, madame la princesse, by the way I came."

"But--wait--come back!"

He shrugged agreeably, released the door-k.n.o.b, and stood before her, or rather over her--for he was the taller by a good five inches--looking down, quietly at her service.

"I haven't thanked you."

"For what, madame? For treating myself to an amusing adventure?"

"It has cost you dear!"

"The fortunes of war ..."

Her hands rose unconsciously, with an uncertain movement. Her face was soft with an elusive bloom of unwonted feeling. Her eyes held a puzzled look, as if she did not quite understand what was moving her so deeply.

"You are a strange man, monsieur...."