CHAPTER XIX
Laurel drew back on the threshold, fearful of interrupting the singer, but Mrs. Le Roy had already perceived her and came forward with considerable empressement to draw her into the room and introduce her.
"Miss Gordon, Count Fitz John," she said, and with a gasp as if someone had thrown cold water over her, the false Beatrix Gordon found herself bowing to a real, live French count.
Her trepidation passed away in a moment. The count was not at all imposing—a good-looking young fellow enough, but St. Leon Le Roy overtopped him by head and shoulders in size and manly beauty. Laurel sat down, shyly conscious of his palpable admiration, and when the song had come to an end she was presented to the singer.
A shimmer of azure silk, a gleam of jewels, a waft of overpowering perfume, and Laurel dared raise her eyes to the beautiful blonde face with its turquois blue eyes, its pink cheeks, and smiling lips, a halo of pale golden hair framing it all and lending an air of infantile innocence to its beauty. She looked very young, and she was smaller than Laurel—a wax doll, dainty and diminutive, and with a smile as sweet and inane. She did not look like a widow. It seemed strange to call her Mrs. Merivale.
The blue eyes, for all their infantile softness, gave Laurel a piercing take-you-in-at-a-glance look, as they touched each other's hands.
"A dark-eyed blonde—labeled dangerous!" said Mrs. Merivale to herself enviously, and feeling for a moment doubtful over the effect of her own elaborate costume as compared with this pure white robe with its vivid garniture of roses.
But, in a moment, her natural vanity reasserted itself. She concluded to be gracious.
"I am so glad to know you, Miss Gordon. I have heard of you in New York, although rumor did not credit you with half the charms I find you in actual possession of," she twittered, sweetly. "Will you come to the piano and play for us? I am so fond of music?"
"I do not play," Laurel answered, feeling the warm color flood her cheeks under the lady's astonished gaze.
"Not play! Why, surely—" began Mrs. Merivale, but to Laurel's intense relief dinner was announced, and she was spared the expression of the lady's surprise at her ignorance.
Yet she looked at the pearl keys longingly as she swept past the grand piano on the count's arm. She had a great passionate love for the divine art of music, and a great grief filled her soul at the thought that her hands had no power to wake the soul of harmony slumbering in those silent keys.
"Poor Papa! I wish that he had taught me more of music and less of languages," she thought, regretfully.
Yet, when at dinner they talked in the French language out of compliment to the polite count, she was glad that she could hold her own among them. She felt rather than saw, St. Leon's surprise, and Mrs. Merivale's dismay.
"So she can speak French like a native, although she cannot play—curious!" said the latter to herself, with a feeling of vexation, for she had started the ball of French conversation with a distinct view to Miss Gordon's discomfiture.
Laurel had never seen Mr. Le Roy so brilliant as he was this evening. It seemed that he had never exerted himself for her. He was affable, courteous, and fascinating to his visitors, especially so to the lady. He had softly spoken words for her winning smiles that Laurel had never dreamed could curve those sternly set lips. A pang of bitterness pierced the sensitive heart of the lovely young impostor.
"He has never thought Beatrix Gordon worthy of his kind words and smiles," she thought.
He did not think so now it seemed. He did not speak to her and seldom looked at her. His words and looks were lavished on the fair, smiling widow who gave herself up to the flirtation with eager, absorbing interest. The count paid great attention to Laurel, and she tried to look interested in his conversation, but she was glad when the dinner was ended and the ladies passed from the room, leaving the gentlemen to finish their wine.
Mrs. Merivale went to the low window and looked out upon the moonlit balcony.
"How lovely it is!" she cried. "Will you come out, Mrs. Le Roy?—you and Miss Gordon?"
"Beatrix may go—I am afraid of the night air," Mrs. Le Roy responded, settling herself in an easy chair.
"Will you come, Miss Gordon?" asked the fair widow. "It is too lovely a night to remain indoors," she added, sentimentally.
Laurel went out to her, and Mrs. Merivale drew her ringed hand lovingly through the girl's arm.
"Let us go out and gather some roses with the moonlight and dew upon them. They will be so sweet," she said, winningly. "And, please, will you call me Maud, and let me call you Beatrix? We are both too young to be ceremonious with each other."
They went down into the graveled paths where the September moonlight shone clear and white, and then Maud Merivale seemed to forget all about the roses.
"Ma chère, I am dying to know how you like the count!" she cried.
"He is very nice, I suppose," said Laurel, vaguely, her thoughts elsewhere.
"'Very nice'—oh, dear, what faint praise for my gallant adorer!" laughed the lady. "Why, my dear Beatrix, all the girls in New York vote him a love, a darling, an Adonis, and above all, a splendid catch! They are all jealous of me! Any one of them could willingly cut my ears off for having taken him captive!"
"Then you are to marry him?" said innocent Laurel, taking a vague pleasure in the thought as suggested by the lady's words.
"Cela depend. I can marry him if I choose," laughed the lady. "You must have observed how devoted he is."
Laurel had not observed it, but she wisely said nothing.
Maud Merivale shook her golden frizzes in the moonlight.
"I shall not marry him. It is useless his breaking his heart over me," she said. "I am too true to my old love."
"Your dead husband," Laurel said, gently.
"Pshaw, Beatrix"—impatiently—"what are you talking of? Do you not know that Mr. Merivale was an old man? It was not at all a love match: it was because he was rich."
"Pardon," Laurel murmured, faintly, and she recalled to herself, as she often did, Clarice's favorite song of "Dollars and Dimes."
"It is all right. The old man died soon, and left me a fortune," said the young widow, heartlessly. "But as for loving him, or having any sentimental tendresse over his memory—pshaw, I am not such a little simpleton as that, my dear! no one could expect it," plaintively. "Beatrix," this with startling suddenness—"tell me what do you think of your host—of St. Leon Le Roy?"
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