Behind the Throne. Le Queux William

sleepless night, made up his mind.

      When he descended to breakfast next morning he announced to his uncle his intention of cycling into Rugby, well knowing that the rector had to give a lesson in religious instruction in the village school, and would therefore not be able to accompany him.

      So, in determination to meet the Frenchman face to face, to expose him and thus save Mary, even at risk of his own disgrace, he mounted and rode away down the white, dusty highroad.

      Instead of going into Rugby, however, he turned off at Lilbourne, and rode over the road along which they had driven the previous evening, to Orton.

      Eleven o’clock was certainly a rather unconventional hour for calling, but as he dismounted at the gates and walked his machine up the long, well-kept drive he had already invented an excuse. As he passed the study window he saw within a tall, elderly, grave-faced man in a suit of light grey tweed, and at once recognised that it was His Excellency himself.

      In answer to his ring at the door, a young English footman appeared, whereupon he asked —

      “Is Count Dubard at home?”

      “The count left this morning by the nine o’clock train.”

      “Left!” echoed Macbean. “And is he not returning?”

      “I think not, sir. He took his luggage. But I will inquire if you’ll step in a moment.”

      The man had conducted him across the wide old-fashioned stone hall into a pleasant morning-room which looked out upon the flower-garden and was flooded with sunshine, and after the lapse of a few moments the door reopened and there entered Mary herself, a charming figure in a fresh white blouse and linen skirt.

      “Why, Mr Macbean!” she cried, extending her hand gaily. “You are quite an unexpected visitor! Davis says you want to see Count Dubard. He left for Paris this morning.”

      “And is he not coming back?”

      “No, I believe not,” was her answer. “He received a letter this morning calling him to Paris at once, and dashed off to try and catch the eleven o’clock service from Charing Cross. He just had time, he said. He was anxious to see you, I think.”

      “Anxious to see me – why?” asked Macbean quickly.

      “Last night he told me that he recognised you as you were driving home with Mr Sinclair, and asked if I knew you. I, of course, told him that you had been playing tennis here. He seemed very eager to see you, and made quite a lot of inquiries about you.”

      Her companion was silent. The recognition had been mutual, then, and the story of the urgent letter was only an excuse of the Frenchman’s to escape from a very ugly and compromising position! His flight showed Macbean that the fellow was in fear of him, and yet he had fortunately avoided a scene between them, and a result which, in all probability, might have caused his own ruin.

      He looked at the bright, sweet-faced woman before him, and wondered – wondered how she could allow her affection to be attracted towards such a fellow. And yet what an admirable actor the man was! She was, alas! in ignorance of it all.

      How could he tell her? To explain, would only be to condemn himself. No. He resolved that for the present he must conceal his secret – for his own sake. Nevertheless how strange it was, he thought, that he should thus suddenly be drawn so closely towards her. Yesterday she was a mere acquaintance of the tea-table and the tennis-lawn, like dozens of other girls he knew, while to-day he was there as her friend and protector, the man who intended to save her and her family from the ingenious trap that he now saw was already prepared.

      “I’m sorry he’s gone,” he remarked in a tone of regret, adding, “I knew him long ago, and only after we had passed, my uncle told me that he was a guest here.”

      “He too said he wanted very much to see you,” she remarked brightly. “But you’ll meet again very soon, no doubt. I shall tell him of your inquiries when I write, for he spoke of you in the warmest terms. I did not know your address in London, so I gave him Mr Sinclair’s. I’m so sorry he’s gone,” she added. “We were to have all gone for a picnic to-day over to Kenilworth.”

      “And instead of that the central attraction has disappeared,” he hazarded, with a smile.

      “What do you mean by ‘central attraction’?” she asked, flushing slightly.

      “My friend Dubard, of course. I suppose what everyone says is correct, Miss Morini, and therefore I may be permitted to congratulate you upon your engagement to my friend?”

      “Oh, there is no engagement, I assure you,” was her reply, as she looked at him with open frankness, her cheeks betraying a slightly heightened colour. “I know there’s quite a lot of gossip about it, but the rumours are entirely without foundation,” she laughed; and as she sat there in the deep old window-seat, he recognised that, notwithstanding the refined and dignified beauty of a woman who was brilliant in a brilliant court, she still retained a soft simplicity and a virgin innocence; she was a woman whose first tears would spring from compassion, “suffering with those that she saw suffer.” She had no acquired scruples of honour, no coy concealments, no assumed dignity standing in its own defence. Her bashfulness as they spoke together was less a quality than an instinct; like the self-folding flower, spontaneous and unconscious. Cosmopolitan life in that glare and glitter of aristocratic Rome – that circle where, from the innate distrust women have of each other, the dread of the betrayed confidence and jealous rivalry, they made no friends, and were indeed ignorant of the true meaning of friendship, where flattery and hypocrisy were the very air and atmosphere and mistrust lay in every hand-clasp and lurked in every glance – had already opened Mary Morini’s eyes to the hollow shams, the manifold hypocrisies, and the lamentable insincerity of social intimacies, and she had recoiled from it with disgust.

      She had retained her woman’s heart, for that was unalterable and inalienable as a part of her being; but her looks, her language, her thoughts, assumed to George Macbean, as he stood there beneath the spell of her beauty, the cast of the pure ideal.

      And yet she loved Jules Dubard!

      He bit his lip and gazed out of the old diamond panes upon the tangle of red and white roses around the lawn.

      Ah! how he longed to speak to her in confidence – to reveal to her the secret that now oppressed his heart until he seemed stifled by its ghastliness.

      But it was utterly impossible, he told himself. Now that Dubard had fled, he must find other and secret means by which to acquaint her with the truth, and at the same time shield himself from the Frenchman’s crushing revenge.

      He contrived to conceal the storm of emotion that tore his heart, and laughed with her about the unfounded rumours that had got abroad concerning her engagement, saying —

      “Of course in a rural neighbourhood like this the villagers invent all kinds of reports based upon their own surmises.”

      “Yes,” she declared. “They really know more about our business than we do ourselves. Only fancy! That I am engaged to marry Count Dubard – ridiculous!”

      “Why ridiculous?” he asked, standing before her.

      “Well – because it is!” she laughed, her fine eyes meeting his quite frankly. “I’m not engaged, Mr Macbean. So if you hear such a report again you can just flatly deny it.”

      “I shall certainly do so,” he declared, “and I shall reserve my congratulations for a future occasion.”

      She then turned the conversation to tennis, evidently being averse to the further discussion of the man who had courted and flattered her so assiduously – the man who was her father’s friend – and presently she took Macbean out across the lawn to introduce him to her father, who had seated himself in a long cane chair beneath the great cedar, and was reading his Italian paper.

      His Excellency looked up as they approached, whereupon Mary exclaimed —

      “This is Mr Macbean, father. He wishes to salute you. He was here yesterday playing tennis, but you were not visible.”

      “Very glad to