“Lord, you wouldn’t see me here if he was in Paris!” said Rupert reassuringly.
“If Fanny is here, I cannot face her!” stated madame in palpitating tones. She pointed to her desk, and the scattered sheets of gilt paper. “I am writing to her now. Why have you come? I am glad, yes, but I do not know why you have come.”
“Glad, are you? Well, it don’t sound like it,” commented his lordship. “We’ve come chasing after that plaguey nephew of mine, and a devilish silly errand it is.”
Madame sank down on to a spindle-legged chair, and stared at him with her mouth open. “You know, then?” she faltered.
“Yes, yes, we know everything!” Léonie said. “Now tell me where is Dominique, Elisabeth? Please tell me quickly.”
“But I do not know!” cried madame, spreading out her two plump hands.
“Oh, peste!” said Léonie impatiently.
“Come now, that’s the only thing we do know,” said his lordship. “Vidal’s gone to Dijon.”
Madame looked from him to Léonie in blank bewilderment. “To Dijon? But why? Gracious God, why to Dijon?”
“Just what I said myself, cousin,” replied Rupert triumphantly. “I don’t say the boy hasn’t his reasons, but what the devil he can want in Dijon beats me.”
“Let me see Juliana,” interrupted the Duchess. “I think perhaps she will know where is my son, for he is fond of her, and I feel very certain that she has seen him.”
Madame gave a start. “Juliana?” she echoed hollowly. “Alas, then, you do not know!”
LordRupert looked at her with misgiving in his face. “Burn it, I believe you’re going to start a mystery now. What’s to do? Not that I want to know, for I’ve enough on my hands as it is, but you’d best tell us and so be done with it.”
Thus encouraged, madame delivered her terrific pronouncement: “Juliana has eloped with Vidal!”
The effect of this on her hearers was to bereave them, momentarily, of all power of speech. Léonie stood staring in astonished incredulity, and Lord Rupert’s jaw dropped perceptibly. Léonie found her tongue first.
“Bah, what a piece of nonsense!” she said. “I do not at all believe it!”
“Read that!” commanded madame dramatically, and handed her a crumpled sheet of paper.
It contained a brief message in Juliana’s sprawling characters: “My dear Tante, pray do not be in a taking, but I have gone with Vidal. I have No Time to write more, for I am in Desperate Haste. Juliana.”
“But — but it is not possible!” stammered Léonie, growing quite pale.
Lord Rupert snatched the letter unceremoniously out of her hand. “Here, let me read it!” he said. His eyes ran over the sheet. “Damme, if this doesn’t beat all!” he ejaculated. “Oh, there’s not a doubt about it: the boy’s gone stark, staring crazy.” He struck the paper with his hand. “It ain’t decent, Léonie! I’ve naught to say against him abducting this other wench: there’s no harm in that. But when he takes to running off with his cousin, blister it, it’s time he was clapped up!”
Mme. de Charbonne followed this rather imperfectly. “I do not understand. Vidal has eloped with Juliana, that is seen. But why, I ask you? Is it not permitted that they wed? Now they make a scandal, and Fanny will come here, and I am afraid of Fanny.”
Léonie, who had possessed herself of Juliana’s letter again, said stubbornly: “I do not believe it. Dominique does not love Juliana. There is a mistake. I remember, too, that Juliana is going to marry the Nobody.”
Madame de Charbonne said that she still did not understand. Upon the matter being made plain to her, she remarked thoughtfully: “Ah, that is the young Englishman, without doubt. He comes very often to see Juliana.”
“What, is Frederick Comyn in Paris, too, then?” demanded Rupert.
“That is the name,” nodded madame. “A young man tres comme il faut. But Juliana is going to marry Dominique.”
“No!” said Léonie firmly. “He does not want to, and he shall not.”
“But, my dear, he has eloped with her, and he must certainly marry her.”
“Lord, that’s nothing, Elisabeth!” said Rupert. “Juliana ain’t the only girl Vidal’s eloped with. I’ll tell you what it is, the boy’s a Bluebeard.”
“Stop saying that he has eloped with Juliana!” ordered Léonie, her eyes flashing. “I do not know why he has taken her away, but of a certainty he has a reason.”
“Taken her to Dijon, too,” said my lord thoughtfully. “Y’know, the more I think on it the less I believe in this Dijon rubbish. It don’t make sense. I can swallow the rest, but I’ll admit that worries me.”
“It is of all things the most incomprehensible,” agreed madame.
“But you are imbécile, Rupert! To go to Dijon, that is not a great affair! Many people go to Dijon: it is nothing!”
“Do they?” said his lordship sceptically. “Well, I never met anyone that did. Why should they? What’s to do at Dijon? Tell me that!”
“It is a town, Rupert, is it not? Then, of course, people go there. I do not find that part incomprehensible. But that Vidal should run away with Juliana — voyons, that is so incomprehensible that I do not believe it.” She turned to Madame de Charbonne. “Do not write to Fanny! Me, I will arrange everything.”
Madame sighed. “Very well, my dear. I do not want to write to Fanny, I am sure. It has been a very perplexing day, very énervant, I assure you. I ask myself, where, too, is the other girl? But that is not my affair, only that I think it very strange to depart without a word to me.”
“What other girl?” asked Rupert, puzzled.
“The girl that was the friend of Juliana. Juliana asked her to visit us. She was in Paris with her aunt, and Juliana invited her to stay in my house.”
Léonie brushed this aside. “I am not interested in Juliana’s friend. She is not at all a propos.”
“No, my dear, but I think it odd that she should go away like that.”
“Belike she’s gone with Vidal too,” Lord Rupert said sarcastically.
Léonie refused to be diverted by this artless suggestion. She had been thinking hard, and now said: “If the Nobody — what is his name, Rupert? — Comyn. I will remember. If M. Comyn is in Paris, I think Juliana has eloped with him. Naturally, she would not tell you that, Elisabeth. If Vidal is with them, it is, sans doute, to make it to appear quite respectable. They had fled, perhaps to Dijon, and Vidal went to — to — en chaperon, in effect.”
Lord Rupert listened to this in considerable astonishment. “Do you tell me Vidal’s gone to play propriety?” he asked blankly. “Vidal? No, rabbit it, that’s too much! You’re the boy’s mother, and of course you’re bound to make the best of him, but to say he’s gone to a silly place like Dijon to be a duenna to Juliana — Lord, you must be besotted, my dear!”
An irrepressible dimple peeped in Léonie’s cheek. “It is not perhaps very probable,” she admitted. “But he has not eloped with Juliana. I know he has not! It is all so strange that it makes my head ache, and I see that there is only one thing to do.”
Lord Rupert breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re a sensible woman, Léonie, ’pon my soul you are. If the luck favours us we’ll reach home before Avon gets back from Newmarket.”
Léonie tied the strings of her cloak under her chin, and shot a mischievous look at his lordship. “Mon pauvre, we are not going home.”
Lord Rupert said disgustedly: “I might have known it. If ever there was a female with silly, wild notions in her head — ”
“I am very sensible. You said so,” Léonie pointed out, twinkling. “We will start very early in the morning, Rupert, and go to Dijon.” She paused, and added buoyantly: “Du vrai, I find it fort amusant, you know. For it seems to me that my poor Dominique has now two ladies he must marry a l’instant, which is a thing not permitted. It does not amuse you, Rupert?”