"No, you do not understand!" she cut him short. "However black any man's thoughts, he would incline to put off so terrible a deed until the last extremity. Diego believed that Lady Etheredge was willing to spend several weeks in Paris. Perhaps she would have been, but for the fact that she is now pursued by a new admirer, and he an Englishman who is pressing her to return home in his company at an early date."
"Who is he?" asked Roger with quick interest. "And what type of man?"
"He is the Earl of St, Ermins; and he is young, rich and handsome. We met him at Tours. He was engaged on a leisurely progress round the historic chateaux of the Loire; but he abandoned it, and joining his coach to our cavalcade accompanied us on the last stages to Paris. Each day Diego became more green with jealousy. By the time we reached the capital he was near desperate. Had I lodged with him at the Spanish Embassy, I vow that within the next few days he would have taken any gamble to rid himself of me; so that he might declare himself, rather than see Lady Etheredge leave for England with his rival."
"I will admit that puts a very different complexion on the matter," Roger agreed. "But, thank God, you will be safe from him here until I can make arrangements to take you away with me."
She smiled. "There is naught for which to wait, I saw Her Majesty last night, and she gave me every assurance in connection with Diego's mission that I could desire. I wrote him to that effect first thing this morning. Maria I had to leave behind at the Embassy, but I could send money to her and instructions how to join us later. Quetzal is here with me now, as I arranged for him to sleep in the gardener's lodge. There is at last, my dearest love, no reason left to prevent us taking the road to happiness together, tomorrow."
"I fear there is still one," he demurred. "Having come to Paris, I took the opportunity yesterday to raise certain questions with the Government in connection with work upon which I am engaged; so I could hardly leave now without making some attempt to complete this business satisfactorily."
"What is this work of yours?" she asked with a frown. "You made only the vaguest references to it in Aranjuez, so the thought of it passed entirely from my mind until Quetzal caught us up in Madrid, and gave it as your reason for not joining us on the pretext I had suggested."
"It is the agreement of certain navigational rights between several countries," Roger replied quietly. "For some time past I have been asked by my Government, when travelling here, and there, to settle such questions to the best of my ability."
She shrugged. "Surely such matters are of very minor importance.
Can you not take me to England without delay, and get your Government to instruct their Consul here to conclude the negotiations in your stead?"
"Seeing that I started the ball rolling myself, I fear that might be taken very ill. But I think my business will be settled one way or the other within the next few days. So we could get away by the end of the week."
"Ah well," she sighed. " 'Tis a disappointment after the happy dreams I had last night; but since we have waited for one another for so long, and you require only so short a period, I will endeavour not to show too great an impatience."
For the better part of two hours they talked of the retired but happy life they proposed to lead in England; then, as he was about to leave her, she asked when he would visit her again.
"In view of our projected elopement it might be unwise for us to court suspicion by my coming here too frequently," he answered cautiously. "Let us leave it till Wednesday. I will come in the morning at ten o'clock and, with luck, by then I shall be in a position to fix a time for our departure."
When he had left her he was glad that he had not committed himself to a series of visits. He had found their long talk in that bare, cold room a considerable strain; but he hoped and believed that matters would be very different once they could get away, as there would be the excitement of the elopement and the brighter prospect of all the new interests of their life together.
That afternoon he went to the Spanish Embassy to call upon Georgina, but she was out, so he left a message that he would wait upon her the following morning. In the evening he went again to the Jacobins, and listened for four hours to the heated speeches of the members. The immediate crisis now seemed to have become submerged in the general question whether the right to make peace or war at any time should remain in the hands of the King; and the speakers of the Extreme Left were urging that he should be deprived of the power to do do by a clause in the new Constitution.
On the Monday morning at eleven o'clock Roger was shown up to the salon on the first floor of the Spanish Embassy. He found Georgina with her hostess, the Condesa Fernanunez, so for a while their conversation had to remain impersonal. The war scare was naturally mentioned and the Condesa complained unhappily about the situation of the Embassy. Unlike most of the great hotels in Paris, which were built round a courtyard with gates that could be closed in an emergency, the Spanish Embassy had all its principal rooms facing on the street. As Roger had noticed on his arrival, there was a little group of ugly-looking loiterers outside; and the Condesa said that since the trouble had started such groups had collected each day, often increasing to large proportions whenever the situation appeared to worsen, and sometimes demonstrating in the most threatening fashion against the Embassy and its Spanish inmates.
Roger duly commiserated with her on this unpleasantness and said he hoped the crisis would soon pass; then, after they had touched upon various other matters, the Condesa, seeing that Georgina and her visitor wished to be alone, tactfully made an excuse to leave them.
The moment the door had closed behind her, Georgina burst out: "Oh, Roger, Roger! What madness has possessed you that you are come to Paris? When you did not join us with little Quetzal in Madrid I counted you saved from your own folly, and long since this happily back in England."
"I had to come here," he replied, "though I fear now that I can do little good. 'Twas work in connection with the crisis that brought me."
"God be praised for that!" she exclaimed. "I feared that you still felt yourself committed to the Condesa Isabella. By a merciful Providence she has taken herself off to a convent, so 'tis unlikely you will meet her."
"I have already done so. I came face to face with her on Saturday evening at the Tuileries, as she was about to wait upon the Queen; and I visited her yesterday at the Carmelites."
"What say you? Oh, Roger!" Georgina's big dark eyes filled with tears. "I would have cut off my right hand rather than that you should have fallen into the clutches of that designing woman yet again."
"Georgina, you are unjust to her," he retorted quickly. "It is more than I could hope that you should make a real friend of anyone so intense and serious-minded; but she is an honest, sweet-natured creature, who asks nothing more than to devote her whole life to me. How can I possibly abandon her, when her own life is in such dire jeopardy that she has been forced to take refuge in a convent?"
"Stuff and nonsense!" cried Georgina angrily. "That wicked snare she laid for you concerning Don Diego's intent to poison her was fully exploded by our journey to Paris. I never did believe one word of it. Had he ever had a mind to such a crime he would have rid himself of her in his own country and house, where he would have had a good chance to conceal the manner of her death; or at some lonely inn on the road to Paris; not waited till he arrived here, where 'tis certain that a close enquiry into her sudden death would certainly result."