The Splendid Folly Part 18

"But--but why?" she stammered.

"I can't tell you why. Only take my advice and leave her alone."

"But I thought her delightful," protested Diana. "And"--wistfully--"I haven't many friends in London."

"Miss de Gervais isn't quite all she seems. And your art should be your friend--you don't need any other."

Diana laughed.

"You talk like old Baroni himself! But indeed I do want friends--I haven't nearly reached the stage when art can take the place of nice human people."

Miss Lermontof regarded her dispa.s.sionately.

"That's only because you're young--horribly young and warm-hearted."

"You talk as if you yourself were a near relation of Methuselah!"--laughing.

"I'm thirty-five," returned Olga, "And that's old enough to know that nine-tenths of your 'nice human people' are self-seeking vampires living on the generosity of the other tenth. Besides, you have only to wait till you come out professionally and you can have as many so-called friends as you choose. You'll scarcely need to lift your little finger and they'll come flocking round you. I don't think"-- looking at her speculatively--"that you've any conception what your voice is going to do for you. You see, it isn't just an ordinary good voice--it's one of the exceptional voices that are only vouchsafed once or twice in a century."

"Still, I think I should like to have a few friends--now. _My_ friend, I mean--not just the friends of my voice!"--with a smile.

"Well, don't include Miss de Gervais in the number--or Max Errington either."

She watched Diana's sudden flush, and shrugging her shoulders, added sardonically:--

"I suppose, however, it's useless to try and stop a marble rolling down hill. . . . Well, later on, remember that I warned you."

Diana stared into the fire for a moment in silence. Then she asked with apparent irrelevance:--

"Is Mr. Errington married?"

"He is not." Diana's heart suddenly sang within her.

"Nor," continued Miss Lermontof keenly, "is there any likelihood of his ever marrying."

The song broke off abruptly.

"I should have thought," said Diana slowly, "that he was just the kind of man who _would_ marry. He is"--with a little effort--"very delightful."

Miss Lermontof got up to go.

"You have a saying in England: _All is not gold that glitters_. It is very good sense," she observed.

"Do you mean"--Diana's eyes were suddenly apprehensive--"do you mean that he has done anything wrong--dishonourable?"

"I think," replied Olga Lermontof incisively, "that it would be very dishonourable of him if he tried to--to make you care for him."

She moved towards the door as she spoke, and Diana followed her.

"But why--why do you tell me this?" she faltered.

The Russian's queer green eyes held an odd expression as she answered:--

"Perhaps it's because I like you very much better than you do me.

You're one of the few genuine warm-hearted people I've met--and I don't want you to be unhappy. Good-bye," she added carelessly, "thank you for my tea."

The door closed behind her, and Diana, returning to her seat by the fire, sat staring into the flames, puzzling over what she had heard.

Miss Lermontof's curious warning had frightened her a little. She apparently possessed some intimate knowledge of the affairs both of Max Errington and Adrienne de Gervais, and what she knew did not appear to be very favourable to either of them.

Diana had intuitively felt from the very beginning of her acquaintance with Errington that there was something secret, something hidden, about him, and in a way this had added to her interest in him. It had seized hold of her imagination, kept him vividly before her mind as nothing else could have done, and now Olga Lermontof's strange hints and innuendos gave a fresh fillip to her desire to know in what way Max Errington differed from his fellows.

"It would be dishonourable of him to make you care," Miss Lermontof had said.

The words seemed to ring in Diana's ears, and side by side with them, as though to add a substance of reality, came the memory of Errington's own bitter exclamation: "I forgot that I'm a man barred out from all that makes life worth living!"

She felt as though she had drawn near some invisible web, of which every now and then a single filament brushed against her--almost impalpable, yet touching her with the fleetest and lightest of contacts.

During the weeks that followed, Diana became more or less an intimate at Adrienne's house in Somervell Street. The actress seemed to have taken a great fancy to her, and although she was several years Diana's senior, the difference in age formed no appreciable stumbling-block to the growth of the friendship between them.

On her part, Diana regarded Adrienne with the enthusiastic devotion which an older woman--more especially if she happens to be very beautiful and occupying a somewhat unique position--frequently inspires in one younger than herself, and Olga Lermontof's grave warning might just as well have been uttered to the empty air. Diana's warm-hearted, spontaneous nature swept it aside with an almost pa.s.sionate loyalty and belief in her new-found friend.

Once Miss Lermontof had referred to it rather disagreeably.

"So you've decided to make a friend of Miss de Gervais after all?" she said.

"Yes. And I think you've misjudged her utterly," Diana warmly a.s.sured her. "Of course," she added, sensitively afraid that the other might misconstrue her meaning, "I know you believed what you were saying, and that you only said it out of kindness to me. But you were mistaken--really you were."

"Humph!" The Russian's eyes narrowed until they looked like two slits of green fire. "Humph! I was wrong, was I? Nevertheless, I'm perfectly sure that Adrienne de Gervais' past is a closed book to you--although you call yourself her friend!"

Diana turned away without reply. It was true--Olga Lermontof had laid a finger on the weak spot in her friendship with Adrienne. The latter never talked to her of her past life; their mutual attachment was built solely around the present, and if by chance any question of Diana's accidentally probed into the past, it was adroitly parried. Even of Adrienne's nationality she was in ignorance, merely understanding, along with the rest of the world, that she was of French extraction.

This a.s.sumption had probably been founded in the first instance upon her name, and Adrienne never troubled either to confirm or contradict it.

Mrs. Adams, her companion-chaperon, always made Diana especially welcome at the house in Somervell Street.

"You must come again soon, my dear," she would say cordially.

"Adrienne makes few friends--and your visits are such a relaxation to her. The life she leads is rather a strain, you know."

At times Diana noticed a curious aloofness in her friend, as though her professional success occupied a position of relatively small importance in her estimation, and once she had commented on it half jokingly.

"You don't seem to value your laurels one bit," she had said, as Adrienne contemptuously tossed aside a newspaper containing a eulogy of her claims to distinction which most actresses would have carefully cut out and pasted into their book of critiques.

"Fame?" Adrienne had answered. "What is it? Merely the bubble of a day."

"Well," returned Diana, laughing, "it's the aim and object of a good many people's lives. It's the bubble I'm in pursuit of, and if I obtain one half the recognition you have had, I shall be very content."

Adrienne regarded her musingly.