I

It is how I remember it, chère, a chance comment made by the Vicomte de Progny. 'Your little friend has gotten married, Mlle la Comtesse.' The gouty old fool was one of the worst gossip-mongers in Paris, but to bring up such a thing, even in the quiet of my private sâlon, when I had scarcely resumed my connexions with my friends in Paris, was spiteful, even for him.

'I have a great deal of friends whose nuptials I have not been fortunate enough to celebrate with them, M. le Vicomte, particularly as I was absent during the spring and summer, the season of love. Doubtless, however, you mean dear Mlle de la Polastron?' I smiled coolly. My father, as you know, was English. You know also, my darling, that I can be as cold as a dead fish, if I need, but my mother is pure Parisian, and my understanding of the intrigue is her particular legacy. 'I believe my brother Victor attended, and my sister, Alcmene. I was, of course, in England.'

'And it was very gallant of you, too,' continued the vile Progny, 'to see a man who was once your most amorous suitor marry a woman you do not at all know?'

'Ah, but you mistake,' I held up my hand. 'My lord the Duke of Rothcester courted me only out of necessity; he did not have any serious love for me. Why, we grew up pestering one another.'

A fatuous smile came to Progny's greasy lips. 'Ah! You are too young to yet consider yourself quite grown up, Mlle la Comtesse.' He exclaimed.

'Monsieur is too kind.' I bestowed upon him the glazed smile of the supremely bored.

It was not long before he (the excretious vulture) excused himself, having deposited his reeking egg of information in the nest of my mind. It was nothing, of course, that I did not know. Only, it brought to me the realisation, my love, that I had not seen you since I had returned.

Suddenly, I missed you, bone-deep, as I had ever since I had gone away from Paris, had left you, dewy eyed but brave, with your trembling lower lip, all alone, with only your grandmère, the Marquise de Flers for company.

I knew, of course, that you were going to marry, a beautiful young profligate whom you adored. I, myself, had never met him, though I had seen him before at the opera with various women. You wrote to me upon your engagement. Ryno, you called him, and I could very well imagine you speaking his name in that coy, lover's-secret voice in which you had so often pronounced my own. Marigny, I called him, and thought as little as I could of him.

In the ring of light cast by my lamp in the dim coolness of my study, I sat down to write to you, as I do now. I did not plan, would not plan, the motion which my words would take. I knew it was cruel to introduce myself to you again this way, but I would do it anyhow. You were leaving Paris in a fortnight with your new husband, bound for the provinces, no doubt, but I needed you. I would encroach upon your fledgling happiness, upon the birthing-bed of your new and infinite life. I was going to insult your nuptial threshold with the burden of myself, cool politesse and sincere good wishes.

'My dear Madame,' I wrote, with tolerable steadiness, 'How strange to call you after such a style, when you have always been "dear Mimi" to my mind.' I used vous mercilessly, mingling coquettish familiarity with formal address. 'It has been vile of you not to write, and it is only from my dear brother Victor that I had an account of your marriage. Certainly, I am assured of your happiness, if I know nothing else, for if you are so enchanted by your husband that you cannot constrain yourself to communicate with your most devoted friends, you must be very happy indeed. But why did you not write? Were you afraid I would oppose it? Well, never mind that. I will come to you. I hear you depart Paris very soon, and I wish to see you before you are so thoroughly entombed—' here I could see your forehead wrinkling in distaste at this phrasing, '—in nuptial bliss that the influences of old friends can have no sway. Tonight, then, at eight? After supper, but before the opera. Yours, Isolde Wade, Countess of Scarborough.'

It was a letter that would have been peremptory for anyone else, but things had been too deep between you and I, darling, to merit anything but this. I knew you would see not only the bitterness in my light words, but the tenderness, too. You have always seen precisely what it is I mean.

I sent the billet (was it a billet-doux?) with an attendant, and made myself beautiful for you. Being a woman, you are doubly aware of the beauty of rivals, and what might have been the stuff of a man's dearest fancy would have been mediocrity to you.

When I finally entered your parlour, you were absent. Darling, it wrenched at my heart that you would feed me to the wolves in this manner, leaving me alone with your husband, when all I wanted was the merest glimpse of you. Would a moment alone have cost you so dear?

He stood lounging against the fire, the red gold gleaming on his finger like a thrown gauntlet. I gave him a smile, and he responded in kind, crossing the room and taking my hand to bow over it. 'My dear Mlle la Comtesse,' he murmured, in a voice made for a lover, his pale green eyes searching mine through heavy black lashes, 'Hermangarde has told me everything about you. I feel that you are as completely my friend as you have been hers.'

By Apollo, he was beautiful. Only a fool (and a blind fool, at that) would ever deny it, and no one had ever called me either. He was all that was perfect in his type, the elegant, slender effeminate, who challenged women in the freshness of his complexion, in the fullness of his sensualist's mouth, in the lucidity of his indolent eyes. Perhaps it was only that he had green eyes. I had not exactly lied to the Vicomte de Progny when I said that the young Scotch duke had no interest in me, but I had myself been very well in love with him, and his green eyes. But Ryno de Marigny was nothing like Laurence of Rothcester. He had that flexible waist, which so well typifies the Parisian man of fashion, and defies distinction between the ages of thirteen and thirty. Indeed, M. de Marigny could have been of any age at all, provided it was ethereal. I saw in a moment why you, my dear Hermangarde, had been so drawn to him. But there must be something beyond the beauty which caused you to adore him enough to forget me so entirely.

'I am afraid,' I said, preventing myself consciously from assuming the rôle of a feeble-minded young coquette, 'that you have the advantage of me. Hermangarde has told me very little about you, monsieur, so that I fear I shall never equal your understanding of me, and shall make a very big fool of myself.'

'Don't be silly, Isolde!' cried your fresh young voice from the antechamber, and my heart uplifted within me. 'You've never feared looking like a fool, and you never have. You are too much conscious of how perfect you are. Ryno, my love, is she not gorgeous?'

'Just as you told me, my dear.' Marigny replied. I turned to accept your embrace, with your lavender-water scent, and your kiss, feather-light and laden with unspoken promises, upon my forehead.

'Mimi,' I murmured into your ear as I kissed you in return. I longed to hold you, to feel the birdlike trembling of your body against mine.

'Oh, Isolde,' you smiled, with the brilliance of a thousand suns, and more vivacity besides, 'you must not call my by that silly child's name any longer.'

'Oh? Shall I call you Mme. la Comtesse now?' I teased, tugging on a golden ringlet which had escaped the severe ministrations of your hairdresser.

'No. You must call me as my husband calls me. Hermangarde.'

'As you wish, Mme de Marigny.' I dipped a curtsey. You laughed, and I doubted your illuminated god of a husband knew you were being facetious. He really was like something out of a book. I imagine Zeus must have looked so as a swan.

He was smiling with you. The happy fool. I examined again the dichotomy of resolve, of age, and suffering hidden behind those limpid green eyes, and the ethereal agelessness of his face. Oh, there was the first thing you would have found to love. Sweet Diana, how could I ever hope to compete with that?

'It really is quite dreadful of us to keep you standing here.' I was saying, leading us toward the lounges, where coffee was laid out. We arranged ourselves quite civilly, you and I, Hermangarde, on the settee, and he in a wing-backed silken chair, made after the English fashion. Do you recall how our knees brushed? How you would not quite meet my eyes?

I do not recall what it was we chattered about. Something silly, I expect. Something simple, of the Parisian set. I complained about England, and you told me that my elder brother, Joseph, had been again the object of a scandal, which was silly, because I knew very well that he was chaste, and had aspirations toward the seminary. Marigny knew him, had been of the same set when they were some ten or twelve years younger. I teased him for being old, and you, chère, for marrying a man who was near as anything to a corpse.

I despised it, even as I laughed. I longed to strike him, to call him out, as another man might, to throw myself at his feet and beg mercy—to demand it. Hermangarde, you were so alive. I have never seen you more beautiful. Even unclad in candle light, your golden hair spilling over my pillow like the rays of the sun, whispering obscene pleas, you were never more satisfied. I wanted to laugh hysterically and dash my hands through my hair, to despise you, to love your husband as you did.

Oh, darling, I wanted so much to be alone with you.

But he tarried, and watched me.

I do not believe he suspected anything, not for a moment, but there must have been something between us that he found unnerving, and you—you!—traitor, you would not give him some silly excuse to leave.

My house in the Rue de'l Arbre Sec came into play. Would I stay in Paris, or return to London, as Victor wanted?

'That is right, you have a twin brother,' Marigny said. 'You know, I have seen him once or twice. Always getting into duels, that one, is he not?'

'Victor adores me,' I said. Finally, someone who would never leave me. 'He is determined that I should remain an old maid, and adore him, too.'

'That seems hardly fair,' Marigny said. It was at that moment, my dear Hermangarde, that I knew I could have him. Oh, not straight away. I could see that he adored you, that the fresh spring of marriage still overflowed in his black heart, aged beyond his physical years (and what had he lost to make it so?), but he would soon learn to take you for granted, to realise that you are his, completely his, and he would begin to imagine that he is not completely yours. The simpleton.

The whole affair played out in my mind, over the course of a moment. I could call upon him one day, when I knew you were gone, and express my disappointment at your absence. He would insist upon giving me something to drink, at least. There it could begin. I am no mean woman. I have had Paris at my feet since I was fourteen. Marigny would prostrate himself, as well, to the idol I would make of myself. I could have him within five months, and reject or accept him as suited me.

And he was beautiful.

But you, my darling Hermangarde.

You.

I have loved you too well and too fiercely to allow myself to take what I want and to ruin your joy. I shall not take from you what you will not yield. I told you that once, and I mean to abide by it.

Ruin him, darling. Please, please ruin him before he does it to you.

Oh, Hermangarde.

You reign, the despot, the tyrant, single-handedly crushing the freedom of my heart. How you imagine life without me, when I am so helpless to imagine life without you, convinces me utterly of your sovereignty. You, fragile and ingenuous and starry-eyed in love with your lovely, unfaithful husband (do you think I do not know what all of Paris knows?), you will rule the world, my darling.

When he calls back his prima donna, his Malaguese, will you have me then? Will you have your inextinguishable, cold-blooded English girl?

Find me, then, through your lorgnette at the opera, when he goes to number 46, Rue du Carmes, and you are open-mouthed in horror. I will come to you if you but beckon with your smallest finger.

I will not destroy anything that your beautiful swan Marigny has not first beaten to shells with his terrible archangel's wings.