“My dear Simon,” replied my lost mother-in-law, “you have behaved irreproachably.  Eleanor will feel it for some time no doubt; but she is young and will soon get over it.  I’ll send her to the Drascombe-Prynnes in Paris.  And as for yourself, your terrible misfortune will be as much as you can bear.  You mustn’t increase it by any worries on her behalf.  In that way I’ll do my utmost to help you.”

“You are kindness itself, Mrs. Faversham,” said I.

I bowed over the delighted lady’s hand and went away, deeply moved by her charity and maternal devotion.

But perhaps in her hardness lies truth.  I have never touched Eleanor’s heart.  No romance had preceded or accompanied our engagement.  The deepest, truest incident in it has been our parting.

CHAPTER VI

Dale’s occupation, like Othello’s, being gone, as far as I am concerned, Lady Kynnersley has despatched him to Berlin, on her own business, connected, I think, with the International Aid Society.  He is to stay there for a fortnight.

How he proposes to bear the separation from the object of his flame I have not inquired; but if forcible objurgations in the vulgar tongue have any inner significance, I gather that Lady Kynnersley has not employed an enthusiastic agent.

Being thus free to pursue my eumoirous schemes without his intervention, for you cannot talk to a lady for her soul’s good when her adorer is gaping at you, I have taken the opportunity to see something of Lola Brandt.

I find I have seen a good deal of her; and it seems not improbable that I shall see considerably more.  Deuce take the woman!

On the first afternoon of Dale’s absence I paid her my promised visit.  It was a dull day, and the room, lit chiefly by the firelight, happily did not reveal its nerve-racking tastelessness.  Lola Brandt, supple-limbed and lazy-voiced, talked to me from the cushioned depths of her chair.

We lightly touched on Dale’s trip to Berlin.  She would miss him terribly.  It was so kind of me to come and cheer her lonely hour.  Politeness forbade my saying that I had come to do nothing of the sort.  To my vague expression of courtesy she responded by asking me with a laugh how I liked Mr. Anastasius Papadopoulos.

I replied that I considered it urbane on his part to invite me to see his cats perform.

“If you were to hurt one of his cats he’d murder you,” she informed me.  “He always carries a long, sharp knife concealed somewhere about him on purpose.”

“What a fierce little gentleman,” I remarked.

“He looks on me as one of his cats, too,” she said with a low laugh, “and considers himself my protector.  Once in Buda-Pesth he and I were driving about.  I was doing some shopping.  As I was getting into the cab a man insulted me, on account, I suppose, of my German name.  Anastasius sprang at him like a wild beast, and I had to drag him off bodily and lift him back into the cab.  I’m pretty strong, you know.  It must have been a funny sight.”  She turned to me quickly.  “Do you think it wrong of me to laugh?”