The Price of Things. Glyn Elinor

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СКАЧАТЬ commented the affronted Marie, who adored Fou-Chou. "Et le cher petit chien de Madame est si doux!"

      * * * * *

      Stanislass Boleski was poring over a voluminous bundle of papers when his wife, clad in a diaphanous wrap, came into his sitting room. They had a palatial suite at the Rhin. The affairs of Poland were not prospering as he had hoped, and these papers required his supreme attention—there was German intrigue going on somewhere underneath. He longed for Harietta's sympathy which she had been so prodigal in bestowing before she had secured her divorce from that brute of a Teutonic husband, whom she hated so much. Now she hardly ever listened, and yawned in his face when he spoke of Poland and his high aims. But he must make allowances for her—she was such a child of impulse, so lovely, so fascinating! And here in Paris, admired as she was, how could he wonder at her distraction!

      "Stanislass! my old Stannie," she cooed in his ear, "what am I to wear to-night for the Montivacchini ball? You will want me to look my best, I know, and I just love to please you."

      He was all attention at once, pushing the documents aside as she put her arms around his neck and pulled his beard, then she drew his head back to kiss the part where the hair was growing thin on the top—her eyes fixed on the papers.

      "You don't want to bother with those tiresome old things any more; go and get into your dressing-gown, and come to my room and talk while I am polishing my nails—we can have half an hour before I must dress. I'll wait for you here—I must be petted to-night, I am tired and cross."

      Stanislass Boleski rose with alacrity. She had not been kind to him for days—fretful and capricious and impossible to please. He must not lose this chance—if it could only have been when he was not so busy—but—

      "Run along, do!" she commanded, tapping her foot.

      And putting the papers hastily in a drawer with a spring lock, he went gladly from the room.

      Her whole aspect changed; she lit a cigarette and hummed a tune, while she fingered a key which dangled from her bracelet.

      No one eclipsed Madame Boleski in that distinguished crowd later on. Her clinging silver brocade, and the one red rose at the edge of the extreme décolletage, were simply the perfection of art. She did not wear gloves, and on her beautifully manicured hands she wore no rings except a magnificent ruby on the left little finger. It was her caprice to refuse an alliance. "Wedding rings!" she had said to Stanislass. "Bosh! they spoil the look. Sometimes it is chic to have a good jewel on one finger, sometimes on another, but to be tied down to that band of homely gold! Never!"

      Stanislass had argued in those early days—he seldom argued now.

      "My love!" he cried, as she burst upon his infatuated vision, when ready for the ball, "let me admire you!"

      She turned about; she knew that she was perfection.

      Her husband kissed her fingers, and then he caught sight of the ruby ring. He examined it.

      "I had not seen this ruby before," he exclaimed in a surprised voice, "and I thought I knew all your jewel case!"

      She held out her hand while her big, stupid, appealing hazel eyes expressed childish innocence.

      "No—I'd put it away, it was of other days—but I do love rubies, and so

       I got it out to-night, it goes with my rose!"

      He had perceived this. Had he not become educated in the subtleties of a woman's apparel? For was it not his duty often, and his pleasure sometimes, to have to assist at her toilet, and to listen for hours to discussions of garments, and if they could suit or not. He was even accustomed now to waiting in the hot salons in the Rue de la Paix, while these stately perfections were being essayed. But the ruby ring worried him. Why had she asked him to give her just such a one only last month, if she already possessed its fellow? … He had refused because her extravagance had grown fantastic, but he had meant to cede later. Every pleasure of the senses he always had to secure by bribes.

      "I do not understand why?—" he began, but she put her hand over his mouth and then kissed him voluptuously before she turned and shrilly cried to Marie to bring her ermine cloak.

      The maid's eyes were round and sullen with resentment; she had not forgotten the beating of Fou-Chou! "As for the ear of Madame!" she said, clasping the tiny dog to her heart, as she watched her mistress go towards the lift from the sitting-room, "as for that maudite ear, thy teeth are innocent, my angel! But I wish that he who is guilty had bitten it off!" Then she laughed disdainfully.

      "And look at the old fool! He dreams of nothing! And if he dreamed, he would not believe—such insensés are men!"

      Meanwhile the Boleskis had arrived at the hotel of the Duchesse di

       Montivacchini, that rich and ravishing American-Italian, who gave the

       most splendid and exclusive entertainments in Paris. So, too, had arrived

       Sir John and Lady Ardayre, brought on from the dinner at the Ritz by

       Verisschenzko.

      Denzil had left that morning for England, or he would have had the disagreeable experience of meeting his soi-disant cousin, to whom he had applied the epithet "toad." For Ferdinand Ardayre had just reached the gay city from Constantinople, and had also come to the ball with a friend in the Turkish Embassy.

      He happened to be standing at the door when the Boleskis were announced, and his light eyes devoured Harietta—she seemed to him the ideal of things feminine—and he immediately took steps to be presented. Assurance was one of his strongest cards. He was a fair man—with the fairness of a Turk not European—and there was something mean and chetive in his regard. He would have looked over-dressed and un-English in a London ball-room, but in that cosmopolitan company he was unremarkable. He had been his mother's idol and Sir James had left him everything he could scrape from his highly mortgaged property. But certain tastes of his own made a Continental life more congenial to him, and he had chosen early to enter a financial house which took him to the East and Constantinople. He was about twenty-seven years old at this period and was considered by himself and a number of women to be a creature of superlative charm.

      The one burning bitterness in his spirit was the knowledge that Sir John Ardayre had never recognised him as a brother. During Sir James' lifetime there had been silence upon the matter, since John had no legal reason for denying the relationship, but once he had become master of Ardayre he had let it be known that he refused to believe Ferdinand to be his father's son. On the rare occasions when he had to be mentioned, John called him "the mongrel" and Ferdinand was aware of this. A silent, intense hatred filled his being—more than shared by his mother who, until the day of her death, two years before, had always plotted vengeance—without being able to accomplish anything. Either mother or son would willingly have murdered John if a suitable and safe method had presented itself. And now to know that John had married a beautiful far-off cousin and might have children, and so forever preclude the possibility of his—Ferdinand's—own inheritance of Ardayre was a further incentive to hate! If only some means could be discovered to remove John, and soon! But while Ferdinand thought these things, watching his so-called brother from across the room, he knew that he was impotent. Poisons and daggers were not weapons which could be employed in civilised Paris in the twentieth century! If they would only come to Constantinople!

      Amaryllis Ardayre had never seen a Paris ball before. She was enchanted. The СКАЧАТЬ