Her eyes flashed something at him. What it was he could not rightly tell. It seemed to him that he saw pleasure there, and fear, but more of the latter. The Marquis intervened.

"I trust," he said, "that in that case you will give us the pleasure of seeing something of you. We live in the Avenue de St. Cloud."

"You are very kind," Duncombe said. "I shall not fail to come and see you."

Spencer threw open the door, and they pa.s.sed out. Phyllis kept by Duncombe's side. He felt her hand steal into his.

"I want you to keep this envelope for me," she whispered. "It contains nothing which could bring you into trouble, or which concerns any one else. It is just something which I should like to feel was in safe keeping."

He thrust it into his pocket.

"I will take care of it," he promised. "And--you won't forget me? We shall meet again--sooner perhaps than you expect."

She shook her head.

"I hope to Heaven that we shall not! At least, not yet," she murmured fervently.

From the carriage window she put out her hand.

"You have been very kind to me," she said. "Good-bye!"

"An impossible word," he answered, with well-affected gayety. "A pleasant journey to you."

Then the carriage rolled away, and Spencer and he were left alone.

Duncombe secured the front door, and they walked slowly back to the library.

"You know Paris well," Duncombe said. "Have you ever heard of these people?"

Spencer smiled.

"My dear fellow!" he exclaimed. "De St. Ethol is one of the first n.o.bles in France. I have seen him at the races many times."

"Not the sort of people to lend themselves to anything shady?"

"The last in the world," Spencer answered. "She was the Comtesse de Laugnan, and between them they are connected with half a dozen Royal houses. This business is getting exceedingly interesting, Duncombe!"

But Duncombe was thinking of the empty room.

BOOK II

CHAPTER I

GUY POYNTON AGAIN

"I Suppose," the boy said thoughtfully, "I must seem to you beastly ungrateful. You've been a perfect brick to me ever since that night. But I can't help being a bit homesick. You see, it was really the first time I'd ever been away from home for long, and though my little place isn't a patch on this, of course, still, I was born there, and I'm jolly fond of it."

His companion nodded, and his dark eyes rested for a moment upon the other's face. Guy Poynton was idly watching the reapers at work in the golden valley below, and he did not catch his friend's expression.

"You are very young, _mon cher ami_," he said. "As one grows older one demands change. Change always of scene and occupation. Now I, too, am most hideously bored here, although it is my home. For me to live is only possible in Paris--Paris, the beautiful."

Guy looked away from the fields. He resented a little his friend's air of superiority.

"There's only a year's difference in our ages!" he remarked.

Henri de Bergillac smiled--this time more expressively than ever, and held out his hands.

"I speak of experience, not years," he said. "You have lived for twenty years in a very delightful spot no doubt, but away from everything which makes life endurable, possible even, for the child of the cities. I have lived for twenty-one years mostly in Paris. Ah, the difference!"

Guy shrugged his shoulders, and leaned back in his chair.

"Well," he said briefly, "tastes differ. I've seen quite all I want to of Paris for the rest of my life. Give me a fine June morning in the country, and a tramp round the farm, or an early morning start in September walking down the partridges, or a gray day in November with a good gee underneath, plenty of gra.s.s ahead, and hounds talking. Good G.o.d, I wish I were back in England."

Henri smiled and caressed his upper lip, where symptoms of a moustache were beginning to appear.

"My dear Guy," he said, "you speak crudely because you do not understand. You know of Paris only its grosser side. How can one learn more when he cannot even speak its language? You know the Paris of the tourist. The real magic of my beautiful city has never entered into your heart. Your little dabble in its vices and frivolities must not count to you as anything final. The joy of Paris to one who understands is the exquisite refinement, the unsurpa.s.sed culture, of its abysmal wickedness."

"The devil!" Guy exclaimed. "Have you found out all that for yourself?"

Henri was slightly annoyed. He was always annoyed when he was not taken seriously.

"I have had the advantage," he said, "of many friendships with men whose names you would scarcely know, but who directed the intellectual tendencies of the younger generation of Parisians. People call us decadents--I suppose, because we prefer intellectual progression to physical activity. I am afraid, dear friend, that you would never be one of us."

"I am quite sure of it," Guy answered.

"You will not even drink absinthe," Henri continued, helping himself from a little carafe which stood between them, "absolutely the most artistic of all drinks. You prefer a thing you call a pipe to my choicest cigarettes, and you have upon your cheeks a color of which a ploughboy should be ashamed."

Guy laughed good-humoredly.

"Well, I can't help being sunburnt!" he declared. Henri sighed delicately.

"Ah, it is not only that," he said. "I wish so much that I could make you understand. You positively cultivate good health, take cold baths and walks and exercises to preserve it."

"Why the d.i.c.kens shouldn't I?"

Henri half closed his eyes. He was a dutiful nephew, but he felt that another month with this clodhopper of an English boy would mean the snapping of his finely strung nerves.

"My friend," he began gently, "we in Paris of the set to whom I belong do not consider good health to be a state which makes for intellectual progression. Good health means the triumph of the physical side of man over the nervous. The healthy animal sleeps and eats too much. He does not know the stimulus of pain. His normal condition is unaspiring--not to say bovine. The first essential, therefore, of life, according to our tenets, is to get rid of superfluous health."

Guy did not trust himself to speak this time. He only stared at his companion, who seemed pleased to have evoked his interest.

"Directly the body is weakened," Henri continued, "the brain begins to act. With the indisposition for physical effort comes activity of the imagination. Cigarettes, drugs, our friend here," he continued, patting the carafe, "late nights, _la belle pa.s.sion_--all these--all these----"