voice from another, or one word from another amid the noise of the crowded garden. She had quite enough to do to attend to Mrs. Lennard, who chattered all dinner time, keeping up an uninterrupted babble, in which remarks upon the business of the dinner-table were blended with criticism upon the dress of ladies sitting in the other boxes.
“You should eat those little red things—baby-lobsters—écrivisses, I think they call them, dear; I always do. How do you like that bonnet; no, not that one—a little more St. Jacques, Major,—the black one, with the peach-coloured strings. I wonder why they call all the Clarets saints, and not the Burgundies? Do you think she’s pretty in the box opposite? No, you don’t think much of her, do you?—I don’t—I like the one in the blue silk, pretty well, if her eyebrows weren’t so heavy.”
The dinner was drawing to a close, the Major was up to his eyes in roast fowl and water-cress, and Mrs. Lennard was scraping the preserved fruit out of a shellwork of heavy pastry with the point of her spoon, trifling idly now that the grand business was done, when Eleanor rose suddenly from her seat, breathless and eager, as much startled by the sound of a voice in the next arbour as if a shell had just exploded amidst the debris of the dinner.
“After?” some one had said interrogatively.
“After,” answered a man whose voice had grown hoarser and thicker, as the empty bottles about the legs of the president had become more numerous, “my stripling has refused me a little bank-note of a thousand francs. Thou art too dear, my friend, he has said to me; that has been paid already, and enough largely. Besides, that was not great things. Ah! ha! I said, thou art there, my drole; you begin to fatigue yourself of your confederate. He is too much. Very well; he has his pride, he also. Thou art the last of men, and I say to you, adieu, Monsieur Launcelot Darrell.”
This was the name that struck upon Eleanor’s ear, and aroused the old feeling in all its strength. The snake had only been scotched after all. It reared its head at the sound of that name like a war-horse at the blast of a trumpet. Eleanor, starting to her feet, turned round and faced the party in the next box. The man who had spoken had risen also, and was leaning across the table to reach a bottle on the other side. Thus it was that the faces of the two were opposite to each other; and Victor Bourdon, the commercial traveller, recognised Gilbert Monckton’s missing wife.
He dropped the glass that he was filling, and poured some wine into the cuff of his coat, while he stared at Eleanor in drunken surprise.
“You are here, madame?” he cried, with a look in which astonishment was blended with intense delight, a sort of tipsy radiance that illuminated the Frenchman’s fat face. Even in the midst of her surprise at seeing him, Eleanor perceived that blending of expression, and wondered at it.
Before she could speak, Monsieur Bourdon had left his party and had deliberately seated himself in the empty chair next her. He seized her hand in both his own, and bent over her as she shrunk away from him.
“Do not recoil from me, madame,” he said, always speaking in French that was considerably disguised by wine. “Ah, you do not know. I can be of the last service to you; and you can be of the last service to me also. I have embroiled myself with this Monsieur Long—cel—lotte, for always; after that which I have done for him, he is an ingrate, he is less than that;” Monsieur Bourdon struck the nail of his thumb upon his front tooth with a gesture of ineffable contempt. “But why do I tell you this, madame? You were in the garden when this poor old,—this Monsieur de Crespigny, was lying dead. You remember; you know. Never mind, I lose myself the head; I have dined a little generously. Will you find yourself to-morrow, madame, in the gardens of the Palais Royal, at five hours? There is music all the Tuesdays. Will you meet me? I have something of the last importance to tell you. Remember you that I know everything. I know that you hate this Long—cellotte. I will give you your revenge. You will come; is it not?”
“Yes,” Eleanor answered, quickly.
“Upon the five hours? I shall wait for you near to the fountain.”
“Yes.”
Monsieur Bourdon rose, took up his hat with a drunken flourish, and went back to his friends. The Major and Mrs. Lennard had been all this time staring aghast at the drunken Frenchman. He had spoken in a loud whisper to Eleanor, but neither Frederick Lennard nor his wife retained very much of that French which had been sedulously drilled into them during their school-days, and beyond ordering a dinner, or disputing with a landlord as to the unconscionable number of wax candles in a month’s hotel bill, their knowledge of the language was very limited; so Eleanor had only to explain to her friends that Monsieur Bourdon was a person whom she had known in England, and that he had brought her some news of importance which she was to hear the following day in the gardens of the Palais Royal.
Mrs. Lennard, who was the soul of good-nature, readily assented to accompany Eleanor to this rendezvous.
“Of course I’ll go, my dear, with pleasure; and really I think it’s quite funny, and indeed actually romantic, to go and meet a tipsy Frenchman—at least, of course he won’t be tipsy to-day—near a fountain, and it reminds me of a French novel I read once, in English, which shows how true it must have been to foreign manners; but as the Major knows we’re going, there’s no harm, you know,” Mrs. Lennard remarked, as they walked from the Hôtel du Palais to the gardens. The diners were hard at work already at the cheap restaurants, and the brass band was braying lively melodies amidst the dusty trees and flowers, the lukewarm fountain, the children, the nursemaids, and the rather seedy-looking Parisian loungers. It was a quarter past five, for Mrs. Lennard had mislaid her parasol at the last moment, and there had been ten minutes employed in skirmish and search. Monsieur Victor Bourdon