Faithful Margaret Part 58

"Each of these lockets," sneered madame, "contains a victim to my power of fascination, [there were at least a dozen,] and the whole string of them was presented to me by an old vice admiral who fell in love with me at Barbadoes last winter, and escorted me to the Bermudas when I went there. My good lady, that first foolish pa.s.sion of mine has so destroyed my powers of mercy that I love to torture mankind and madden them with false expectations, if only I might be revenged."

The beautiful lips of the lady suddenly compressed with a cruel expression, and looking up, Margaret beheld the Chevalier de Calembours hurrying across the room to join them.

"The Chevalier de Calembours wishes to be presented to you," said Margaret.

Those gleaming, chrysolite orbs flashed a full upward glare in the chevalier's face. He recoiled, he changed color, and became strangely silent.

"So glad to meet the chevalier," murmured madame, with an inimitable elegance of manner.

Monsieur's face relaxed; he drew near her, dazzled as with the eye of a rattlesnake.

"Incomparable madame, where have we met before?" inquired he, with soft insinuation.

She honored him with a glance of astonishment and an artless smile.

"Indeed I cannot say, chevalier," she minced, "unless we've met in dreams."

"Pardon the presumption, madame, _mon amie_," persisted the chevalier, growing very pale, "but I think we are not strangers."

Another change swept over Madame Hesslein's ever-changeful face; all resemblance of her late self disappeared, and a bold, brilliant, haughty creature sat in her place, smiling with supercilious amus.e.m.e.nt at the little Bohemian's blunder.

"I should indeed feel honored if monsieur would recall the circ.u.mstances of our acquaintance," she said, blandly; "for I am frequently accosted by strangers who vow that I am known to them, and who afterward discover that my resemblance to the person they took me for was owing solely to the Protean expression of my face. I can't help my face being like twenty other people's in a breath, can I, Miss Walsingham? But I would like to think that Chevalier Calembours had known me previously, for I always have a warm side to Frenchmen for a special reason."

The chevalier was himself again: his doubts had fled, and he was laughing at himself for his momentary illusion.

"Madame has explained the sweet hallucination," he said, hand on heart.

"We have not met except in dreams. Ah! that we had been friends in those days of glory when I was the favorite of the Hungarian court, the Count of Calembours, owner of diamond mines! _Mon Dieu!_ my homage was worthy of its object then!"

Monsieur launched into his loftiest braggadocio, and madame listened well, and drew him out with skill.

"So monsieur was born in Hungary?"

"In Hungary, madame."

"Have you seen the pretty river Theiss?"

"Hem! Yes, madame. I lived in Irzegedin."

"Ah!"--with a mocking smile--"the residences of the counts are particularly magnificent in that city, are they not?"

"Madame is right. Madame must have been there."

"Oh, no, my dear chevalier, else I should have heard of Count Calembours, without doubt. And Chevalier de Calembours left his princely fortune behind when he came here to fight?"

"Madame is a good listener."

"Brave chevalier! but you will return to your estates?"

"Without doubt, madame, when I am weary of glory."

"Admirable man!" cried madame, with a silvery laugh. "What an enviable lady your wife is."

"Dear friend, I have no wife," complacently.

"Is that credible? A young and handsome man without a wife? Oh, chevalier!"

"My wife,"--with a frown--"my wife is gone long since."

"Alas! how sad. You must have been adored by her," breathed Madame Hesslein.

"Ah, _pauvrette_, yes. She wearied me with that grand pa.s.sion of hers."

Madame's smiling face hardened into a stone-mask, but her eyes seemed to pulsate with smothered fire.

"Wearied monsieur, did she?" (with a threatening smile into his eyes).

"Silly, clumsy wretch!"

"No, no, madame," laughed the chevalier; "she was a pretty Venus, but unsophisticated, unformed, somewhat vulgar."

"And your indifference broke her heart--she died for love of you?"

questioned madame, wickedly.

"No, no, madame," laughed the chevalier again. "She consoled herself.

She ran away with a cotton lord from Manchester, and I heard of her no more."

"She was mad--she was a fool!" cried madame, blandly mischievous. "She should have polished her dull l.u.s.ter, and recaptured the errant heart of her n.o.ble chevalier. I should have done so."

"You, exquisite madame?" sighed the chevalier, _con amore_. "Ah, but my wife was not clever like you, nor beautiful."

"She was only affectionate?" whispered madame.

"Only affectionate," and monsieur bowed.

Again their eyes met, hers streaming forth a bewildering fire, his wistful and adoring, and though her words stung the Chevalier de Calembours, the victim could not choose but hover close, and closer to admire the serpentine grace of his tormentor.

Presently, becoming weary of the amus.e.m.e.nt, the siren sent him for a chess-board, promising him a game of backgammon for reward, and turning to Margaret, with a laugh of derision, her excitement burst forth.

"See how that man throws himself down to be trampled over by me," she whispered, exultingly. "See how he licks the dust from my feet. Ah, if I could only spurn him into ruin I would do it."

She thrust her lovely foot of Andalusian grace from out of its velvet folds, and contemplated it with a smile.

"I am more beautiful than that creature who loved him long ago on the banks of the Theiss, am I? Then by virtue of my beauty, I shall avenge her cause, and my own. I shall humiliate our n.o.ble count."

She whispered it gayly to her sumptuous bracelets, turning and clanking the golden shackle on her shapely wrist; but her fine, small face was wild with malice.

"You hate my friend, the chevalier, with a strange perversity," remarked the disapproving Margaret. "Doubtless that hapless woman was as much to blame as he."

"Ah, was she?" breathed madame, turning pale. "I think he said that her only fault was her pa.s.sionate love, which his shallow soul wearied of.

Oh, Heaven! how cruel you can be! Her case, Miss Walsingham, is like my own--how keenly I can understand such wrongs. Pshaw! I shall moralize no more. I have long, long ago left these stormy waves behind, and now float on a gla.s.sy sea, lit by rays of golden ambition. I have buried the G.o.d of luckless youth, poor Cupid, and set upon his grave the G.o.d of the Thirties--yellow-faced Pluto. My motto is, 'No heart and a good digestion,' and taking heed to its warning, I expect to live, handsome as a picture, to the age of old Madame Bellair, who