"On the contrary, you were very good to allow me this conversation. Command me at any time if I can be useful to you and Lady Henry."
Julie Le Breton smiled upon him and was gone.
Sir Wilfrid ran down the steps, chafing at himself.
"She somehow gets round one," he thought, with a touch of annoyance. "I wonder whether I made any real impression upon her. Hm! Let's see whether Montresor can throw any more light upon her. He seemed to be pretty intimate. Her 'principles,' eh? A dangerous view to take, for a woman of that provenance."
An hour or two later Sir Wilfrid Bury presented himself in the Montresors' drawing-room in Eaton Place. He had come home feeling it essential to impress upon the cabinet a certain line of action with regard to the policy of Russia on the Persian Gulf. But the first person he perceived on the hearth-rug, basking before the Minister's ample fire, was Lord Lackington. The sight of that vivacious countenance, that shock of white hair, that tall form still boasting the spareness and almost the straightness of youth, that unsuspecting complacency, confused his ideas and made him somehow feel the whole world a little topsy-turvy.
Nevertheless, after dinner he got his fifteen minutes of private talk with his host, and conscientiously made use of them. Then, after an appointment had been settled for a longer conversation on another day, both men felt that they had done their duty, and, as it appeared, the same subject stirred in both their minds.
"Well, and what did you think of Lady Henry?" said Montresor, with a smile, as he lighted another cigarette.
"She's very blind," said Sir Wilfrid, "and more rheumatic. But else there's not much change. On the whole she wears wonderfully well."
"Except as to her temper, poor lady!" laughed the Minister. "She has really tried all our nerves of late. And the worst of it is that most of it falls upon that poor woman who lives with her"--the Minister lowered his voice--"one of the most interesting and agreeable creatures in the world."
Sir Wilfrid glanced across the table. Lord Lackington was telling scandalous tales of his youth to a couple of Foreign Office clerks, who sat on either side of him, laughing and spurring him on. The old man's careless fluency and fun were evidently contagious; animation reigned around him; he was the spoiled child of the dinner, and knew it.
"I gather that you have taken a friendly interest in Miss Le Breton," said Bury, turning to his host.
"Oh, the Duchess and Delafield and I have done our best to protect her, and to keep the peace. I am quite sure Lady Henry has poured out her grievances to you, hasn't she?"
"Alack, she has!"
"I knew she couldn't hold her tongue to you, even for a day. She has really been losing her head over it. And it is a thousand pities."
"So you think all the fault's on Lady Henry's side?"
The Minister gave a shrug.
"At any rate, I have never myself seen anything to justify Lady Henry's state of feeling. On the famous Wednesdays, Mademoiselle Julie always appears to make Lady Henry her first thought. And in other ways she has really worn herself to death for the old lady. It makes one rather savage sometimes to see it."
"So in your eyes she is a perfect companion?"
Montresor laughed.
"Oh, as to perfection--"
"Lady Henry accuses her of intrigue. You have seen no traces of it?"
The Minister smiled a little oddly.
"Not as regards Lady Henry. Oh, Mademoiselle Julie is a very astute lady."
A ripple from some source of secret amusement spread over the dark-lined face.
"What do you mean by that?"
"She knows how to help her friends better than most people. I have known three men, at least, made by Mademoiselle Le Breton within the last two or three years. She has just got a fresh one in tow."
Sir Wilfrid moved a little closer to his host. They turned slightly from the table and seemed to talk into their cigars.
"Young Warkworth?" said Bury.
The Minister smiled again and hesitated.
"Oh, she doesn't bother me, she is much too clever. But she gets at me in the most amusing, indirect ways. I know perfectly well when she has been at work. There are two or three men--high up, you understand--who frequent Lady Henry's evenings, and who are her very good friends. … Oh, I dare say she'll get what she wants," he added, with nonchalance.
"Between you and me, do you suspect any direct interest in the young man?"
Montresor shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know. Not necessarily. She loves to feel herself a power--all the more, I think, because of her anomalous position. It is very curious--at bottom very feminine and amusing--and quite harmless."
"You and others don't resent it?"
"No, not from her," said the Minister, after a pause. "But she is rather going it, just now. Three or four batteries have opened upon me at once. She must be thinking of little else."
Sir Wilfrid grew a trifle red. He remembered the comedy of the door-step. "Is there anything that he particularly wants?" His tone assumed a certain asperity.
"Well, as for me, I cannot help feeling that Lady Henry has something to say for herself. It is very strange--mysterious even--the kind of ascendency this lady has obtained for herself in so short a time."
"Oh, I dare say it's hard for Lady Henry to put up with," mused Montresor. "Without family, without connections--"
He raised his head quietly and put on his eye-glasses. Then his look swept the face of his companion.
Sir Wilfrid, with a scarcely perceptible yet significant gesture, motioned towards Lord Lackington. Mr. Montresor started. The eyes of both men travelled across the table, then met again.
"You know?" said Montresor, under his breath.
Sir Wilfrid nodded. Then some instinct told him that he had now exhausted the number of the initiated.
When the men reached the drawing-room, which was rather emptily waiting for the "reception" Mrs. Montresor was about to hold in it, Sir Wilfrid fell into conversation with Lord Lackington. The old man talked well, though flightily, with a constant reference of all topics to his own standards, recollections, and friendships, which was characteristic, but in him not unattractive. Sir Wilfrid noticed certain new and pitiful signs of age. The old man was still a rattle. But every now and then the rattle ceased abruptly and a breath of melancholy made itself felt--like a chill and sudden gust from some unknown sea.
They were joined presently, as the room filled up, by a young journalist--an art critic, who seemed to know Lord Lackington and his ways. The two fell eagerly into talk about pictures, especially of an exhibition at Antwerp, from which the young man had just returned.
"I looked in at Bruges on the way back for a few hours," said the new-comer, presently. "The pictures there are much better seen than they used to be. When were you there last?" He turned to Lord Lackington.
"Bruges?" said Lord Lackington, with a start. "Oh, I haven't been there for twenty years."
And he suddenly sat down, dangling a paper-knife between his hands, and staring at the carpet. His jaw dropped a little. A cloud seemed to interpose between him and his companions.
Sir Wilfrid, with Lady Henry's story fresh in his memory, was somehow poignantly conscious of the old man. Did their two minds hold the same image--of Lady Rose drawing her last breath in some dingy room beside one of the canals that wind through Bruges, laying down there the last relics of that life, beauty, and intelligence that had once made her the darling of the father, who, for some reason still hard to understand, had let her suffer and die alone?