A Modern Mercenary Part 12

'Ah, I knew you wouldn't come! Well, you will lose nothing. We shall have a houseful of fools,' interrupted the Count roughly.

'I have already accepted, and will with your permission, Count, be one of the fools,' replied Counsellor genially.

The Countess understood she had in some way put her foot in it, but as the two men walked away together she nodded complacently to herself, with the words, 'I know what I know!'

The tide of dancers still swept backwards and forwards as Madame de Sagan idly observed them, until her glance chanced to fall upon the opposite couple at the further end of the saloon. Something in Valerie's air fixed her wandering attention at once with a little shock. What was Rallywood saying to her? And where was Anthony Unziar? The Countess Isolde had to the full the all-devouring vanity of her type, but now, for once in her life, she felt desirous of forwarding a love affair that was not her own.

'You are going to Sagan, of course?' Valerie had said to her partner as they stood together.

'I think not,' Rallywood replied.

'I thought you would be sure to be in attendance'--she glanced carelessly towards the das where the Countess was at the moment laying her fan on Counsellor's knee--'as usual.'

'No, Unziar is the lucky man,' Rallywood answered without significance in his tone.

'Nonsense! Anthony is her cousin!' said the girl impatiently.

Rallywood's grey eyes were on her face.

'Whose cousin? What do you mean?' he asked innocently.

Valerie bit her lip. She hated this Englishman. Of all her acquaintances he alone, in his blundering way, was able to put her somehow at a disadvantage.

'When the Duke goes to Sagan,' she said, without noticing his question, 'the Count has the privilege as colonel-in-chief of the Guard, of inviting any two officers he pleases to act with the escort. So we shall see.'

'I wonder,' said Rallywood after a pause, 'where you get your impressions from, Mademoiselle?'

'I see--like other people. We all form our judgments on what we see and--know!'

'What do you know, for instance?'

'I heard of you when you were at Kofn Ford, near the Castle of Sagan,'

she answered.

Rallywood was only human, and however moderately he may have returned Madame de Sagan's preference, he was fully aware of its existence. In those days on the frontier he had, rather from fastidiousness than principle perhaps, avoided her and her invitations whenever possible.

But that was one thing; it was another to hear the matter coolly alluded to by the girl beside him. Involuntarily he drew a little away from her. His notions were founded less on actual knowledge and experience of women--for of that he had little--than gathered from that idealized version of the s.e.x with which the right-minded male animal is usually furnished by his own mental and emotional processes. So far his intercourse with Isolde of Sagan had been limited to certain sentimental pa.s.sages; the initiative lay with the lady, but Rallywood had once or twice been distinctly wrought upon by the appeals to his sympathy and pity. Now, however, looked at from a fresh standpoint, the one in fact from which Valerie viewed it, the subject became suddenly repellent, and he slid away from the discussion with another question.

'What has Unziar been saying of me? You have treated me differently since--that night.'

There appeared to be no need to particularize the night.

Mademoiselle Selpdorf understood both the first involuntary movement and the change of subject, and resented them equally.

'Anthony is generous, so generous!' she said with some warmth. 'I suppose it is an English trait to take everything and to give nothing in return. Anthony told me of all that took place in the Cloister of St.

Anthony. Your action seemed to him so fine, poor fellow!--but not to me.

You believed in your luck, of course, and took the hazard and won, leaving him hopelessly at a disadvantage. I should not have accepted the position as he did--I should have forced you to fight it out sooner or later! I had rather a hundred times have died by your bullet than lived to endure your triumph!'

Rallywood pondered this view of the matter before he spoke.

'I dare say you are right,' he said at last; 'at least, no woman could have been so generous to another woman as he was to me.'

'You are complimentary, Captain Rallywood!'

'I beg your pardon. I only meant that women are not generous as between themselves. Looked at from your point of view, I see that I was wrong about that affair with Unziar. But more than all, it proves he is a splendid fellow.'

Now Unziar's praise from Rallywood's lips displeased Mademoiselle Selpdorf almost more than all which had gone before.

'It is easy to say these things, but'--she rose eagerly--'at last that figure is ended. What a stupid interval it has been!' she added with a little smile.

'I am sorry. I always have the misfortune to bore you,' Rallywood said, accepting his snub meekly.

'Never mind! You can't help it!' she responded with a pleasant nod as she left him.

Rallywood remained standing where he was.

'A very nasty one indeed for me. I shouldn't wonder, though, if she forgave me for the sake of that last back-handed blow!' he reflected with some amus.e.m.e.nt.

Which proves that Revonde was teaching Rallywood something that has its own value at one period or another of a man's life. He was too poor to dream of marrying anyone, much less the daughter of the Chancellor of Maasau, a woman whose training and tastes had not been guided on the lines of simplicity or economy. That Valerie Selpdorf attracted him was a truth to which his eyes began to be opened at the moment when Counsellor asked him why he haunted Madame de Sagan's entertainments.

Then it had struck him that the almost certain chance of meeting Valerie was his chief motive, yet he believed it was safe to divulge to himself, since the girl bitterly disliked him, and he, in the strength of the insular and Puritan side of his nature, disapproved of her. It was the pleasure of the hour, no one looked beyond that in Revonde, and Rallywood had fallen into the universal habit of drifting.

'You are thoughtful. What can you have been talking about?' asked the Countess, coming up.

'Mademoiselle Selpdorf has been giving her opinion of me. It is not flattering, and I am depressed,' returned Rallywood, hoping the Countess meant to talk of Valerie.

'Has she? She is often absurd in her ideas. But we need not talk of her.

To turn to something pleasanter, do you know that I have just persuaded Major Counsellor to come to us at Sagan?'

Rallywood instantly perceived that the three or four days at the old frontier castle might prove to be a singularly interesting period, and regretted that he was not to be a guest also.

'And you are coming too, are you not?' went on Madame de Sagan, with a note in her voice that Rallywood was learning to dread.

'I fancy not. Unziar and Adiron have been mentioned.'

'Yes, Anthony Unziar, because he is my cousin, and for the sake of Valerie. Also Captain Colendorp. I do not like him, he is always black and sneering, but the Count chose him yesterday, and then I suggested yourself. They were rather doubtful about you, but Baron von Elmur consented. And I was so glad--Jack!'

The friendship had been progressing, it will be perceived, during the last three weeks. But Rallywood made no immediate response, being absorbed in digesting the information she had given him. That the German minister should be permitted to dictate the guests for the three days'

festivities at the Castle was in itself a pregnant fact. But further, the Germans had never before possessed old Sagan's confidence; his dislike of the encroaching mammoth, whom the whole little nation feared, was notorious. This new departure was therefore ominous.

'I had no notion that Baron von Elmur liked me any better than my countrymen,' said Rallywood aloud.

'Ah, no, perhaps not; but now, you will understand, he wishes to please me!' Countess Isolde answered with an air of mysterious importance.

'He is not alone in wishing to do that,' returned Rallywood, ashamed even as he uttered it, of the meaningless compliment.

'Jack,' she said, with a proud raising of her blonde head, 'you are my friend, and of course you wish to please me. But everyone will want to stand well with me some day--when I have power--and then you shall see what I will do for those whom I wish to please!'

Every word she spoke added to the certainty that some new plot was afoot, and Rallywood glanced round for Counsellor's stout figure.

'You are glad to come to Sagan?' persisted his companion; 'say you are glad.'