XV

"NOT AT HOME"

"A gentleman to see madame."

The servant came into the sitting-room with a card. Jim was at the barber's; he had done nothing but sleep since their return, twenty-four hours earlier, and Muriel had urged him to "go down and get rubbed up"

at a shop where, as he had discovered during their first stay in Paris, there was a French barber that did not get the lather up his patient's nose. She was now, therefore, alone. She took the card: it was that of Captain von Klausen.

"I am not at home," said Muriel.

"Yes, madame," said the servant. He hesitated a moment and then added: "This same gentleman called, I believe, on the afternoon of the day that madame, last week, left. I chanced to be in the bureau at the time, and it was there that he made his enquiries. The gentleman seemed disappointed."

"I am not at home," repeated Muriel.

This time the servant received the phrase in silence. He bowed himself out and left her seated, a touch of red burning in her pale and somewhat wasted cheeks; but he had scarcely gone before the door of the sitting-room again opened and Jim appeared. He had met von Klausen downstairs and had brought him along.

In his frock-coat the Austrian looked taller and slimmer than ever, and his face appeared to be even younger than when she had last seen it.

Aglow with health and warm with the pleasure of this meeting, it had an air singularly boyish and innocent. The waxed blond moustache failed utterly to lend it severity, and the blue eyes sparkled with youth. Had Stainton been told of what Muriel had seen at L'Abbaye, he would have protested that her eyes deceived her: it was incredible that this young fellow, whose smile was so honest and whose blush was as ready as a schoolgirl's, as ready as Muriel's own, could ever have frequented Montmartre and danced there in public with a hired Spanish woman.

Nevertheless, Muriel was annoyed. She was annoyed lest they had fallen in with the servant, which they had not done, and been told that she was out. She was annoyed with Jim because he had brought to call upon her a man that, only a few days before, she had told him she disliked. And she was distinctly annoyed with von Klausen.

Yet the interview pa.s.sed off pleasantly enough. Jim was never the man to observe under a woman's conventional politeness, even when that politeness was ominously intensified, the fires of her disapproval, and von Klausen, if indeed he saw more than the husband, at least appeared to see no more. He remained to tea.

"Why on earth did you bring _him_ here?" asked Muriel as soon as the door had closed on the Austrian.

"Why, did you mind?"

"I told you that I didn't like him."

"I know, but you didn't seem to mind."

"I managed not to be rude to your guest, that's all. Jim, you must have remembered that I said I didn't like him."

"Yes, I do remember," Stainton confessed; "but the fact is that I brought him because I couldn't very well get out of bringing him. He was so extremely glad to see me that I couldn't merely drop him in the lobby."

"How did he know that we were here?"

"I told him on the boat that we were to stop here."

"But we have been and gone and returned since then."

"Then I suppose he found us out in the same way that Boussingault did: in the hotel news of the _Daily Mail_."

"Well, you might have told him that I wasn't at home. That's what I told the servant when his card was sent up."

"Yes, Muriel, I might have tried that, and, as a matter of fact, I did think of it; but then he would have hung on to me downstairs, and I knew you would be lonely up here without me."

Muriel turned away to observe herself in a long mirror.

"You know I don't like him," she repeated.

"Yes, yes, dear, but what was I to do. Besides, he is really a very good fellow; I really can't see why you don't like him. What reason can you have for your prejudice?"

"When a woman can give a reason for disliking a man," said Muriel, "she hasn't any. If her dislike comes just because she has no reason there's generally good ground for it."

"There's nothing wrong with von Klausen," said Jim. "Besides, he's a mere boy."

"Please don't talk about his youth. He is at least five years older than I am."

"Are you so very aged, my dear?"

"I am old enough, it appears, to be the wife of my young husband."

Stainton kissed her.

"Well said," he declared; "your young husband has been so weather-beaten that he has been a pretty poor sort of spouse lately. We won't worry any more about von Klausen."

Yet to worry about von Klausen they were forced. They seemed, during the next ten days, to meet him everywhere, and he was always so polite that his invitations could not be contumeliously refused. He took them to the opera and to supper afterwards, and they, at last, had to ask him to dine.

It was in the midst of this dinner at Les Fleurs that Stainton, begging his guest's pardon, glanced at a letter that had been handed him as he and Muriel that evening left the hotel.

"h.e.l.lo," he said, "these French business-men are not so slow, after all.

They have drawn the final papers, and I am to sign them to-morrow."

He turned to Muriel.

"So," he said, "I shall have to break our agreement this once, Muriel, and leave you alone for the morning. Will you forgive me?"

Muriel smiled.

"I'll try," she said.

"You won't be bored?"

"Oh, I'll be bored, of course, but I shall make the best of it."

"Permit me," interposed von Klausen, "to offer my services to Mrs.

Stainton."

"Your services?" asked Muriel.

"To occupy you during your husband's absence. It is unendurable to think of you as wholly deserted--is it not, sir?"

The Austrian was addressing Jim. Stainton and his wife exchanged a quick glance. Jim was thinking of her expression of dislike for the Captain; Muriel was annoyed because her husband had neglected to read his letter before they joined von Klausen: she was in the mood for revenge.