The Bondwoman Part 13

"No, no, _no_!" she breathed hurriedly. "You must go; and you must remain Monsieur Incognito; thus it will be only a comedy, a morsel of romance. But if I knew you well--ah! I do not know what it would be then. I am afraid to think. Yes, I confess it, Monsieur, you make me afraid. I tell myself you are a foreign ogre, yet when you speak to me--ah!"

She put out her hands as he came close. But he knelt at her feet, kissing her hands, her wrists, the folds of her dress, then lifted his face glowing, ardent, to her own.

"I shall make you love me some day," he whispered; "not now, perhaps, but some day."

She stared at him without a word. She had received proposals of marriage, dignified, ceremonious affairs submitted to her by the dowager, but from this stranger came the first avowal of love she had ever listened to. A stranger; yet he held her hand; she felt herself drawn towards him by a force she could not combat. Her other arm was over the back of a chair, slowly she lifted it, then he felt her hand touch his hair and the touch was a caress.

"My queen!"

"Co--now," she said so lowly. It was almost a whisper. He arose, pressed her hand to his lips and turned away, when a woman's voice spoke among the palms:

"Did you say in this corner, Madame? I have not found him; Kenneth!"

"It is my mother," he said softly, and was about to draw back the alcove draperies when the Marquise took a step towards him, staring strangely into his face.

"_Your Mother!_" and her tones expressed only doubt and dread. "No, no! Why, I--I know the voice; it is Madame McVeigh; she called Kenneth, her son--"

He smiled an affirmative.

"Yes; you will forgive me for having my name spoken to you after all?

But there seems to be no help for it. So you see I am not English despite the hat, and my name is Kenneth McVeigh."

His smile changed to quick concern as he noticed the strange look on her face, and the swaying movement towards the chair. He put out his hand, but she threw herself back from him with a shuddering movement of repulsion.

And a moment later the palms parted beside Mrs. McVeigh, and she was startled at sight of her son's face.

"Kenneth! Why, what is wrong?"

"A lady has fainted there in the alcove," he said, in a voice which sounded strange to her; "will you go to her?"

"Fainted? Why, Kenneth!--"

"Yes; I think it is the Marquise de Caron."

CHAPTER VIII.

The dowager was delighted to find that the one evening of complete social success had changed her daughter-in-law into a woman of society. It had modified her prejudices. She accepted invitations without her former protests, and was only careful that the people whom she visited should be of the most distinguished.

Dumaresque watched her with interest. There seemed much of deliberation back of every move she made. The men of mark were the only ones to whom she gave encouragement, and she found several so responsive that there was no doubt, now, as to whether she was awake to her own power--more, she had a mind to use it. She was spoken of as one of the beauties of the day.

The McVeighs had gone to Italy, the mother to visit a relative, the son to view the late battle fields on the other side of the Pyrenees and acquaint himself with military matters wherever he found them.

He had called on the Marquise the day following the fete at the Hotel Dulac. She had quite recovered her slight indisposition of the preceding evening, and there had been no hesitation about receiving him. She was alone, and she met him with the fine, cool, gracious manner reserved for the people who were of no importance in her life.

Looking at her, listening to her, he could scarcely believe this could be the girl who had provoked him into a declaration of love less than a day ago, and in whose eyes he had surprised a fervor responding to his own. She called him Lieutenant McVeigh, with an utter disregard of the fact that she had ever called him anything else.

When in sheer desperation he referred to their first meeting, she listened with a chill little smile.

"Yes," she agreed; "Fontainbleau was beautiful in the spring time.

Maman was especially fond of it. She, herself, had been telling a friend lately of the very unconventional meeting under the bushes of the Mademoiselle and Monsieur Incognito, and he--the friend--had thought it delightfully amusing, good enough for the thread of a comedy."

Then she sent some kindly message to Mrs. McVeigh, but refused to see the wonder--the actual pain--in the eyes where before she had remembered those half slumberous smiles, or that brief s.p.a.ce of pa.s.sionate pleading. He interrupted some cool remark by rising.

"It is scarcely worth while--all this," he said, abruptly. "Had you closed your doors against me after last night I should have understood--I should have gone away adoring you just the same. But to open them, to receive me, and then--"

His voice trembled in spite of himself. All at once he appeared so much more boyish than ever before--so helpless in a sort of misery he could not account for, she turned away her head.

"With the ocean between us my love could not have hurt you. You might have let me keep that." He had recovered control of his voice and his eyes swept over her from head to foot like blue lightning. "I bid you good-day, Madame."

She made an inclination of the head, but did not speak. She had reached the limit of her self control. His words, "_You might have let me keep that_," were an accusation she dared not discuss.

When the door closed behind him she could see nothing, for the blur of tears in her eyes. Madame La Marquise received no other callers that day.

In the days following she compared him with the courtiers, the diplomats, the very clever men whom she met, and told herself he was only a boy--a cadet of twenty-two. Why should she remember his words, or forget for one instant that infamy with which his name was connected?

"He goes on his knees to me only because he has grown weary of the slave-women of the plantations," she told herself in deepest disgust.

Sometimes she would look curiously at the hands once covered by his kisses. And once she threw a withered bunch of forget-me-nots from her window, at night, and crept down at daybreak next morning and found it, and took it back to her room.

It looked as though the boy was holding his own despite the diplomats.

When she saw him again it was at an auction of articles donated for a charity under the patronage of the Empress, and open to the public.

Cotton stuffs justled my lady's satins, and the half-world stared at short range into the faces whose owners claimed coronets.

Many leading artists had donated sketches of their more pretentious work. It was to that department the Marquise made her way, and entering the gallery by a side door, found that the crowd had separated her from the Countess Biron and the rest of their party.

Knowing that sooner or later they would find her there, she halted, examining some choice bits of color near the door. A daintily dressed woman, who looked strangely familiar, was standing near with apparently the same intent. But she stood so still; and the poise of her head betrayed that she was listening to something. The something was a group of men back of them, where the black and white sketches were on exhibition. The corridor was not wide, and their conversation was in English and not difficult to understand if one gave attention.

The Marquise noted that Dumaresque was among them, and they stood before his donation of sketches, of which the princ.i.p.al one was a little study of the octoroon dancer, Kora.

Then in a flash she understood who the person was who listened. She was the original of the picture, drawn there no doubt by a sort of vanity to hear the artistic praise, or personal comment. But a swift glance showed her it had been a mistake; the dark brows were frowning, the full lip was bitten nervously, and the small ungloved hand was clenched.

The men were laughing carelessly over some argument, not noticing that they had a listener; the people moving along the corridor, single and in groups, hid the two who remained stationary, and whose backs were towards them. It was most embarra.s.sing, and the Marquise was about to move away when she heard a voice there was no mistaking--the voice she had not been able to forget.

"No, I don't agree with you;" he was saying, "and you would not find half so much to admire in the work if the subject were some old plantation mammy equally well painted. Come over and see them where they grow. After that you will not be making celebrities of them."

"If they grow many like that I am most willing, Monsieur."

"I, too. When do we start? I can fancy no land so well worth a visit but that of Mohammed."

The first speaker uttered an exclamation of annoyance, but the others laughed.

"Oh, we have seen other men of your land here," remarked Dumaresque.

"They are not all so discreet as yourself. We have learned that they do not usually build high walls between themselves and pretty slaves."

"You are right," agreed the American. "Sorry I can't contradict you.