color had sprung up as her story approached the moment of her own personal acquaintance with Mademoiselle Le Breton. "For one or two of the nuns when I saw them in Bruges, before the bargain was finally struck, were candid enough. However, now I come to the moment when I first set eyes on her. You know my little place in Surrey? About a mile from me is a manor-house belonging to an old Catholic family, terribly devout and as poor as church-mice. They sent their daughters to school in Bruges. One summer holiday these girls brought home with them Julie Dalrymple as their quasi-holiday governess. It was three years ago. I had just seen Liebreich. He told me that I should soon be blind, and, naturally, it was a blow to me."
Sir Wilfrid made a murmur of sympathy.
"Oh, don't pity me! I don't pity other people. This odious body of ours has got to wear out sometime--it's in the bargain. Still, just then I was low. There are two things I care about--one is talk, with the people that amuse me, and the other is the reading of French books. I didn't see how I was going to keep my circle here together, and my own mind in decent repair, unless I could find somebody to be eyes for me, and to read to me. And as I'm a bundle of nerves, and I never was agreeable to illiterate people, nor they to me, I was rather put to it. Well, one day these girls and their mother came over to tea, and, as you guess, of course, they brought Mademoiselle Le Breton with them. I had asked them to come, but when they arrived I was bored and cross, and like a sick dog in a hole. And then, as you have seen her, I suppose you can guess what happened."
"You discovered an exceptional person?"
Lady Henry laughed.
"I was limed, there and then, old bird as I am. I was first struck with the girl's appearance--une belle laide--with every movement just as it ought to be; infinitely more attractive to me than any pink-and-white beauty. It turned out that she had just been for a month in Paris with another school-fellow. Something she said about a new play--suddenly--made me look at her. 'Venez vous asseoir ici, mademoiselle, s'il vous plaît--près de moi,' I said to her--I can hear my own voice now, poor fool, and see her flush up. Ah!" Lady Henry's interjection dropped to a note of rage that almost upset Sir Wilfrid's gravity; but he restrained himself, and she resumed: "We talked for two hours; it seemed to me ten minutes. I sent the others out to the gardens. She stayed with me. The new French books, the theatre, poems, plays, novels, memoirs, even politics, she could talk of them all; or, rather--for, mark you, that's her gift--she made me talk. It seemed to me I had not been so brilliant for months. I was as good, in fact, as I had ever been. The difficulty in England is to find any one to keep up the ball. She does it to perfection. She never throws to win--never!--but so as to leave you all the chances. You make a brilliant stroke; she applauds, and in a moment she has arranged you another. Oh, it is the most extraordinary gift of conversation--and she never says a thing that you want to remember."
There was a silence. Lady Henry's old fingers drummed restlessly on the table. Her memory seemed to be wandering angrily among her first experiences of the lady they were discussing.
"Well," said Sir Wilfrid, at last, "so you engaged her as lectrice, and thought yourself very lucky?"
"Oh, don't suppose that I was quite an idiot. I made some inquiries--I bored myself to death with civilities to the stupid family she was staying with, and presently I made her stay with me. And of course I soon saw there was a history. She possessed jewels, laces, little personal belongings of various kinds, that wanted explaining. So I laid traps for her; I let her also perceive whither my own plans were drifting. She did not wait to let me force her hand. She made up her mind. One day I found, left carelessly on the drawing-room table, a volume of Saint-Simon, beautifully bound in old French morocco, with something thrust between the leaves. I opened it. On the fly-leaf was written the name Marriott Dalrymple, and the leaves opened, a little farther, on a miniature of Lady Rose Delaney. So--"
"Apparently it was her traps that worked," said Sir Wilfrid, smiling. Lady Henry returned the smile unwillingly, as one loath to acknowledge her own folly.
"I don't know that I was trapped. We both desired to come to close quarters. Anyway, she soon showed me books, letters--from Lady Rose, from Dalrymple, Lord Lackington--the evidence was complete. …
"'Very well,' I said; 'it isn't your fault. All the better if you are well born--I am not a person of prejudices. But understand, if you come to me, there must be no question of worrying your relations. There are scores of them in London. I know them all, or nearly all, and of course you'll come across them. But unless you can hold your tongue, don't come to me. Julie Dalrymple has disappeared, and I'll be no party to her resurrection. If Julie Le Breton becomes an inmate of my house, there shall be no raking up of scandals much better left in their graves. If you haven't got a proper parentage, consistently thought out, we must invent one--'"
"I hope I may some day be favored with it," said Sir Wilfrid.
Lady Henry laughed uncomfortably.
"Oh, I've had to tell lies," she said, "plenty of them."
"What! It was you that told the lies?"
Lady Henry's look flashed.
"The open and honest ones," she said, defiantly.
"Well," said Sir Wilfrid, regretfully, "some sort were indispensable. So she came. How long ago?"
"Three years. For the first half of that time I did nothing but plume myself on my good fortune. I said to myself that if I had searched Europe through I could not have fared better. My household, my friends, my daily ways, she fitted into them all to perfection. I told people that I had discovered her through a Belgian acquaintance. Every one was amazed at her manners, her intelligence. She was perfectly modest, perfectly well behaved. The old Duke--he died six months after she came to me--was charmed with her. Montresor, Meredith, Lord Robert, all my habitués congratulated me. 'Such cultivation, such charm, such savoir-faire! Where on earth did you pick up such a treasure? What are her antecedents?' etc., etc. So then, of course--"
"I hope no more than were absolutely necessary!" said Sir Wilfrid, hastily.
"I had to do it well," said Lady Henry, with decision; "I can't say I didn't. That state of things lasted, more or less, about a year and a half. And by now, where do you think it has all worked out?"
"You gave me a few hints last night," said Sir Wilfrid, hesitating.
Lady Henry pushed her chair back from the table. Her hands trembled on her stick.
"Hints!" she said, scornfully. "I'm long past hints. I told you last night--and I repeat--that woman has stripped me of all my friends! She has intrigued with them all in turn against me. She has done the same even with my servants. I can trust none of them where she is concerned. I am alone in my own house. My blindness makes me her tool, her plaything. As for my salon, as you call it, it has become hers. I am a mere courtesy-figurehead--her chaperon, in fact. I provide the house, the footmen, the champagne; the guests are hers. And she has done this by constant intrigue and deception--by flattery--by lying!"
The old face had become purple. Lady Henry breathed hard.
"My dear friend," said Sir Wilfrid, quickly, laying a calming hand on her arm, "don't let this trouble you so. Dismiss her."
"And accept solitary confinement for the rest of my days? I haven't the courage--yet," said Lady Henry, bitterly. "You don't know how I have been isolated and betrayed! And I haven't told you the worst of all. Listen! Do you know whom she has got into her toils?"
She paused, drawing herself rigidly erect. Sir Wilfrid, looking up sharply, remembered
