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Unpunctuality could not be cited as among Madame de Vallorbes' offenses. Yet, on the morning in question, she was certainly very late for the twelve o'clock breakfast. Richard Calmady awaiting her coming beneath the glistering dome of the airy pavilion, set in the angle of the terminal wall of the high-lying garden had time to become conscious of slight irritation.
It must be admitted that he had long ceased to accept Madame de Vallorbes' estimate of her husband with unqualified belief. But, be that as it might, whether he were a consummate, or merely an average, profligate, one thing was certain that this man trusted him Richard Calmady, and that he Richard Calmady had very vilely betrayed that trust.
At the best of times this descent for him demanded caution. Now his vision was again so queerly blurred that he miscalculated the distance between the two lowest treads, slipped and stumbled, lunging forward. Quick as a cat, Madame de Vallorbes was behind him, her right hand grasping his right elbow, her left hand under his left armpit. "Ah!
"But look," Madame de Vallorbes cried, "do you not prefer exposing yourself to the probability of serious illness rather than remain under the same roof with me? The inference hits one in the face. To you the pestilential exhalations, the unspeakable abominations, of Naples harbour appear less dangerous than my near neighbourhood." "You put it more strongly than I should," he answered, smiling.
"No, no;" and regardless of her fine laces, and trinkets, and sables Madame de Vallorbes put her shoulder against the resisting door and fairly burst it open. "See," she cried, breathless but triumphant, "I am very strong." "You are very pretty," Katharine said, almost involuntarily.
Surely, for any man, my love is good enough!" And then hurriedly, with a rustling of silken skirts, hot with anger from head to heel, she sprang to her feet. Across the room one of the men-servants advanced. "The carriage is at the door, sir," he said. And Madame de Vallorbes' voice broke in with a singular lightness and nonchalance: "Surely it is rather imprudent to go out again to-night?
I see I understand," he exclaimed, "you are my cousin you are Madame de Vallorbes." For a moment his sense of disappointment was so keen, he was minded to turn his horse and incontinently ride away. The misery of that episode of his boyhood set its tooth very shrewdly in him even yet.
Otherwise, the aspect of the Villa Vallorbes showed but small alteration since the year when, for a few socially historic weeks, the "glorious Lady Blessington," and her strangely assorted train, condescended to occupy it prior to taking up their residence at the Palazzo Belvedere near by. The walls were sufficiently massive to withstand a siege.
"I don't want to bother you; but really it's about time we were moving." "I come, I come," Madame de Vallorbes cried, in answer. She put one neatly-shod foot on the axle, and stepped up Richard holding out his hand to steady her. A sense, at once pleasurable and defiant, of something akin to ownership, came over him as he did so.
After which, Richard mentally took himself by the throat and proceeded to choke the folly out of himself. Yes, she would go back to all those other people, back moreover to the Vicomte de Vallorbes whom, by the way, it occurred to him she so seldom mentioned. Well, we don't continually talk about the people we love best, do we, to comparative strangers?
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