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With one effort he prised up the cover, but the hinge snapped, and the lid rolled across the table into Barebone's hand. "Ah!" he cried, in that breathless silence, "now I remember it. I remember the red silk lining of the cover, and in the other side there is the portrait of a lady with " The Vicomte paused, with his palm covering the other half of the locket and looked across at Loo.
There is always something unreal in fame, and great men know in their own hearts that they are not great. It is only the world that thinks them so. When they are alone in a room by themselves they feel for a moment their own smallness. But the door opens, and in an instant they arise and play their part mechanically. This had come to be Barebone's daily task.
"She is quite harmless," said Juliette, tying, with a thread, the primroses she had been picking in that shady corner of the garden which lay at the other side of the Italian house. The windows of Barebone's apartment, by the way, looked down upon this garden, and he, having perceived her, had not wasted time in joining her in the morning sunshine.
In truth his hypocrisy was of a far higher and rarer sort than the hypocrisy which had flourished in Barebone's Parliament. For the consummate hypocrite is not he who conceals vice behind the semblance of virtue, but he who makes the vice which he has no objection to show a stalking horse to cover darker and more profitable vice which it is for his interest to hide.
On their way back to France, without directly referring to that fatal portrait and the revelation caused by Barebone's unaccountable feat of memory, he had smoothed away any possible scruple. "France must always be deceived," he had said, a hundred times. "Better that she should be deceived for an honest than a dishonest purpose if it is deception, after all, which is very doubtful.
Then they heard Loo Barebone's voice, cheerful and energetic, almost laughing. Before they could understand what was taking place his voice was audible again, giving a sharp, clear order, and all the black forms rushed together down into the surf. A moment later the boat danced out over the crest of a breaker, splashing into the next and throwing up a fan of spray.
And now in the twinkling of an eye the positions were reversed. Colville stood watching Barebone's face with eyes rendered almost servile by a great suspense. He waited breathless for the next words. "This portrait," said Barebone, "of the Queen was placed in the locket by you?" Colville nodded with a laugh of conscious cleverness rewarded by complete success.
It was quite obvious to John Turner, who had entered the room in ignorance on this point, that Marvin knew nothing of Barebone's heritage in France while Miriam knew all. "There is one point," he said, "which is perhaps scarcely worth mentioning. The man who makes the offer is not only the most unscrupulous, but is likely to become one of the most powerful men in Eur men I know.
"You can never tell," laughed Colville, but his laugh rather paled under Barebone's glance. "You can never tell." "Wise men do not attempt to blackmail kings." And Colville caught his breath. "Perhaps you are right," he admitted, after a pause. "You seem to be taking to the position very kindly, Barebone. But I do not mind, you know. It does not matter what we say to each other, eh?
And the eyes of all Royalist France were fixed on the same face. "Silence!" whispered Dormer Colville in English, crushing Barebone's foot under the table. "The portrait of a lady," repeated Loo, slowly. "Young and beautiful. That much I remember." The old nobleman had never removed his covering hand from the locket. He had never glanced at it himself.
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