Fairy Fingers Part 26

"Very wisely remarked! Change of air is beneficial, and gentle exercise is beneficial: both stimulate the digestive faculties and keep up their healthy action. And you really think, my dear, you would like to taste some of those new Parisian dishes?"

"I should indeed!"

"Then you shall. I look upon it as criminal, in the present low state of your appet.i.te, to thwart its faintest craving. Of course we cannot procure anything fit to sustain nature on the road to Paris, but I can make Pierre pack up a basket of refreshments, and a bottle of old wine, so that we shall not be poisoned on the way. If we can only make the journey comfortably, I have no objection to investigate the gastronomic novelties of which you have heard. I could take Lucien with us, that he might learn some new mysteries in his art."

"To be sure you could. When shall we start, dear uncle? I am so anxious to go! When shall we start?"

"There! there! Don't get excited about it; that will interfere with the gastric juices. Let us conclude our dinner quietly. Try a wing of that pheasant, while we discuss the matter with wholesome calmness."

Bertha allowed herself to be helped to the wing, and tried to force down a few morsels for the sake of humoring the generously inclined _bon vivant_, who grew more and more genial and amiably disposed as he sipped his Chateau Margaux. Fine wine invariably had a softening, expansive effect upon his character, and, after a few gla.s.ses, he honestly looked upon himself as one of the most tender-hearted, soberly inoffensive, and morally disposed of mortals.

If Bertha had openly proposed to him that they should spend a few weeks in Paris for the gratification of any praiseworthy intention of her own, or of any harmless whim, he would have unhesitatingly refused, and opposed any number of objections to the proposition; but she had introduced the subject in its most favorable light, and was sure of a victory.

A few days later, the Marquis de Merrivale and his niece, attended by her maid, his valet and cook, were on their way to the metropolis. The marquis, having inst.i.tuted many inquiries with the view of discovering what hotel rejoiced in the possession of the most scientific cook, concluded to engage a suite of apartments at the hotel _des Trois Empereurs_.

The meeting between Bertha and Maurice was as full of tenderness as though they had been in reality what their strong family resemblance caused them to appear, brother and sister.

"No word from Madeleine yet?" was Bertha's first inquiry,--hardly an inquiry, for she knew what the answer must be.

Then Maurice told her of the _soeur de bon secours_ who had sat by his bed night after night.

"Could it really have been Madeleine?" she asked, breathlessly.

"M. de Bois seems to think not; yet I am unshaken in my conviction that it was she herself."

"But why did you not speak to her?"

"A feeling which I can scarcely define withheld me. At first I thought I was dreaming, and that the dream would be broken if I spoke or moved.

Then I felt sure Madeleine was there, but that she believed herself unrecognized, and if I showed that I knew her she would leave me,--leave me when I could not follow, and must again have lost all trace of her.

It was such a luxury, such a joy to feel her by my side! It was her presence and not the skill of the physician which restored me."

"And you never once betrayed yourself?"

"No. What seems most singular is that from the very day I mentioned to M. de Bois that I had seen her, she came no more. Yet how could she have learned, or divined, that I knew her?"

"That circ.u.mstance, dear Maurice, makes it all look like a dream. As soon as the fever left you the phantom it conjured up disappeared."

Maurice shook his head, unconvinced, and Bertha was too willing to be deceived herself to attempt to persuade him that he was in error.

The Marquis de Merrivale now entered. Maurice, whom he had only known slightly, rose in favor when the epicure found that the young Parisian could give all requisite information concerning the best restaurants in Paris; and the viscount reached a higher summit of esteem, when he promptly promised to put Lucien _en train_ to familiarize himself with certain valuable culinary discoveries. Maurice knew enough of the character of the marquis to be confident that his stay in the metropolis would be determined by the amount of comfort he enjoyed, and the quality of the dinners set before him.

Bertha's next visit was from M. de Bois, and could she have banished from her mind a vague impression that he loved Madeleine, or was beloved by her, the interview would have afforded her unmitigated happiness.

M. de Bois had not yet gained sufficient mastery over himself to command his utterance in the presence of the woman who had most power to confuse him. He still stammered painfully; but he could not help remarking that, even as Madeleine had said, Bertha finished his broken sentences, apparently unaware that she was doing so. And her greeting, surely it had been far from cold. And did she not say, with a soft emphasis which it almost took away his breath to hear, that it seemed an age since they met? Had she then felt the time long? And did she not drop some involuntary remark concerning the dulness of Brittany after he and Maurice left? Had she not coupled him with her cousin? Might he not dare to believe that Madeleine was right, and Bertha certainly did not scorn him?

CHAPTER XIV.

DIAMONDS AND EMERALDS.

"I wish you would go, Maurice. Do, for my sake!" pleaded Bertha, twisting in her slender fingers a note of invitation. "The Marquis de Fleury was one of the first persons who called upon my uncle, and he made a very favorable impression. Then Madame de Fleury has nearly crushed me beneath an avalanche of sweet civilities. I fancy that a humming-bird drowned in honey must experience sensations very similar to mine in her presence. Is it not the Chinese who serve as the greatest of delicacies a lump of ice rolled in hot pastry? The condiment with which she feeds my vanity reminds me of this singular and paradoxical dainty.

If you penetrate the warm, sugared, outer crust, you find ice within.

But, as my uncle does not antic.i.p.ate Chinese diet at the table of the marchioness, he desires me to accept her invitation; and, as you are invited, I wish _you_ to do the same, that I may have some familiar face near me."

"Gaston de Bois will be there," returned Maurice, "and so will the young American student, Ronald Walton, whom I presented to you; they are my dearest friends; pray let them represent me, little cousin."

But Bertha was obstinate; her character had a strong tincture of wilfulness, the result of invariably having her pleasure consulted, and always obtaining her own way. She did not relinquish her entreaties until Maurice, who had not lived long enough to be skilled in the art of successfully denying the pet.i.tion of a person who will take no refusal, or of plucking the waspish sting out of a "no," consented to be present at the dinner.

The Marquis de Fleury had learned, through his secretary, that Mademoiselle Merrivale and her guardian were in Paris. Though the matrimonial proposition of the marchioness on behalf of her brother, the Duke de Montauban, had been so unfavorably received by Bertha's relatives in Brittany, and though Bertha herself, when she met the duke at the Chateau de Tremazan, had treated him somewhat coldly, the young duke was too much enamored of the fair girl herself,--to say nothing of a tender leaning towards her attractive fortune,--to be discouraged by a pa.s.sing rebuff. His relatives hailed the antic.i.p.ated opportunity of making the acquaintance of Bertha's guardian, and were prompt in paying their devoirs. An invitation to dine followed quickly on the footsteps of the visit.

We pa.s.s over the days that preceded the one appointed for the dinner party; they were unmarked by incidents which demand to be recorded.

The bond of intimacy between Ronald and Maurice was drawn closer and closer each day. Little by little the latter had communicated the history of his own trials; his father's determined opposition to his embracing a professional career; his attachment to Madeleine; her unaccountable rejection of his hand; her sudden disappearance, and the mad pursuit, which terminated by casting him insensible at Ronald's door, and brought to his succor one who not only watched beside him with all the devotion of a brother, mingled with the tenderness of womanhood itself, but whose buoyant, healthy tone of mind had infused new hope and vigor into a broken, despondent, prostrate spirit.

Ronald Walton was placed in an advantageous position in Paris by the very fact of being an American. His intellect, talents, manners, person, fitted him to grace the most refined society; and, coming from a land where distinctions of rank are not arbitrarily governed by the accident of birth, but where men are a.s.signed their positions in the social scale through a juster, higher, more liberal verdict, the young Carolinian gained facile admission into the most exclusive circles abroad, and even took precedence of individuals who made as loud a boast of n.o.ble blood and hereditary t.i.tles as though the concentrated virtues of all their ancestors had been transmitted to them through these dubious mediums.

Ronald, as the intimate friend of Maurice de Gramont, had received an invitation to the dinner given by the Marchioness de Fleury to the relatives of the viscount.

The young men entered Madame de Fleury's drawing-room together, and, after having basked for a few seconds in smiles of meridian radiance, and been inundated by a flood of softly syllabled words, moved away to let the beams of their sunny hostess fall upon new-comers.

Maurice glanced around the room in search of his cousin.

"She has just entered the antechamber," said Ronald, comprehending his look. "Her Hebe-like face this minute flashed upon me."

While he was speaking, Bertha and her uncle were announced, and advanced toward their hostess.

The low genuflection of the marchioness had been responded to by Bertha's unstudied courtesy, and the lips of the young girl had just parted to speak, when she suddenly gave a violent start, and uttered a cry as sharp and involuntary as though she had trodden upon some piercing instrument. As she tottered back, her dilated eyes were fixed upon Madame de Fleury in blank amazement.

"What is it, my dear? Are you ill?" asked her uncle with deep concern.

Bertha did not reply, but still gazed at the marchioness, or rather her eyes ran over the lady's toilet, and she clung to her uncle's arm as though unable to support herself.

"I am afraid you really are ill," continued the Marquis de Merrivale.

"Something has disagreed with you; it must have been the truffles with which that pheasant we had for _dejeuner_ was stuffed. I toyed with them very timidly myself."

"Pray sit down, my dear Mademoiselle de Merrivale," said Madame de Fleury, leading her to a chair which stood near. "Sit down while I order you a gla.s.s of water."

She turned to address a servant, but Bertha stretched out her hand, almost as though she feared to lose sight of her. "Don't go! Don't go!

Let me look! Can they be hers? Let me look again!"

Madame de Fleury, as unruffled as though these broken exclamations were perfectly natural and comprehensible, bent over Bertha caressingly, laying the tips of her delicately gloved fingers on her shoulder. Bertha wistfully examined the bracelet on the lady's arm, then fixed her eyes upon the necklace, brooch, and ear-rings, and lastly upon the tiara-like comb, about which the hair of the marchioness was arranged in a dexterous and novel manner.

Madame de Fleury was gratified, without being moved by the faintest surprise that her toilet had produced such an overpowering sensation.

Bertha's emotion did not appear to her in the least misplaced or exaggerated.