CHAPTER V

THE BARON

Among the visitors whom Paul left behind him in the little drawing-room in Brook Street was the Baron Claude de Chauxville, Baron of Chauxville and Chauxville le Duc, in the Province of Seine-et-Marne, France, attache to the French Embassy to the Court of St. James; before men a rising diplomatist, before God a scoundrel.  This gentleman remained when the other visitors had left, and Miss Maggie Delafield, seeing his intention of prolonging a visit of which she had already had sufficient, made an inadequate excuse and left the room.

Miss Delafield, being a healthy-minded young English person of that simplicity which is no simplicity at all, but merely simple-heartedness, had her own ideas of what a man should be, and M. de Chauxville had the misfortune to fall short of those ideas.  He was too epigrammatic for her, and beneath the brilliancy of his epigram she felt at times the presence of something dark and nauseous.  Her mental attitude toward him was contemptuous and perfectly polite.  With the reputation of possessing a dangerous fascination—­one of those reputations which can only emanate from the man himself—­M. de Chauxville neither fascinated nor intimidated Miss Delafield.  He therefore disliked her intensely.  His vanity was colossal, and when a Frenchman is vain he is childishly so.

M. de Chauxville watched the door close behind Miss Delafield with a queer smile.  Then he turned suddenly on his heels and faced Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.

“Your cousin,” he said, “is a typical Englishwoman—­she only conceals her love.”

“For you?” enquired Mrs. Sydney Bamborough.

The baron shrugged his shoulders.

“Possibly.  One can never tell.  She conceals it very well if it exists.  However, I am indifferent.  The virtue of the violet is its own reward, perhaps, for the rose always wins.”

He crossed the room toward Mrs. Sydney Bamborough, who was standing near the mantelpiece.  Her left hand was hanging idly by her side.  He took the white fingers and gallantly raised them to his lips, but before they had reached that fount of truth and wisdom she jerked her hand away.

M. de Chauxville laughed—­the quiet, assured laugh of a man who has read in books that he who is bold enough can win any woman, and believes it.  He was of those men who treat and speak of women as a class—­creatures to be dealt with successfully according to generality and maxim.  It is a singular thing, by the way, that men as a whole continue to disbelieve in a woman’s negative—­singular, that is, when one reflects that the majority of men have had at least one negative which has remained a negative, so far as they were concerned, all the woman’s life.

“I am aware,” said M. de Chauxville, “that the rose has thorns.  One reason why the violet is hors de concours.”

Etta smiled—­almost relenting.  She was never quite safe against her own vanity.  Happy the woman who is, and rare.