"It does seem strange," she said.

Pauline nodded. "N"est-ce pas? I feel as if you were in a trap."

The girl shivered, and her voice became pleading. "Oh, Pauline, do watch me! Look after me! I have no one now but you!"

The old bonne kissed the delicate, shrinking little figure. "La! la!"

she said. "With my last breath I will shield you! Nevertheless, you are a mischief and make some men mad. Oh, the things they say about you! But it is only play."

"Only play?"

"That is all, cherie; I am sure of it."

Peggy went up to the fireplace. "Sometimes," she said, "I think it is very foolish play. I only hope that it won"t end in tears." She looked down at the logs--smouldering now and with no more flame of rose-pink and amethyst.

"Tears? For you? Never!"

Peggy turned half round. "Pauline--I am going to be sensible. I shall turn over a new leaf. I shall become a _grande dame_, give great entertainments, hold court at Admaston House in Hampshire, and at Castle Netherby--then I shall not have time to make men mad!"

Pauline clapped her hands. "That will be splendid!" she said. "That will make him so happy!"

"Who, my husband?"

"Exactement. Monsieur adores you."

"I wonder?" Peggy said slowly, more to herself than to Pauline.

The maid nodded. "Madame," she went on, "he is a great big dog. You can do anything with him. He will never bite nor snarl, nor show even a little bit of his teeth."

"Perhaps it would be better if he would," Peggy replied in a rather broken voice. "I am so lonely, Pauline. Sometimes I think that his politics don"t leave even a little corner for me."

"Bien!" said Pauline with a chuckle. "You would not feel lonely, madame, unless you loved him."

Peggy went up to the piano, which was open, and struck two or three resonant chords. "Certainly there is something in that," she said musingly.

"Yes, madame," Pauline replied, "he is a man, and you are proud of him.

He is so different from all the others."

Peggy"s idle fingers rattled out a little trilling catch from the Chanson Florian. Suddenly she stopped and turned her head swiftly. "You do not like Mr. Collingwood?" she asked, watching Pauline"s face intently.

"Ma Doue!" Pauline answered in her native Breton, "but I like M.

Collingwood well enough. All the women that there are like M.

Collingwood. He is a terrible flirt, but he is not wicked. But madame must be careful, that is all. He loves madame not as he loves the others."

Peggy closed the lid of the piano with a bang. "Now, Pauline," she said, "don"t be silly. Off you go to bed. I feel ever so much better now."

The maid gathered up the brushes and the bottle of eau-de-cologne from the table and took them into Mrs. Admaston"s room. Then she returned.

"Good night, madame," she said. "If you want me, that little bell there rings in my room. Boone nuit. Dormez bien, cherie."

She kissed her mistress and left the room.

Peggy remained alone.

CHAPTER III

Mrs. Admaston pulled aside the long curtains of green silk. She turned the oblong handle which released two of the windows, pulled it towards her, and drank in the fresh night air.

How fragrant and stimulating it was. How pure, and how different from the horrid, scented air of the sitting-room!

""From the cool cisterns of the midnight air my spirit drinks repose,""

Peggy quoted to herself; and she did, indeed, seem to be bathed by a sweet and delicate refreshment, a cleansing, reviving air, which washed all hot and feverish thoughts away and made her one with the stainless spirit of the night.

The black ma.s.ses--the black, blotted ma.s.ses--of the trees in the Tuileries gardens cut into the sky-line. But even now, late as it was, innumerable lights twinkled over Paris, and a big honey-coloured moon, which shamed the firefly lights below, and seemed almost like a harvest moon, had risen and was staring down upon the City of Pleasure.

In front of the window was a balcony, and, lightly clad as she was, the girl went out upon it and with an impulsive gesture stretched out her arms to where the Lamp of the night, depended from a little drift of fleecy-white and amber-coloured clouds, swung over Paris.

"O moon," she said, "dear, round, red moon, I am going to be good! I really, really am. I am going to turn over a new leaf; I am going...."

There was a sharp whirr, hard, metallic, and insistent, from the room behind.

The telephone bell was ringing.

Peggy started--the world called her back. In her mind, as it were, she put down her good resolutions on the balcony and hurried in to see who had rung her up.

She fluttered up to the telephone, caught the receiver to her ear, and spoke breathlessly:

"Well, who is it? What? Yes. Who is it? Oh! Where are you? Chalons! You have arrived, then? What?"

A voice, not over the telephone wire, but behind her and in the room, came to Peggy"s disengaged ear.

She started violently and turned round as if upon a pivot.

She saw standing before her a slim, tall, clean-shaved man, anywhere between thirty and forty. He was in evening clothes--that is to say, he wore a dinner jacket and black tie. His hair was dark and curly and grew low upon his forehead; his eyebrows were beautifully pencilled; and below them two shrewd, mocking, and yet somehow simple and merry eyes of a brilliant grey looked out upon Mrs. Admaston. The nose was aquiline; the lips, a trifle full, were nevertheless beautifully shaped. They were parted now in a smile.

"Who is it? Let me speak, Peggy?" Collingwood said.

Peggy looked at him. "Oh, how you startled me!" she cried, with a little shriek of alarm and embarra.s.sment. Then without a further word she fluttered towards the door of her bedroom, dropping the receiver of the telephone, which hung by its twisted cord and swung this way and that.

Roderick Collingwood took a couple of quick, decisive steps to the wall.

He caught up the receiver.

"h.e.l.lo! That you, Ellerdine? Yes, just finished supper. What? What? 2.34 to-night--I mean this morning? What time do you reach Paris? What?--five o"clock?"

He turned round to Peggy, who was standing by her bedroom door. "They are coming on here," he said.