Petticoat Rule Part 11

The purple livery with broad white facings was that of the Comte de Stainville.

"I have a message for M. le Comte from Mme. de Pompadour," said Lady Eglinton carelessly. "I'll find him, I daresay."

And she turned into the great corridor.

Lydie no longer thought of flight; an unexplainable impulse caught her to change her mind, and to follow in Lady Eglinton's wake. She could not then have said if "le pet.i.t Anglais" was still near her not. She had for the moment forgotten his insignificant existence.

There was an extraordinary feeling of unreality about herself and her movements, about the voluminous person ahead clad in large-flowered azure brocade and closely followed by a stiff automaton in purple and white; they seemed to be leading her along some strange and unexpected paths, at the end of which Lydie somehow felt sure that grinning apes would be awaiting her.

Anon Lady Eglinton paused, with her hand on the handle of a door; she caught sight of Mlle. d'Aumont and seemed much surprised to see her there. She called to her by name, in that harsh voice which Lydie detested, whilst the obsequious automaton came forward and relieved her from the trouble of turning that handle herself.

"Allow me, milady."

The door flew open, the flunkey at the same moment also drew a heavy curtain aside.

Lydie had just come up quite close, in answer to Lady Eglinton's call.

She was standing facing the door when Benedict threw it open, announcing with mechanical correctness of att.i.tude:

"Mme. la Marquise d'Eglinton, M. le Comte!"

At first Lydie only saw Gaston as he turned to face the intruders. His face was flushed, and he muttered a quickly-suppressed oath. But already she had guessed, even before Lady Eglinton's strident voice had set her every nerve a-tingling.

"Mlle. de Saint Romans!" said milady, with a shrill laugh, "a thousand pardons! I had a message from Mme. de Pompadour for M. le Comte de Stainville, and thought to find him alone. A thousand pardons, I beg--the intrusion was involuntary--and the message unimportant--I'll deliver it when Monsieur is less pleasantly engaged."

Lydie at that moment could not have stirred one limb, if her very life had depended on a movement from her. The feeling of unreality had gone. It was no longer that. It was a grim, hideous, awful reality.

That beautiful woman there was reality, and real, too, were the glowing eyes that flashed defiance at milady, the lips parted for that last kiss which the flunkey's voice had interrupted, the stray black curls which had escaped from the trammels of the elaborate coiffure and lay matted on the damp forehead.

And those roses, too, which had adorned her corsage, now lying broken and trampled on the floor, the candles burning dimly in their sockets, and Gaston's look of wrath, quickly followed by one of fear--all--all that was real!

Real to the awful shame of it all--milady's sneer of triumph, the oath which had risen to Gaston's lips, the wooden figure of the lacquey standing impa.s.sive at the door!

Instinctively Lydie's hand flew to her lips; oh, that she could have wiped out the last, lingering memory of that kiss. She, the proud and reserved vestal, a Diana chaste and cold, with lips now for ever polluted by contact with those of a liar. A liar, a traitor, a sycophant! She lashed her haughty spirit into fury, the better to feel the utter degradation of her own abas.e.m.e.nt.

She did not speak. What could she say! One look at Gaston's face and she understood that her humiliation was complete; his eyes did not even seek her pardon, they expressed neither sorrow nor shame, only impotent wrath and fear of baffled ambition. Not before all these people would she betray herself, before that beautiful rival, or that vulgar _intrigante_, not before Gaston or his lacquey, and beyond that mechanical movement of hand to lips, beyond one short flash of unutterable pride and contempt, she remained silent and rigid, whilst her quick eyes took in a complete mental vision of that never to-be-forgotten picture--the dimly-lighted boudoir, the defiant figure of Irene de Saint Romans, the crushed roses on the floor.

Then with a heart-broken sigh unheard by the other actors in this moving tableaux, and covering her face with her hands, she began to walk rapidly down the corridor.

CHAPTER IX

THE WINNING HAND

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 Irene 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 Irene 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 las.h.i.+ng 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 tete-a-tete_ 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n came from Lady Eglinton's astonished lips. Lydie had not stirred. She did not seem to have heard, and certainly Irene's triumphant announcement left her as cold, as impa.s.sive as before. What did it matter, after all, what special form Gaston's lies to her had a.s.sumed? Nothing that he or Irene 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 att.i.tude, 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 cla.s.sed 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-p.r.i.c.k which causes her the most acute pain and influences the whole of her subsequent conduct.

It was Irene'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 Irene 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 abas.e.m.e.nt.

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 coa.r.s.e 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 compa.s.sion or sarcasm aimed at her as soon at this t.i.t-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 impa.s.sive 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 pet.i.t 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 ent.i.tled. 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 grat.i.tude 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.

Irene, 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.