By Wit of Woman Part 4

He paused, as if hesitating to use the excuse I offered.

"No," he answered. "It has been arranged for weeks. These things have to be with us, you know."

In a flash his baseness was laid bare to me; and the first sensation of numbing pain dumbed me. I had not then acquired the art of masking my feelings. But anger came to my relief, as I realized how he had intentionally played with me. I knew what a silly trusting fool I had been; and knew too that had I been a man, I would have struck him first and killed him afterwards for his dastardly treachery. I was like a little wild beast in my sudden fury.

He saw something of this; for his eyes changed. "I am so sorry," he said. As if a lip apology were sufficient anaesthetic for the stabbing pain in my heart.

"For what, Count von Ostelen?" I asked, lifting my head and looking him squarely in the eyes. The question disconcerted him.

"I did not know----" he stammered, and stopped in confusion.

"Did not know what?" I asked; and he was again so embarra.s.sed by the direct challenge that he kept silent. His embarra.s.sment helped me; and I added: "I think your going is the best thing for all concerned, Count, except perhaps for the unfortunate country to which you go.

_Bon voyage!_" And with that I wheeled my horse round and rode away.

It was months before the wound healed; months of sorrow, self-discipline and rigidly suppressed suffering. I took it fighting, as our Missouri men Say. No one saw any difference in me. My moods were as changeable, my manner as frivolous, my words as light and my smiles as frequent as before; and I was as careful not to over-act the frivolous part as I was to hide the truth. It was a period of as hard labour as ever a convict endured in Sing-Sing prison.

But I won. Not a soul even suspected the canker in my heart which had changed the point of view of all things in life for me. I came in the end to be glad of the stern self-discipline which had made me a woman before my girlhood had fully opened. I learnt the lesson thoroughly, and never again would I be tempted to trust myself to any man's untender mercies.

I grew very tired of a girl's humdrum routine life. I longed for activity and adventure. I wanted to be doing something earnest and real, to pit myself against men on equal terms; and for this I sought to qualify myself both physically and mentally. I travelled through the States alone; meeting more than once with adventures that tested my nerve and courage.

I made a trip to Europe; and when my uncle insisted upon sending a good placid dame to chaperone me, I found occasion to quarrel with her on the voyage out so that I might even sample Europe by myself.

Unconsciously, I was fitting myself for the work which my father's letters were to lay upon me; and when in Paris on that trip I had an adventure destined to prove of vital import to that task.

The big hotel in which I was staying caught fire one night, and the visitors, most of them women and elderly men, were half mad with panic.

I was escaping when I found crouching in one of the corridors, fear-stricken, helpless, and hysterical, a very beautiful woman whom I had seen at the dinner table, the laughing centre of a noisy and admiring crowd of men. I first shook some particles of sense into her and then got her out.

It was a perfectly easy thing to do without any risk to me; but she said I had saved her life. Probably I had: for she might have lain there till she was suffocated by the smoke; and she insisted upon showering much hysterical grat.i.tude upon me; and then wished to make me her close friend. She was a Madame Constans; and, as I can be cautious enough upon occasion, I had some inquiries made about her from our Emba.s.sy. The caution was justified. She was a secret Government agent; a police spy with a past.

I parted from her therefore amid vivid evidences of affection from her and vehement protestations that, if ever she could return the obligation, her life would willingly be at my disposal. I accepted her declarations at their verbal worth and expected never to see her again.

But the Fates had arranged otherwise; and it was with genuine astonishment that when Madame d'Artelle was pointed out to me one day driving in the Stadwalchen of Pesth, I recognized her as Madame Constans.

This fact set me thinking. What could she be doing in Buda Pesth? Why was she coiling the net of intrigue round the young Count--the future Duke? Was she still a secret Government agent promoted to an international position? Who was behind her in it all? These and other questions of the kind were started.

Then came the mysterious theft of the ducal jewels; and through my instinct, or intuition, call it by what term you may, that which was a mystery to so many became my key to the whole problem. Count Karl was in the toils of the lovely French-woman; he was one of the very few persons who had access to the jewels; he was admittedly a man of dissipated habits; and it was an easy deduction that she had instigated the robbery; more to test the extent of her power over him, perhaps, than because she coveted the jewels. There was much more than mere vulgar theft in it; that was but one of the coils she threw round him.

She was in the Hungarian capital because others had sent her to find out secrets; and she was drawing the net about his feet to ruin him for other and greater purposes.

Here then was my course ready shaped for me. I had entered the Minister's household to win his confidence as a possible means to the end I had in view; but the study of my father's papers had shown me that the General might have had a hand in the grim drama, and in such an event I might find my way blocked.

But if I took the field against Madame d'Artelle and cut the meshes of the net of ruin being woven round Count Karl, I should have on my side the future Duke, the man with the power in his hands, and himself quite innocent of all connexion with my father's fate. Success might easily lie that way.

I acted promptly. I went to Madame d'Artelle's; and the interview was one which would have greatly interested his Excellency. I posed as the student and governess with my own way to make in the world; and the Frenchwoman, eager to buy my silence and wis.h.i.+ng to separate me from the Minister, urged me to trust to her to advance my interests, and to live with her in the meantime.

I consented, of course; and it was then I spoke out to General von Erlanger. Thus with one stroke I established close relations with two sides in the intrigue.

It was with a feeling of some inward satisfaction at the progress I was making that I went to stay in Madame d'Artelle's house; and, as I had not yet seen the man whom I planned to deliver from her hands, I looked forward with much curiosity and interest to meeting him. I should need to study him very closely; for I was fully alive to the infinite difficulties of what I had undertaken to do.

But those difficulties were to prove a hundred-fold greater than I had even antic.i.p.ated; and my embarra.s.sment and perplexity were at first so great, that I was all but tempted to abandon the whole scheme.

I was sitting with Madame d'Artelle one afternoon reading--I kept up the pretence of studying--when Count Karl was announced. I rose at once to leave the room.

"Don't go," she said. "I wish to present you to the Count."

"Just as you please," I agreed, glad of the chance, and resumed my seat.

He was shown in, and as I saw him I caught my breath, my heart gave a great leap, and I felt a momentary chill of dismay.

Count Karl was no other than the Count von Ostelen--the man whose treatment of me five years before in New York had all but broken my heart and spoilt my life.

Here was a development indeed.

CHAPTER IV

MADAME D'ARTELLE

For a moment the situation oppressed me, but the next I had mastered it and regained my self-possession. I was not recognized. Karl threw a formal glance at me as Madame d'Artelle mentioned my name, and his eyes came toward me again when she explained that I was an American. I was careful to keep my face from the light and to let him see as little of my features as possible. But I need not have taken even that trouble.

He did not give me another thought; and I sat for some minutes turning over the pages of my book, observing him, trying to a.n.a.lyze my own feelings, and speculating how this unexpected development was likely to affect my course.

My first sensation was one which filled me with mortification. I was angry that he had not recognized me. I told myself over and over again that this was all for the best; that it made everything easier for me; that I had no right to care five cents whether he knew me or not; and that it was altogether unworthy of me. Yet my pride was touched: I suppose it was my pride; anyway, it embittered my resentment against him.

It was an insult which aggravated and magnified his former injury; and I sat, outwardly calm, but fuming inwardly, as I piled epithet upon epithet in indignant condemnation of him until my old contempt quickened into hot and fierce hatred. I felt that, come what might, I would not stir a finger to save him from any fate to which others were luring him.

But I began to cool after a while. I was engaged in too serious a conflict to allow myself to be swayed by any emotions. I could obey only one guide--my judgment. Here was the man who of all others would be able by and by to help me most effectively: and if I was not to fail in my purpose I must have his help, let the cost be what it might.

It was surely the quaintest of the turns of Fate's wheel that had brought me to Pesth to save him of all men from ruin; but I never break my head against Fate's decrees, and I would not now. So I accepted the position and began to watch the two closely.

Karl was changed indeed. He looked not five, but fifteen, years older than when we had parted that morning in the Central Park. His face was lined; his features heavy, his eyes dull and spiritless, and his air listless and almost preoccupied. He smiled very rarely indeed, and seemed scarcely even to listen to Madame d'Artelle as she chattered and laughed and gestured gaily.

The reason for some of the change was soon made plain. Wine was brought; and when her back was toward him I saw him look round swiftly and stealthily and pour into his gla.s.s something from a small bottle which he took from his pocket.

I perceived something else, too. Madame d'Artelle had turned her back intentionally so as to give him the opportunity to do this; for I saw that she watched him in a mirror, and was scrupulous not to turn to him again until the little phial was safely back in his pocket.

So this was one of the secrets--opium. His dulness and semi-stupor were due to the fact that the previous dose was wearing off; and she knew it, and gave him an opportunity for the fresh dose.

I waited long enough to notice the first effects. His eyes began to brighten, his manner changed, he commenced to talk briskly, and his spirits rose fast. I feared that under the spur of the drug his memory might recall me, and I deemed it prudent to leave the room.

I had purposely held my tongue lest he should recognize my voice--the most tell-tale of all things in a woman--but now I rose and made some trivial excuse to Madame d'Artelle.

As I spoke I noticed him start, glance quickly at me, and pa.s.s his hand across his forehead; but before he could say anything, I was out of the room. I had accomplished two things. I had let him familiarize himself with the sight of me without a.s.sociating me with our former relations; and I had found out one of the secrets of Madame's influence over him--her encouragement of his drug-taking.

But why should she encourage it? It seemed both reasonless and unaccountable. Did she care for him? I had my reasons for believing she did. Yet if so, why seek to weaken his mind as well as destroy his reputation? I thought this over carefully and could see but one answer--she must be acting in obedience to some powerful compelling influence from outside. Who had that influence, and what was its nature?

When I knew that Karl had gone I went down stairs and had another surprise. I found Madame d'Artelle plunged apparently in the deepest grief. She was a creature of almost hysterical changes of mood.