The maid nodded. "Madame," she went on, "he is a great big dog. You can do anything with him. He will never bite nor snarl, nor show even a little bit of his teeth."
"Perhaps it would be better if he would," Peggy replied in a rather broken voice. "I am so lonely, Pauline. Sometimes I think that his politics don't leave even a little corner for me."
"Bien!" said Pauline with a chuckle. "You would not feel lonely, madame, unless you loved him."
Peggy went up to the piano, which was open, and struck two or three resonant chords. "Certainly there is something in that," she said musingly.
"Yes, madame," Pauline replied, "he is a man, and you are proud of him. He is so different from all the others."
Peggy's idle fingers rattled out a little trilling catch from the Chanson Florian. Suddenly she stopped and turned her head swiftly. "You do not like Mr. Collingwood?" she asked, watching Pauline's face intently.
"Ma Doue!" Pauline answered in her native Breton, "but I like M. Collingwood well enough. All the women that there are like M. Collingwood. He is a terrible flirt, but he is not wicked. But madame must be careful, that is all. He loves madame not as he loves the others."
Peggy closed the lid of the piano with a bang. "Now, Pauline," she said, "don't be silly. Off you go to bed. I feel ever so much better now."
The maid gathered up the brushes and the bottle of eau-de-cologne from the table and took them into Mrs. Admaston's room. Then she returned. "Good night, madame," she said. "If you want me, that little bell there rings in my room. Boone nuit. Dormez bien, chèrie."
She kissed her mistress and left the room.
Peggy remained alone.
CHAPTER III
Mrs. Admaston pulled aside the long curtains of green silk. She turned the oblong handle which released two of the windows, pulled it towards her, and drank in the fresh night air.
How fragrant and stimulating it was. How pure, and how different from the horrid, scented air of the sitting-room!
"'From the cool cisterns of the midnight air my spirit drinks repose,'" Peggy quoted to herself; and she did, indeed, seem to be bathed by a sweet and delicate refreshment, a cleansing, reviving air, which washed all hot and feverish thoughts away and made her one with the stainless spirit of the night.
The black masses—the black, blotted masses—of the trees in the Tuileries gardens cut into the sky-line. But even now, late as it was, innumerable lights twinkled over Paris, and a big honey-coloured moon, which shamed the firefly lights below, and seemed almost like a harvest moon, had risen and was staring down upon the City of Pleasure.
In front of the window was a balcony, and, lightly clad as she was, the girl went out upon it and with an impulsive gesture stretched out her arms to where the Lamp of the night, depended from a little drift of fleecy-white and amber-coloured clouds, swung over Paris.
"O moon," she said, "dear, round, red moon, I am going to be good! I really, really am. I am going to turn over a new leaf; I am going. … "
There was a sharp whirr, hard, metallic, and insistent, from the room behind.
The telephone bell was ringing.
Peggy started—the world called her back. In her mind, as it were, she put down her good resolutions on the balcony and hurried in to see who had rung her up.
She fluttered up to the telephone, caught the receiver to her ear, and spoke breathlessly:
"Well, who is it? What? Yes. Who is it? Oh! Where are you? Chalons! You have arrived, then? What?"
A voice, not over the telephone wire, but behind her and in the room, came to Peggy's disengaged ear.
She started violently and turned round as if upon a pivot.
She saw standing before her a slim, tall, clean-shaved man, anywhere between thirty and forty. He was in evening clothes—that is to say, he wore a dinner jacket and black tie. His hair was dark and curly and grew low upon his forehead; his eyebrows were beautifully pencilled; and below them two shrewd, mocking, and yet somehow simple and merry eyes of a brilliant grey looked out upon Mrs. Admaston. The nose was aquiline; the lips, a trifle full, were nevertheless beautifully shaped. They were parted now in a smile.
"Who is it? Let me speak, Peggy?" Collingwood said.
Peggy looked at him. "Oh, how you startled me!" she cried, with a little shriek of alarm and embarrassment. Then without a further word she fluttered towards the door of her bedroom, dropping the receiver of the telephone, which hung by its twisted cord and swung this way and that.
Roderick Collingwood took a couple of quick, decisive steps to the wall. He caught up the receiver.
"Hello! That you, Ellerdine? Yes, just finished supper. What? What? 2.34 to-night—I mean this morning? What time do you reach Paris? What?—five o'clock?"
He turned round to Peggy, who was standing by her bedroom door. "They are coming on here," he said.
"Now?" the girl asked.
"Yes! they get here at five." He caught up the receiver again and pressed it to his ear, leaning forward to the mouthpiece.
"I say, Ellerdine—I say, why not wait for us at Chalons? What? You have decided not to go on? Very well. We will wait for you."
He placed the receiver of the telephone back upon its rest, and turned the handle to ring off. Then he looked at Peggy, walking slowly towards her as he spoke.
"Ellerdine is vexed," he said.
Peggy's face was the most alluring pink, her eyes looked angry.
"Please leave the room," she said.
Collingwood stopped. "I am sorry," he said. "I heard the telephone ring, and before I knew where I was. … "
Peggy cut him short, pointing to the door on the left-hand side of the room, the door not far from that which led into the corridor. "Is that your room?" taking a couple of steps towards him.
"Yes," the dark man answered; "the hotel was full—it was the only room left. Don't be vexed, Peggy."
The girl's face had a sort of hard impatience in it, though mingled with something else also—something very difficult to define. "Wait," she said. "That door was locked when I tried it before you came in to supper. Did you unlock it?"
Mr. Collingwood laughed a pleasant, musical laugh, which seemed to resolve the somewhat tragic note of Mrs. Admaston's voice into nothing—to make it seem rather unnecessary and absurd. It was a thoroughly boyish laugh.
"Why, Peggy," he said, "what a very serious mood you are in! Unlock it? Of course I unlocked it, when I heard you at the telephone. I thought you would not mind. Besides, I wanted to know what Ellerdine was up to. Come, come, Peggy; this is not the first time we have been together so late."
Peggy looked at him with wide eyes. "Oh, but it is different," she said; "we are in a strange hotel—by accident. Colling, it was by accident, wasn't it?"
He started, bent forward a little, and answered her with great eagerness.
"Of course, of course; surely you did not think——"
"Oh, I don't know what I thought; but I feel so funny, so nervous."
Collingwood laughed again—really, it was the most reassuring and musical laugh. "Peggy nervous?"
"Well, it is rather alarming," Peggy replied.
Collingwood laughed once more, and stepped up towards her. "But rather nice—isn't it rather nice?—what, Peggy?"