Her companion, a dark, oval-faced, well-set-up young fellow, was under thirty, above the average height for a Belgian, perhaps, with a pair of keen, shrewd eyes, in which was a kindly, sympathetic look, closely trimmed hair, and a small dark moustache cut in English fashion. He was broad-shouldered, strong, and manly, and by his gesture and attitude the keen observer would have marked that he had had more military training than was usual in the circle in Brussels in which he moved. He was dressed in a suit of well-cut grey tweeds, with straw hat, while the silver watch set in the well-worn leather wristlet gave him an altogether English air. Indeed, he had lived five years in London—in lodgings in Shepherd’s Bush—when a student, and, as a consequence, spoke English fairly well.
That they were a handsome pair Monsieur le Patron of the hotel, quizzing them through the low-set window of his kitchen which looked out upon the terrasse, could not disguise from himself. Often he had seen the big car sweep past, but of its ownership he was in ignorance. Yet more than once the interesting pair had met at his hotel and had lunched quietly together, while signs had not been wanting that those meetings were in secret.
Jules, the little bald-headed waiter from Rochefort, had flicked out the white cloth and spread it between them; he had placed two yard-long loaves crosswise upon it, with serviettes flat upon the plates and single knives and forks, when Aimée, with a light musical laugh, exclaimed in French:
“I had the greatest difficulty to get away to-day, Edmond. At the very last moment I feared lest I should disappoint you. My mother wanted some lace from Teitz’s, in Brussels, and I, of course, last night volunteered to go shopping for her. But this morning, while I was taking my petit déjeuner, Mélanie came to me to say that mother had made up her mind to come with me, as she wanted to see the Countess d’Echternach before she went to England. She and her husband are taking their yacht to Cowes, and we had been asked to join the party, as you know, but father unfortunately is kept at home because of important meetings of the Senate.”
“Then your mother, the Baroness, may suspect—eh?” exclaimed Edmond Valentin with some apprehension.
“No. I think not,” reflected the girl. “But at first I didn’t know what to do. I knew that by that time you had already left Brussels, and I could not telephone and stop you. Suddenly I recollected that mother has a bad memory, so presently I reminded her of a purely fictitious engagement she had made with the Committee of the Archaeological Society of Antwerp on that day, and succeeded in inducing her to remain to receive the Burgomaster and his antiquarian friends, to whom her father had granted a permit to see over the Château.”
“And so you succeeded in escaping!” he laughed; “and instead of shopping in Brussels and lunching with old Madame Garnier, you are here. Splendid!” Then, glancing round to reassure himself that nobody was present, his fingers tenderly closed over the tiny hand which lay upon the tablecloth.
“But, dearest,” he went on in French, with a grave expression in his kind, dark eyes, “when you did not come at eleven o’clock I began to fear—fear what I am, alas! always fearing—”
“What?” she asked quickly.
He hesitated for a few seconds.
“That somebody may have discovered the truth, and told the Baron—Aimée,” he replied very slowly.
“Really, Edmond, I don’t see what there is to fear. I know you have enemies, and further, that my father does not view you in exactly a friendly spirit, simply because you are not rich, like Arnaud—”
“Arnaud Rigaux!” Interrupted Edmond angrily. “I hate to hear the very name of the fellow! Your father, the Baron, wishes you to marry him, in order to cement the two greatest financial houses in Belgium—that of Neuville Frères and the Banque de Tervueren. Besides, he must be at least thirty years your senior, Aimée.”
“This is really unkind of you, Edmond,” exclaimed the girl in reproach, withdrawing her hand. “I came to meet you, so that we might spend a pleasant day in the country. Surely you believe that I love you, and that being so, how could I possibly consent to marry Monsieur Rigaux?”
“But I am only a mere obscure Brussels lawyer, Aimée,” he said. “How can I ever hope to marry you?”
The girl did not reply. Her heart was too full for mere words. They were alone upon that shady terrasse, with the great river swirling and rippling past them, while at the moment the quiet was broken by the sweet carillon of old church bells somewhere, chiming the hour of noon.
“I know, my darling,” he said in a low voice, in English, so that none should overhear and understand, as he looked at her across the table, “that your father and his friends hold the money-strings of our little nation. They reckon the world by its millions of francs, and the finances of Belgium are in their hands. He will make the most strenuous effort to force you to marry Rigaux, and so strengthen the position of both houses.”
“I will never marry the man—never!” Aimée de Neuville declared emphatically in good English. “I hate him!”
“You swear that?” he demanded quickly, a fierce light suddenly in his eyes.
“I do, Edmond.”
“Ah?” he sighed in deep relief. “Then I am satisfied. Let us discuss the subject no further.”
And at that moment old Jules reappeared with the plate of tempting hors d’oeuvres and the carafe of vin-blanc ordinaire.
Edmond Valentin, the avocat, who struggled hard and fought for small fees in that most palatial Palais de Justice in the world, sat for a few moments gazing thoughtfully across the broad sunlit Meuse, where, on the opposite bank, a train, looking like a small toy, was following the bend of the river on its way to France, leaving a long trail of white smoke behind. He was thinking—thinking of something he knew—a secret—and as it arose in his mind his strong hands clenched themselves tightly beneath the table.
The girl, watching his countenance, wondered when she saw that strange expression of fierce hatred flit across his broad brow. But next second it had vanished, and smiling upon her, he began to help her to the anchovies and salad which the bald-headed waiter had placed before them.
They were truly a striking pair, she pretty and dainty, with a soft, sweet expression that men always found so charming, while he was particularly smart and handsome, without the slightest trace of foreign effeminacy, a fine, well-set-up fellow, who, but for the depth and largeness of his eyes, might easily have been mistaken for an Englishman. Yet their social positions were wide as the poles. She was the only child of Baron Henri de Neuville, the great financier, whose money controlled railways and tramways in half a dozen countries in Europe, and whose splendid old Château de Sévérac, higher up the river, was one of the show-places of Belgium. Ex-Minister of Finance and a member of the Senate, his position gave his wife, the Baroness, and her daughter, the entrée to the Court circle in Brussels, hence Aimée moved in the most exclusive set.
Her companion, however, was the son of the late Burgomaster of Ghent, an estimable man, who had amassed a considerable fortune and possessed much land around Antwerp, but who had, with hundreds of others, been completely ruined by dabbling in a wild-cat scheme on the Congo, and who had died penniless, save for the little pittance which his son Edmond could afford him.
Love, however, laughs at money-bags, and Aimée, while she was passionately fond of the man before her, detested that thin-faced, black-haired, narrow-eyed man, Monsieur Rigaux, whose praises the Baron was so constantly singing when they sat at table together. There was an indescribable look in the financier’s eyes which had, for the past four years—ever since she returned from school at Roedean—always frightened her. It was an expression which, though with her woman’s intuition she distrusted, yet she could neither describe it, nor the feeling which it always aroused within her. What we too often term natural antipathy, is a silent, mysterious warning which springs from