A Lost Leader Part 38

CLOUDS--AND A CALL TO ARMS

The first cloud appeared towards the end of the third day at Bonestre.

Blanche and Sir Leslie were left alone, and he hastened to improve the opportunity.

"The d.u.c.h.ess and your husband," he remarked, "appear very easily to have picked up again the threads of their old friends.h.i.+p."

"The d.u.c.h.ess," she answered, "is a very charming woman. I am sure that you find her so, don't you?"

"We are very old friends," he answered, "but I was never admitted to exactly the same privileges as your husband enjoys."

"The d.u.c.h.ess," she answered, calmly, "is a woman of taste!"

Sir Leslie muttered something under his breath. Blanche made a movement as though to take up again the book which she had been reading in a sheltered corner of the hotel garden.

"Don't you think," he said, "that we should make better friends than enemies?"

"I am not at all sure," she answered, calmly. "To tell you the truth, I don't fancy you particularly in either capacity."

He laughed unpleasantly.

"You are scarcely complimentary," he remarked.

"I did not mean to be," she answered. "Why should I?"

"You are content, then, to let your husband drift back into his old relations with the d.u.c.h.ess? I presume that you know what they were?"

"Whether I am or not," she answered, "what business is it of yours?"

"I will tell you, if you like," he answered. "In fact, I think it would be better. It has been the one desire of my life to marry the d.u.c.h.ess of Lenchester myself."

She smiled at him scornfully.

"Come," she said, "let me give you a little advice. Give up the idea.

They say that lookers-on see most of the game, and so far as I am concerned I'm certainly the looker-on of this party. The d.u.c.h.ess doesn't care a row of pins about you!"

"There are other marriages, besides marriages of affection," Sir Leslie said, stiffly. "The d.u.c.h.ess is ambitious."

"But she is also a woman," Blanche declared. "And she is in love."

"With whom?"

"With my husband! I presume that is clear enough to most people!"

Sir Leslie was a little staggered.

"You take it very coolly," he remarked.

"Why not? The d.u.c.h.ess is too proud a woman to give herself away, and my husband--belongs to me!"

"You haven't any idea of taking poison, or anything of that sort, I suppose, have you?" he inquired. "The other woman nearly always does that."

"Not in real life," Blanche answered, composedly. "Besides, I'm not the other woman--I'm the one. The d.u.c.h.ess is the other!"

"But your husband--"

"Do you know, I should prefer not to discuss my husband--with you,"

Blanche said, calmly, taking up her book. "He is not the sort of man you would be at all likely to understand. If you want a rich wife why don't you propose to Clara Mannering? I suppose you knew that some unheard-of aunt had left her fifty thousand pounds?"

Sir Leslie rose to his feet.

"I don't fancy that you and I are very sympathetic this afternoon," he remarked. "I will go and see if any one has returned."

"Do," she answered. "I shall miss you, of course, but my book is positively absorbing, and I am dying to go on with it."

Sir Leslie left the garden without another word. Blanche held her book before her face until he had disappeared. Then it slipped from her fingers. She looked hard into a cl.u.s.ter of roses, and she saw only two figures--always the same figures. Her eyes were set, her face was wan and old.

"The other woman!" she murmured to herself. "That is what I am. And I can't live up to it. I ought to take poison, or get run over or something, and I know very well I shan't. Bother the man! Why couldn't he leave me alone?"

After dinner that evening she accepted her husband's nightly invitation and walked with him for a little while. The others followed.

"How much longer can you stay away from England, Lawrence?" she asked him.

"Oh--a fortnight, I should think," he answered. "I am not tied to any particular date. You like it here, I hope?"

"Immensely! Are--our friends going to remain?"

"I haven't heard them say anything about moving on yet," he answered.

"Are you in love with the d.u.c.h.ess still, Lawrence?"

"Am I--Blanche!"

"Don't be angry! You made a mistake once, you know. Don't make another.

I'm not a jealous woman, and I don't ask much from you, but I'm your wife. That's all!"

She turned and called to Hester. The little party rearranged itself.

Mannering found himself with Berenice.

"What was your wife saying to you?" she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"It was the beginning," he remarked.

Berenice sighed.

"It is a strange thing," she said, "but in this world no one can ever be happy except at some one else's expense. It is a most unnatural law of compensation. Shall we move on to-morrow?"