By Wit of Woman, Arthur W. Marchmont [best books to read in your 20s .TXT] 📗

thought this over carefully and could see but one answer—she must be acting in obedience to some powerful compelling influence from outside. Who had that influence, and what was its nature?

When I knew that Karl had gone I went down stairs and had another surprise. I found Madame d'Artelle plunged apparently in the deepest grief. She was a creature of almost hysterical changes of mood.

"What is the matter?" I asked, with sparse sympathy. "Don't cry. Tears spell ruin to the complexion."

"I am the most miserable woman in the world," she wailed.

"Then you are at the bottom of a very large class. Tears don't suit you, either. They make your eyes red and puffy. A luxury even you cannot afford, beautiful as you are."

"You are hateful," she cried, angrily; and immediately dried her eyes and sat up to glare at me.

I smiled. "I have stopped your crying at any rate."

"I wish to be alone."

"I think you ought to be very grateful to me. Look at yourself;" and I held a hand mirror in front of her face.

She snatched it from me and flung it down on the sofa pillow with a little French oath.

"Be careful. To break a mirror means a year's ill luck. A serious misfortune for even a pretty woman."

"I don't believe you have a grain of sympathy in your whole heart. It must be as hard as a stone."

"My dear Henriette, the heart has nothing to do with sympathy or any other emotion. It is just the blood pump. I have not read much physiology but...."

"Nom de Dieu, spare me your science," she cried, excitedly.

I laughed again without restraint. "We'll drop physiology, then. But I know other things, and now that I have brought you out of the tear stage, we'll talk about them if you like. I agree with you that it is most exasperating and bitterly disappointing."

Her face was a mask of bewilderment as she turned to me swiftly. "What do you mean?" The question came after a pause.

"It is so ridiculously easy. I mean what you were thinking about when the passion of tears came along. What are you going to do about it?"

I had seated myself and taken up a book, and was turning over the leaves as I put the question. She jumped up excitedly and came and stood over me, her features almost fiercely set as she stared down.

"What do you mean? You shall say what you mean. You shall."

"Not while you stand there threatening me with a sort of wild glare in your eyes. I don't think it's fair to be angry with me just because you can't do what you wish."

She stretched out her hands as if she would shake me in her exasperation. Then she laughed, a little wildly, and went back to her seat on the couch.

"What was in my thoughts then?"

"At the foundation—the inconvenience of your religious convictions as a member of the Roman Catholic Church."

"You are mad," she cried, with a toss of her shapely head and a ringing laugh. But as the laugh died away her eyes filled with sobering perplexity. "At the foundation," she said slowly, repeating my words. "You are a poor thought-reader. What else was I thinking of?"

I paused to give due significance to my next words, and looked at her fixedly as I spoke. "Of your marriage with M. Constans; and that in your church, marriage is a sacrament."

"You are a devil," she exclaimed, with fresh excitement, almost with fury indeed. "Say what you mean and don't torment me."

"The Count has been urging you to marry him of course, and——"

"You have been listening. You spy." The last vestige of her self-control was lost as she flung the words at me.

I paused. I never act impetuously with hysterical people. With studied deliberation I closed my book, having carefully laid a marker between the pages, and looked round as if for anything that might belong to me. Then I rose. Her eyes watched me with growing doubt and anxiety.

"I shall be ready to leave the house in about an hour, Madame," I said icily, and walked toward the door.

She let me get close to it. "What are you going to do?"

My answer was a cold smile, in which I contrived to convey a threat. I knew how to frighten her.

She jumped up and rushed to the door and stood with her back against it—as an angry, over-teased child will do. "You shall not go. You mean to try and ruin me." I had known before that she was afraid of me; but she had never shown it so openly.

"Yes, I shall do my best." I spoke so calmly and looked her so firmly in the face that she was convinced of my earnestness.

"I didn't mean what I said," she declared.

"It is too late for that," I replied, with a sneer of obvious distrust and disbelief. She had very little courage and was a poor fighter. Her only weapon was her beauty; and it was useless of course against me.

Her eyes began to show a scared, hunted expression. "Don't go. Forgive me, Christabel. I didn't mean it. I swear I didn't. You angered me, and you know how impetuous I am."

"I am surprised you should plead thus to—a spy, Madame."

"But I tell you I didn't mean it. Christabel, dear Christabel, I know you are not a spy. Don't make so much of an angry word. Come, let us talk it over. Do, do"; and she put her arm in mine to lead me back to my chair.

I let her prevail with me, but with obvious reluctance. "Why are you so afraid of me?" I asked.

"I am not afraid of you; but I want you to stay and help me."

I sat down then as a concession and a sign that I was willing to talk things over; and she sat near me, taking care to place her chair between me and the door.

"If that is so, it is time that we understood one another. Perhaps I had better begin. You cannot marry Count Karl."

"I love him, Christabel."

"And Monsieur Constans—your husband?"

"Don't, don't. He deserted me. He is a villain, a false scoundrel. Don't speak of him in the same breath with—with the man I love."

"He is your husband, Madame." She moaned and waved her arms despairingly.

"I am the most wretched woman on earth. I love him so."

"And therefore encourage him to take opium. I do not understand that kind of love. Had you not better tell me the truth?"

"I shall save him. You don't understand. My God, you don't understand at all. The only way I can save him is to do what he asks."

"Who is it that is forcing your hand?"

She winced at the question, as if it were a lancet thrust. "You frighten me, Christabel, and mystify me."

"No, no. It is only that you are trying to mystify me, and are frightened lest I should guess your secret. Let us be fair to one another. I have an object here which you cannot guess and I shall not tell you. You have an object which I can see plainly. You have been brought here to involve Count Karl in a way which threatens him with ruin, and you have fallen in love with him—or think you have. You are now anxious to please your employer and also secure the man you love from the ruin which threatens him. He has asked you to marry him; and a crisis has arisen which you have neither the nerve to face nor the wit to solve."

"Nom de Dieu, how you read things!" she exclaimed under her breath, her eyes dilated with wonder and fear.

"But for my presence you would marry him; and trust to Fate to avoid the discovery being made that M. Constans is still alive. To yourself you would justify this by the pretence that if you were once the Count's wife you could check instead of encourage his opium habit and so save him. Who then is it with the power to drive you into this reckless crime?"

She was too astounded to reply at once, but sat staring at me open mouthed. Suddenly she changed, and her look grew fierce and tense. "Who are you, and what is your motive in forcing yourself upon me here?"

"I depend on my wits to make a way for me in the world, Madame; and I take care to keep them in good condition. But I am not forcing myself upon you. I am ready to go at this moment—if you prefer that—and if you think it safer to have me against you."

"Mon Dieu, I believe I am really afraid of you."

"Of me, no. Of the knowledge I have, yes. And you will do well to give that fear due weight. You have been already induced to make one very foolish move. To receive stolen jewels is a crime, even when the thief is——"

"How dare you say that!"

"You forget. The day I came first to you you had occasion to go to the secret drawer in the old bureau in your boudoir, and I saw them there. You are a very poor player, Madame, in such a game as this."

The colour left her cheeks, and hate as well as fear was in her eyes as she stared helplessly at me.

"It is all your imagination," she said, weakly.

I smiled.

"It can remain that—if you wish. It is for you to decide."

"What do you mean?"

"You had better trust me. You can begin by telling me what and whose is this evil influence behind you?"

A servant interrupted us at that moment.

"His Excellency Count Gustav is asking for you, Madame."

She gave a quick start, and flashed a look at me.

"I will go to him," she answered.

I had another intuition then. I smiled and rose.

"So that is the answer to my question. You may wish to consult him, Madame. I will see you afterwards; and will use the interval to have my trunks packed in readiness to leave the house should he deem it best."

"I am right. You are a devil," she cried, with another burst of impetuous, uncontrollable temper.

I turned as I reached the door.

"Should he decide that I stay, Madame, and wish to see me, I shall be quite prepared."

I went out then without waiting for any reply.

CHAPTER V A NIGHT ADVENTURE

I felt completely satisfied with the result of my conversation with Madame d'Artelle. I had had some qualms about the manner in which I had entered her house; feeling, it must be confessed, something like a spy. But our relations would now be changed. It would be at most an alliance of hostility. I should only remain because she would deem it more dangerous for me to leave; she would trust me no further than she dared; and as I had openly acknowledged that I had an object of my own in view, I need no longer have any scruples about staying.

I had made excellent use of my opportunities, moreover; and if my last shaft had really hit the bull's-eye—that the influence behind her was that of Karl's brother—the discovery would be of the utmost value.

Could it be Count Gustav? Instead of packing my trunks I sat trying to answer that question and the others which flowed from it. I had always heard him spoken of not only as a man of high capacity and integrity but as a staunch friend to his brother Karl. Yet he was a man; and he might be as false as any other. I would take no man's good faith for granted.

There was the crucial fact, too, that Karl's ruin meant Gustav's advantage. Every one expressed regret that Karl and not Gustav was to be the future Duke; and if others felt this, was Gustav himself likely to hold a different opinion? From such an opinion it was no doubt a far cry to form a deliberate plot to secure the dukedom; but Gustav was no more than a man; and