She started, bit her lip at a certain gaucherie in the question, but did not withdraw her hand. “I—I cannot say,” she stammered; “isn’t that a point for the little mother?” and she glanced at the sunshade hiding the ponderous sleeper.
“I know! I know! I know!” said the Pompadour in a fury of impatience. “But this is our Scottish fashion; first I must know from you, and then I shall consult your mother. Meanwhile, do you love me?”
“I have had no experience,” said the lady, not much embarrassed. “You have not told me yet if you love me, which is, I understand, the customary ritual.”
“_Mon Dieu_!” said he in an excess of fervour, “I’m in a flame of passion and worship of you,” and he crushed unconsciously her fingers in his two strong hands.
She winced. “_Oh_, _ce n’est pas gentil_,” she exclaimed, pulling away her hand. “You hurt me horribly.” Then she smiled up in his face, provocatively coquettish, whispering, “To-morrow,” for the other guests came trooping back upon the terrace.
On the following evening, when the dark was falling upon Paris, and the lamps began to bloom along the boulevards like flowers of fire, a little woman, simple, elderly, and timid, drove to the door of the mansion in the rue Adolph Yvon, and asked to see his lordship’s secretary.
“He is from home, madam,” said the English servant, looking with curiosity at the homely figure.
“From home!” she exclaimed, beset with fears, and realising now more poignantly than ever all the hazards of her scheme. “I must see him to-night; I am his mother.”
“He is meantime with his lordship at the restaurant of Voisin,” said the domestic kindly. “Will you come in and wait for him?”
“Thank you, thank you!” she exclaimed; “but, if it were possible, I should like to see him now.”
He put her in a cab, and gave the name of Voisin to the driver.
Voisin’s, in the rue Cambon, is a quiet and unpretentious restaurant, dear to aristocratic Paris, since it looks so cheap and really is expensive. So quiet, so discreet, so restrained externally, men from the rural parts have been known to go boldly in, misapprehending, and before they had recovered from the blinding radiance of its tables, ask for a brioche and a mug of beer.
To-night it had, more speciously than usual, the aspect of a simple village inn: a hush prevailed; its waiters moved about on list, and spoke in whispers; le Pompadour écossais dined _en prince_ upstairs with a merry company, in a chamber upon which the whole attention of the house was concentrated, from M. le Gerant down to the meanest kitchen scullion, for the evening’s entertainment was upon a scale of reckless cost. Nothing would satisfy this wonderful man to-night but curious foods far-borne from foreign lands, strange rare beverages, golden vessels that had only once or twice been used in the Tuileries in the last days of the Empire. If diamonds could be crushed and turned by some miracle of alchemy into a palatable bouillon, he, or properly his secretary, would have cheerfully paid the cost. In an alcove screened by palms a string quartette played the most sensuous music, so exquisitely modulated that it seemed deliberately designed to harmonise with rallies of wit and peals of laughter.