"I must tell you the truth, father," said Olivia. "I have known it since the second, and that it was that turned me. I learned from the b.u.t.ton that Count Victor picked up on the stair, for I recognised it as his. I knew--I knew--and yet I wished to keep a doubt of it, I felt it so, and still would not confess it to myself that the man I loved--the man I thought I loved--was no better than a robber." "A robber indeed! I thought the man bad; I never liked his eye and less his tongue, that was ever too plausible. Praise G.o.d, my dear, that he's found out!"

CHAPTER x.x.xVI -- LOVE

It was hours before Count Victor could trust himself and his tell-tale countenance before Olivia, and as he remained in an unaccustomed seclusion for the remainder of the day, she naturally believed him cold, though a woman with a fuller experience of his s.e.x might have come to a different conclusion. Her misconception, so far from being dispelled when he joined her and her father in the evening, was confirmed, for his natural gaiety was gone, and an emotional constraint, made up of love, dubiety, and hope, kept him silent even in the precious moments when Doom retired to his reflections and his book, leaving them at the other end of the room alone. Nothing had been said about the letter; the Baron kept his counsel on it for a more fitting occasion, and though Olivia, who had taken its possession, turned it over many times in her pocket, its presentation involved too much boldness on her part to be undertaken in an impulse. The evening pa.s.sed with inconceivable dulness; the gentleman was taciturn to clownishness; Mungo, who had come in once or twice to replenish fires and snuff candles, could not but look at them with wonder, for he plainly saw two foolish folks in a common misunderstanding.

He went back to the kitchen crying out his contempt for them.

"If yon's coortin'," he said, "it's the drollest I ever clapt een on!

The man micht be a carven image, and Leevie no better nor a shifty in the pook. I hope she disnae rue her change o' mind alreadys, for I'll warrant there was nane o' yon blateness aboot Sim MacTaggart, and it's no' what the puir la.s.sie's been used to."

But these were speculations beyond the sibyl of his odd adoration; Annapla was too intent upon her own elderly love-affairs to be interested in those upstairs.

And upstairs, by now, a topic had at last come on between the silent pair that did not make for love or cheerfulness. The Baron had retired to his own room in the rear of the castle, and they had begun to talk of the departure that was now fixed for a date made imminent through the pressure of Petullo. Where were they bound for but France? Doom had decided upon Dunkerque because he had a half-brother there in a retirement compelled partly for political reasons Count Victor could appreciate.

"France!" he cried, delighted. "This is ravishing news indeed, Mademoiselle Olivia!"

"Yes?" she answered dubiously, reddening a little, and wondering why he should particularly think it so.

"Ma foi! it is," he insisted heartily. "I had the most disturbing visions of your wandering elsewhere. I declare I saw my dear Baron and his daughter immured in some pestilent Lowland burgh town, moping mountain creatures among narrow streets, in dreary tenements, with glimpse of neither sea nor tree to compensate them for pleasures lost.

But France!--Mademoiselle has given me an exquisite delight. For, figure you! France is not so vast that friends may not meet there often--if one were so greatly privileged--and every roadway in it leads to Dunkerque--and--I should dearly love to think of you as, so to speak, in my neighbourhood, among the people I esteem. It is not your devoted Highlands, this France, Mademoiselle Olivia, but believe me, it has its charms. You shall not have the mountains--there I am distressed for you--nor yet the rivulets; and you must dispense with the mists; but there is ever the consolation of an air that is like wine in the head, and a frequent sun. France, indeed! _Je suis ravi!_ I little thought when I heard of this end to the old home of you that you were to make the new one in my country; how could I guess when antic.i.p.ating my farewell to the Highlands of Scotland that I should have such good company to the sh.o.r.e of France?"

"Then you are returning now?" asked Olivia, her affectation of indifference just a little overdone.

In very truth he had not, as yet, so determined; but he boldly lied like a lover.

"'Twas my intention to return at once. I cannot forgive myself for being so long away from my friends there."

Olivia had a bodice of paduasoy that came low upon her shoulders and showed a spray of jasmine in the cleft of her rounded b.r.e.a.s.t.s, which heaved with what Count Victor could not but perceive was some emotion.

Her eyes were like a stag's, and they evaded him; she trifled with the pocket of her gown.

"Ah," she said, "it is natural that you should weary here in this sorry place and wish to get back to the people you know. There will be many that have missed you."

He laughed at that.

"A few--a few, perhaps," he said. "Clancarty has doubtless often sought me vainly for the trivial coin: some b.u.t.terflies in the _coulisse_ of the playhouse will have missed my pouncet-box; but I swear there are few in Paris who would be inconsolable if Victor de Montaiglon never set foot on the _trottoir_ again. It is my misfortune, mademoiselle, to have a mult.i.tude of friends so busy with content and pleasure--who will blame them?--that an absentee makes little difference, and as for relatives, not a single one except the Baroness de Chenier, who is large enough to count as double."

"And there will be--there will be the lady," said Olivia, with a poor attempt at raillery.

For a moment he failed to grasp her allusion.

"Of course, of course," said he hastily; "I hope, indeed, to see _her_ there." He felt an exaltation simply at the prospect. To see her there!

To have a host's right to bid welcome to his land this fair wild-flower that had blossomed on rocks of the sea, unspoiled and unsophisticated!

The jasmine stirred more obviously: it was fastened with a topaz brooch that had been her mother's, and had known of old a similar commotion; she became diligent with a book.

It was then there happened the thing that momentarily seemed a blow of fate to both of them. But for Mungo's voice at intervals in the kitchen, the house was wholly still, and through the calm winter night there came the opening bars of a melody, played very softly by Sim MacTaggart's flageolet. At first it seemed incredible--a caprice of imagination, and they listened for some moments speechless. Count Victor was naturally the least disturbed; this unlooked-for entertainment meant the pleasant fact that the d.u.c.h.ess had been nowise over-sanguine in her estimate of the Chamberlain's condition. Here was another possible homicide off his mind; the Gaelic frame was capable, obviously, of miraculous recuperation. That was but his first and momentary thought; the next was less pleasing, for it seemed not wholly unlikely now that after all Olivia and this man were still on an unchanged footing, and Mungo's sowing of false hopes was like to bring a bitter reaping of regretful disillusions. As for Olivia, she was first a flame and then an icicle.

Her face scorched; her whole being seemed to take a sudden wild alarm.

Count Victor dared scarcely look at her, fearing to learn his doom or spy on her embarra.s.sment until her first alarm was over, when she drew her lips together tightly and a.s.sumed a frigid resolution. She made no other movement.

A most bewitching flageolet! It languished on the night with an o'ermastering appeal, sweet inexpressibly and melting, the air unknown to one listener at least, but by him enviously confessed a very siren spell. He looked at Olivia, and saw that she intended to ignore it.

"Orpheus has recovered," he ventured with a smile.

She stared in front of her with no response; but the jasmine rose and fell, and her nostrils were abnormally dilated. Her face had turned from the red of her first surprise to the white of suppressed indignation.

The situation was inconceivably embarra.s.sing for both; now his bolt was shot, and unless she cared to express herself, he could not venture to allude to it again, though a whole orchestra augmented the efforts of the artist in the bower.

By-and-by there came a pause in the music, and she spoke.

"It is the blackest of affronts this," was her comment, that seemed at once singular and sweet to her hearer.

"_D'accord_," said Count Victor, but that was to himself. He was quite agreed that the Chamberlain's attentions, though well meant, were not for a good woman to plume herself on.

The flageolet spoke again--that curious unfinished air. Never before had it seemed so haunting and mysterious; a mingling of reproaches and command. It barely reached them where they sat together listening, a fairy thing and fascinating, yet it left the woman cold. And soon the serenade entirely ceased. Olivia recovered herself; Count Victor was greatly pleased.

"I hope that is the end of it," she said, with a sigh of relief.

"Alas, poor Orpheus! he returns to Thrace, where perhaps Madame Petullo may lead the ladies in tearing him to pieces!"

"Once that hollow reed bewitched me, I fancy," said she with a shy air of confession; "now I cannot but wonder and think shame at my blindness, for yon Orpheus has little beyond his music that is in any way admirable."

"And that the gift of nature, a thing without his own deserving, like his--like his regard for you, which was inevitable, Mademoiselle Olivia."

"And that the hollowest of all," she said, turning the evidence of it in her pocket again. "He will as readily get over that as over his injury from you."

"Perhaps 'tis so. The most sensitive man, they say, does not place all his existence on love; 'tis woman alone who can live and die in the heart."

"There I daresay you speak from experience," said Olivia, smiling, but impatient that he should find a single plea in favour of a wretch he must know so well.

"Consider me the exception," he hurried to explain. "I never loved but once, and then would die for it." The jasmine trembled in its chaste white nunnery, and her lips were temptingly apart. He bent forward boldly, searching her provoking eyes.

"She is the lucky lady!" said Olivia in a low voice, and then a pause.

She trifled with her book.

"What I wonder is that you could have a word to say of plea for this that surely is the blackest of his kind."

"Not admirable, by my faith! no; not admirable," he confessed, "but I would be the last to blame him for intemperately loving you. There, I think his honesty was beyond dispute; there he might have found salvation. That he should have done me the honour to desire my removal from your presence was flattering to my vanity, and a savage tribute to your power, Mademoiselle Olivia."

"Oh!" cried Olivia, "you cannot deceive me, Count Victor. It is odd that all your s.e.x must stick up for each other in the greatest villanies."

"Not the greatest, Mademoiselle Olivia," said Count Victor with an inclination; "he might have been indifferent to your charms, and that were the one thing unforgivable. But soberly, I consider his folly scarce bad enough for the punishment of your eternal condemnation."

"This man thinks lightly indeed of me," thought Olivia. "Drimdarroch has a good advocate," said she shortly, "and the last I would have looked for in his defence was just yourself."

"Drimdarroch?" he repeated, in a puzzled tone.