"Henry," she said, "I can see only one thing to be done. This is a case for personal influence."
"However much you may influence Zella, my dear, I do not believe it would make Louis alter his mind."
"Zella! she is a child—I am not thinking of her. Or, rather, it is of her that I am thinking, only you are positively making me contradict myself, Henry, by arguing like this."
Henry wisely became silent.
"The fact is, I am unstrung by such a piece of news," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, laying her hand for a moment upon her husband's in order to indicate that her momentary irritation had no deeper underlying cause. "My poor Esmée's only child sent to a convent! It is very wrong of Louis, when he has not even the excuse of being a Roman Catholic himself."
"His relations are Roman Catholics, though."
"That is exactly it, and he is very weak and easily influenced, as I have always said. That is why I see quite plainly that the only thing to do is to get at that old Baronne. It is she who is pulling all these strings, you may depend upon it, with a whole cabal of artful priests and people behind her, as likely as not, hoping to get Louis and his money into their Church through Zella. I can see through the whole thing," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans warmly.
Such penetration alarmed her husband.
"Hadn't you better keep clear of it ?" he demanded rather anxiously.
"My own sister's only child, Henry!"
Henry, who had heard that argument before, had never yet found a suitable rejoinder to it, and again took refuge in silence.
"No. The only hope is to show the artful old lady quite plainly that one sees through the whole plot, and that may frighten her out of it."'
"Do you mean to write to her?"
"A letter in French would not be very satisfactory, Henry," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, with great truth, "and I don't suppose she would understand much English. Foreigners are always so badly educated. No; I think there is nothing for it but to see her."
"She is in Rome, though."
"She went back to Paris when Louis took Zella to Villetswood last week. We shall have to go there," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans with great determination.
Henry, who had not perceived whither her remarks were tending, looked protesting,
"It is a journey, I know, and the crossing will be very tiresome, for I am always ill, as you know," said his wife, rapidly disposing of all Henry's arguments before he had time to formulate them; "but this is not a matter in which one can think of expense or one's own health or comfort, and I am convinced it is the only thing to do."
"Why not try what you can do with Louis himself first?"
"What would be the use of that, Henry? What I did with one hand, the Baronne would undo with the other. Louis is like a reed between two winds," said the agitated Mrs. Lloyd-Evans.
"And do you think," asked Henry rather doubtfully, "that you will be able to make the old woman see reason ?"
"One may be enabled to show her how very dreadful it would be to tamper with the faith of an innocent child," said Mrs. Lloyd-Evans piously; "and at all events she will see that Zella's English relations—her only real relations, since those De Kervoyous can only be called connections, whatever they and Louis may choose to pretend—are not going to let the child be inveigled into Romanism simply because she no longer has a mother's hand to guide her."
If Henry remembered utterances of his wife's, in former years, that had implied anything but approval of the guiding hand exercised by Zella's mother, he did not think fit to recall them now.
"Will Louis like your attacking his relations like this ?" he demanded gloomily.
"Louis will know nothing whatever about it, dear. If I choose to go over to Paris on business, nothing could be more natural than that I should pay a little call on the Baronne de Kervoyou, since she is a connection of Zella's, however distant. If Louis ever comes to hear of it, he will probably be gratified at our having paid the old thing a little attention," retorted Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, with more spirit than conviction in her tones.
"Then, you don't mean to let her know that we are coming?" said Henry, the full extent of his wife's Machiavellian diplomacy gradually dawning upon him, and reducing him to acute depression.
"Certainly not. We might go over for two nights, Henry, and stay quietly at some little hotel, and I will send the Baronne a diplomatic note saying that, as we are passing through Paris, I thought I would come and call on her."
"I think, Marianne," said Henry slowly, goaded into more opposition to his wife's schemes than he generally displayed, by a sense of being involved in international complications, " I think you had far better content yourself with writing again to Louis, and the old woman, too, if you like. Or else leave the whole thing alone."
The eagerness with which this last suggestion was made was obvious, but Marianne, with great tact and sweetness, told her husband that in these matters gentlemen did not always quite understand, and Henry knew better than to dispute the aphorism.
The diplomatic note was accordingly written, and posted five days before the Lloyd-Evanses left home, in order to insure its arriving when they did, since Mrs. Lloyd-Evans knew that the postal arrangements in all countries except England are defective and never to be relied upon.
In consequence of this foresight, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans found awaiting her at the hotel a courteous letter from the Baronne, written in admirable English, and assuring her of the pleasure she would confer by a visit to the Rue des Ècoles at any hour most convenient to herself on the following day. There was also a bouquet of pink roses, accompanied by a card inscribed in Stéphanie's most pointed handwriting and violet ink, with an elaborate little message of welcome from the Baronne de Kervoyou and her daughter, provoking from Mrs. Lloyd-Evans the astute comment:
"Dear me, Henry, this is very foreign and artful. I wonder if they imagined that I shouldn't see through it."
Henry, wrapped in deepest gloom and reflecting that all foreign cooking was bad, made no reply, and was monosyllabic throughout the evening, until his wife suddenly exclaimed:
"I see what it is, Henry. You are depressed. I can always read your mind like an open book, dear—you know I can."
Henry looked much alarmed.
"But, Henry dear, there is really no reason for depression. I think a little tact, and at the same time plain-speaking, will put things before the old lady in quite a new light. She is a foreigner, after all, and has probably
Evans indulgently. "But I feel certain I shall be able to manage her, and, through her, Louis."
"You do not wish me to come with you, I suppose?" "No, dear. This is a woman's mission." Mrs. Lloyd-Evans accordingly set forth on her woman's mission that next afternoon, leaving a profoundly dejected never thought much about Henry to pace through the spring brightness of the Bois, and heartily wish himself back again in his own turnip-fields.
Having a rooted distrust of French cabmen, who are well known to ply their trade principally with a view to decoying and robbing unwary Englishwomen, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans elected to walk to the Rue des Ècoles, and, having several times taken a wrong turning, found herself at the Baronne de Kervoyou's appartement well after five o'clock.
Having rehearsed to Henry on the previous evening her determination to open the campaign with a perfectly self-possessed bow and the almost idiomatically French greeting, " Bon jour.. Baronne, est-ce que vous allez bien?" it slightly disconcerted poor Mrs. Lloyd-Evans to be received by the Baronne and her daughter with a most English-sounding "How do you do?" and extended hand, and "It is a good many years since we last met," from the Baronne. The occasion of their last meeting having been the wedding of Louis de Kervoyou and Mrs. Lloyd-Evans's poor dear Esmee, she thought that the reference might well have been omitted, but replied by instantly banishing the conventional smile of greeting from her features, and saying,
"Ah