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Of late years Madame Steynlin had given up marrying, having at last, after many broken hopes, definitely convinced herself that husbands were only after her money. Rightly or wrongly, she wanted to be loved for herself; loved, she insisted, body and soul.
Of the permanent residents only the Duchess, always of High Church leanings, had of late yielded to his blandishments. She was fairly hooked. Madame Steynlin, a lady of Dutch extraction whose hats were proverbial, was uncompromisingly Lutheran. The men were past redemption, all save the Commissioner who, however, was under bad influences and an incurable wobbler, anyhow.
Harp-like tinklings arose from an adjoining chamber; a general move took place in that direction. Mr. Keith was there. He sat beside Madame Steynlin who, being a fair performer herself, was listening with rapture to Muhlen's strains. During a pause he said: "I wish I could make it out. It annoys me, Madame Steynlin, not to comprehend the charm of music.
"And how," he continued, addressing Denis, "are your Italian studies progressing?" "Fairly well, thank you. My French puts me out a little. And I can't yet conjugate properly." "That is certainly a drawback," said Don Francesco, appearing on the scene. "But don't let it trouble you," he added in paternal tones. "It will come in time. You are still young. You are learning Russian, Madame Steynlin?"
In matters such as these, Madame Steynlin was the reverse of the Duchess. True to her ideal of La Pompadour, that lady did not mind how many men danced attendance on her the more the merrier. Nor did she bother about their ages; for all she cared, they might be, and often were, the veriest crocks.
Only temporarily. Because Mr. Keith would be sure to bail her out again in the morning, which meant another fifty francs in his pocket. This is exactly what had just taken place. Mr. Keith had bailed her out, for the thirty-fourth time. She was at liberty once more, sobering down. Both the Duchess and Madame Steynlin pitied her, as only one woman can pity another.
There was an adequate display of fictitious grief among her social equals. Madame Steynlin, in particular, carried it off to outward appearances with remarkable success. She looked really quite upset, and her hat, as usual, attracted the attention of all the ladies. Madame Steynlin's hats were proverbial. She was always appearing in new ones of the most costly varieties.
The men declared he was going mad breaking up sickening for an attack of G.P. "Miracles will never cease," charitably observed the Duchess. Alone of all his lady acquaintances, Madame Steynlin liked him all the better for this gaucherie. She was a true woman-friend of all lovers; she knew the human heart and its queer little vagaries.
He was beaming all over, none the less, and soon making arrangements with other guests for a series of picnics and boating excursions getting on swimmingly, in fact, when the thoughtless Madame Steynlin captured him and began to talk music. He repeated that remark, too good to be lost, about the spinet; it led to Scarlatti, Mozart, Handel. He said Handel was the saviour of English music.
The Nepenthe magistrate had shown what he was capable of, in his bestial dealings with a half-witted lad and those harmless Russian lunatics the first one saved through the intervention of a cut-throat politician, and the second . . . well, he did not exactly know how the Muscovites had been able to regain their freedom but, remembering what Keith had told him about Miss Wilberforce, her periodical imprisonments and his periodical bribes, he shrewdly suspected some underhand practices on the part of that gentleman at the instigation, very possibly, of the charming Madame Steynlin.
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