heart said: "The man is not a cold statue," but aloud she remarked: "I see now why you hoped that I knew Miss Ffrench. You wanted me to manage it. Well, perhaps I can, even as it is. I have undertaken more difficult things and succeeded."
"Oh, if you would! But why should I hope it, since you have nothing to gain?"
Joan dropped her eyes and did not answer.
"Yet you will try?" pleaded Villa Fora.
"Yet I will try, on one condition. You must be a connection of the late Comte de Merival."
"Your husband!"
Joan smiled as she nodded.
"I am Spanish; he was, I understand, French. But then that presents no difficulty. There are such things as international marriages."
"Yes. Your mother's sister married an uncle of my husband's, didn't she?"
"Quite so. It is settled," agreed the Marchese gravely.
"Well, then, that is the sharp end of the wedge. I will do my best and cleverest to insert it," said Joan. "As you have just arrived, it will be the easier. We are cousins. It can appear to all those whom it does not concern (meaning the gossips of the hotel) that you have run on to see your cousin. For the rest, you must trust me for a day or two, or perhaps more."
Joan had tea--with her cousin--at Miremont's; and they saw the Ffrenches and Sir Justin Wentworth, also having tea. Violet Ffrench looked at Joan with the same side-glance of half-grudging admiration as before, and Joan looked, now and then, at Violet Ffrench with a charming, frank gaze, which seemed to say: "You are so sweetly pretty that I can't keep my eyes off you, and I like you for being pretty." In reality it said something quite different, but it was effects, not realities, which mattered at the moment.
Thus the campaign had begun, though the enemy was blissfully ignorant of the activity upon the other side.
Joan went back to the hotel rather earlier than she had intended, and going straight to the large, empty dining-room, rang for the head waiter. When he appeared, she asked if it were yet arranged where a new arrival, General Ffrench, was to sit with his daughter. The waiter pointed out a small table or two, near the centre of the room; but before his hand withdrew from the gesture, it was turned palm upward in answer to a slight, silent hint from Joan. Finally, it retired with a louis in its clasp. "I want you to put my table close to theirs," said she. "It shall be done, madame," replied the man; and it was done. Therefore Joan and Violet could scarcely help exchanging more glances from between their red-shaded candles that night at dinner, which Joan ate alone, unaccompanied by the wistful Villa Fora.
The Ffrenches appeared to know nobody in the hotel, and of this she was glad. There was the more chance for her.
After dinner there was conjuring, and Joan contrived to sit next to Miss Ffrench. Villa Fora was on the opposite side of the big drawing-room, where he had reluctantly gone in obedience to his "cousin's" instructions. The conjuring made conversation, and Joan was not surprised to find the heiress open to flattery. When the performance was over, she kept her seat; and by this time, having introduced herself to Miss Ffrench, the introduction was passed on to the father. He, good man, was too well-born to be actually a snob, but he had no objection to titles, even foreign ones, and the Comtesse de Merival was so pretty, so modest, altogether such good form, that he had no objection to her as, at least, an hotel acquaintance for his daughter.
It seemed that General Ffrench had been ordered to Biarritz for his health, and that he hoped to do some golfing; but Miss Ffrench hated golf, and as she had no friends in the place, she expected to be very dull.
At this, Joan reminded her gaily of the friend with whom she and her father had been walking in the afternoon.
"Oh, but he is such an old friend, he doesn't count," exclaimed Violet, blushing a little.
"She isn't a bit in love with him," thought Joan. "What a shame! But--tant mieux. She is vain and romantic; often the two qualities go together in a woman. The ground is all prepared for me."
By and by, Sir Justin Wentworth strolled in from his hotel. Though she was dying to stay and meet him, and perhaps have a few words, Joan rose and walked away. This course was approved by General Ffrench. He would have known what to think if the beautiful Comtesse had made herself fascinating, at such short notice, to his son-in-law elect.
Joan talked with her "cousin," who had been in the smoking-room, and Violet Ffrench had time to be intensely curious as to the connection between her charming new acquaintance, the Comtesse de Merival, and the handsome, dark young man who had been in her hotel at Paris. He had looked at her then; he looked at her now. What was he to the Comtesse? what was the Comtesse to him?
Next morning, both General Ffrench and Sir Justin Wentworth walked off to the golf-links, leaving Violet to write letters in the glass room that looked out on the sea. Presently Joan came in, with a writing-case in her hand, and Violet stopped in the midst of the first sentence of her first letter. Joan did not even begin to write, nor had she ever cherished the faintest intention of doing so.
Violet rather hoped that she would mention the dark young man, but she did not; and then, of course, Violet hoped it a great deal more. The two girls drifted from one subject to another, and finally, by way of a favourite author and a popular novel of the moment, they touched the key of romance.
"I used to think that romance was dead in this century, but lately I have been finding out that it isn't," said Joan. "Oh, not personally. Romance is over for me. I loved my husband, you see, and he died the day of our wedding; I married him on his death-bed. That is not romance; it is tragedy. But I am speaking of what I should not speak of, to you, so let us talk of something else."
"Why?" asked Violet.
"Oh, because--because I have an idea that you are engaged."
"How can that matter?"
"It does matter. I oughtn't to explain, so you mustn't urge me."
"You rouse my curiosity," said Violet; but this was not news to Joan.
"Engaged girls shouldn't have curiosity about anything outside their own romances," replied the Comtesse de Merival mysteriously.
"I've never had a real romance," sighed Violet. "I've always been more or less engaged to Sir Justin Wentworth ever since I can remember. He is a splendid fellow, as you can see."
"I hardly noticed," said Joan; then added, in a whisper, but not too low a whisper to be heard: "I was so busy pitying someone else."
Violet's colour rose, and she was really a very pretty girl, though vanity made her eyes cold.
"Sir Justin's father and mine were old chums," went on Violet. "Our place and his lie close together in Devonshire. We have even some of the same money-interests--mines in Australia. He has heaps of money, too, so there's no question of his needing to think of mine."
"As if any man could think of your money when he had you to think of!" exclaimed Joan. "No doubt you will be very happy. Such a long friendship ought to be a good foundation for the rest, and yet--and yet--it's a pity that you should have to marry and become a placid British matron without first knowing some of the wild joys of real love, real romance."
"I thought you doubted there being any left in the world?"
"No; I said I had found at least one case which had built up my faith again; a case of passionate love, born at first sight, and strong enough to carry the man across the world, if necessary, to follow the woman he loves."
"Such love isn't likely to come my way."
"It has come your way. It is here--close to you. Oh, I have done wrong! I should not have spoken. But I am so sorry for him--my poor, handsome cousin."
"Your cousin!" This was a revelation, and Violet's eyes were not cold now, but warm with interest.
"Yes, the Marchese Villa Fora, the best-looking and one of the best-born young men in Spain. But indeed we must not talk of him. What a lovely day it is! I must