"Afterwards the two met fairly regularly, and I was staying at Lord Ellerdine's place in Yorkshire when I believe Collingwood told Peggy of the good influence she had been, and showed himself as a reformed rake, by Jove! I think there's no doubt at all that he would have proposed to the girl if George Admaston had not forestalled him. They say Collingwood was frightfully cut up. At anyrate, he wasn't in England when the marriage took place.
"It was a great wedding. Everybody who was anybody was there, only excepting Collingwood and Lady Attwill. In their case, I remember that people said they were falling back on their own reserves; but that was pure scandal, of course. When Collingwood was in Spain, Lady Attwill was in Switzerland. As a matter of fact, they were both great friends; and no doubt when Clipper went down in his yacht and left Lady Attwill very badly off, Collingwood was quite generous to her.
"Well, to cut a long story short—I see it's nearly one o'clock—Admaston and his wife spent their honeymoon in Italy—Rome, I think it was, or Florence. Shortly after their return George introduced his long and complicated bill on National Roads. It had over a hundred clauses. Ill-natured people said that he married in order to have an excuse to get a holiday in which to draft his measure. At anyrate, after the introduction of the bill George became the absolute centre of the political strife of the day. He worked harder than ever. His party had been in office for three years, and their declining favour urged him on to rouse his followers in the House and in the country to tackle some necessary reforms before the ensuing General Election. In fact, for months after his marriage Admaston seemed to live for his Department and the Front Bench. He was hardly ever seen with Peggy.
"On her part, Peggy went everywhere, and soon the gossips had it that Admaston was disappointed, while his wife lived a really butterfly life.
"Mrs. Admaston's conduct certainly puzzled the gossips. No one could say with any sort of certainty that she did anything wrong. Even her best friends—generally the first persons to give one away—only laughed when they were questioned, and said, 'It's only Peggy.' She and Roderick Collingwood met again and again, renewing their old friendship. After the marriage it was said that Collingwood had a very bad time. There was a broad wicked streak in him, and everybody assumed that he had gone back to his old fast living. Well, at anyrate, Peggy took him up again. She was the kind that either had to be mothered or have someone she could mother herself. George, apparently, wasn't very much about, and so she started once more in the effort to exert a benign influence over an erratic chap like Collingwood. Of course, people said on all sides that it was a very dangerous game to play.
"Old-fashioned people shook their heads and fore-told all sorts of trouble for the little butterfly that fluttered so near to the flame which every one supposed was burning perpetually in Collingwood's heart.
"About this time Lady Attwill returned to England and sought out George Admaston. What she did quite upset the calculations of the people who talk. She became very attentive to George, and yet, at the same time, managed to get about a good bit with Peggy. In fact, she seemed in a sort of way to console Admaston and to be encouraging his wife. Society has been perplexed by the whole business for a considerable time. No one knows what to make of the position. They all met, for instance, at Ellerdine's for the shooting. Admaston ran down for a week-end only. Then during the late winter, after a long autumn session, rumours flew thick and fast, and everybody seemed to be waiting for the storm to break. Why there should be a storm nobody really seemed to know. Collingwood and Peggy have been talked about to the exclusion of almost every other subject. They're talked about now. London and the Faubourg Saint Honoré is buzzing with them. And here, my dear Passhe, you and I away up at the Tuileries for a merry week of theatres in Paris, and we find Peggy staying here and Collingwood, too, by Jove!—what! what! Damn it, Passhe, you're asleep!"
A long-drawn and not entirely unmelodious snore proclaimed that Colonel Adams's long recital had somewhat wearied the civilian, who was not "in society."
CHAPTER II
Mrs. Admaston's sitting-room at the Hôtel des Tuileries was a large and beautiful apartment, one of the best in the hotel. Save for the long French windows, which were now, at midnight, covered with curtains of green tussore silk, there was nothing distinctively foreign about the room. The best French hotels nowadays have all adopted English and American standards of comfort. The stove, the uncarpeted and slippery parquet floor, the impossible chairs, and a ceiling painted to resemble a nightmare of a fruiterer's shop, are all things of the past.
Electric lights in softly shaded globes threw a pleasant yellow radiance over everything. A fire of cedarwood logs glowed on the tiled hearth, and a great bunch of lilac stood in a copper bowl upon a small mahogany table which was placed between two doors which faced the one leading to Mrs. Admaston's bedroom.
Some tall silver candlesticks stood upon the Broadwood piano; and there were others, in which the candles were not lit, upon brackets on either side of the telephone.
It was just upon midnight when the door of Mrs. Admaston's bedroom opened and her confidential maid and companion came into the room. Pauline Toché was a woman of some forty years of age. Her black hair streaked with grey was drawn tightly back from her forehead. The face, a little hard and watchful perhaps, nevertheless showed signs of marked intelligence. The eyes had something of the ferocity but also the fidelity of a well-trained watch-dog. She was dressed unassumingly enough in black, and she wore an apron also of some black material.
Such a face and figure may be seen a dozen times in any Breton village, and more than once her friends had said to Mrs. Admaston that Pauline seemed to require the coif of her country—the snowy white and goffered col which is worn over the shoulders; a pair of sabots even!
The maid was a Breton woman, a daughter of one of the millers of Pont-Aven, and preserved still all the characteristics of that hardy Celtic race.
As the maid entered the sitting-room there was a knock at the door, and in response to her "Entrez" a waiter came into the room. He was an odd-looking person with brilliant red hair—rather a rare thing in France, but cropped close to his head in the French manner, so that it seemed to be almost squirting out of his scalp. The man, with his napkin over his arm, his short Eton jacket, and boots soled with list, was dressed just like any other waiter in the hotel, but somehow or other there was something unusual in his aspect.
He carried a tray, and went up to a small round table, gleaming with cut-glass and silver, on which supper had been laid.
"Are you quite sure there is no train from Chalons before morning?" Pauline asked the man in French.
"No train before five o'clock, mademoiselle," the man replied. "The last fast train reaches Paris at eight-forty."
The Breton woman nodded.
"Thank you," she said, gazing at him rather keenly; and then suddenly—"You're not French, are you?"
With great precision, almost as if he was practising something learnt by rote and not entirely natural to him, the waiter clicked his heels together, spread out the palms of his hands, and bowed.
"Mais oui, mademoiselle," he said.
Pauline shook her head slightly.
"You do not deceive me," she said. "There is something about you—you are a Frenchman?"
The waiter had been piling plates up on a tray. He put the tray down on the table, smiled with a total change of manner, and answered her.
"No," he said with a grin.
"I knew it," Pauline said. "Is it then that you are Irish, M. Jacques?"
"Most certainly not," replied the waiter.
"I figure to