Chapter ONE

Catherine did not at first know what to make of Geoffrey Macadam. Did his stiffness betoken mere British reserve, or was he trying to hide a natural annoyance at having a stranger thrust upon him, threatening the peace of his journey to Paris?

If the latter, she longed to tell him how hotly she shared his resentment, how for eight days across the Atlantic she had been fleeing from the officious patronage of the lady now needlessly effecting the introduction.

“It’s no fault of mine,” her eyes strove to convey. “I promise not to take advantage of it!”

The very next instant she caught that curious, almost startled look on his face which set her wondering, asking herself if he were really as wooden as she had imagined.

That look one may take as the starting point of the story…

Mrs. Hugh Tyler Pope--the Hugh rendered as Huge by some of their fellow-travellers--was no more to be denied than the forces of nature. She overcame by sheer weight of fatuity, and having constituted herself Catherine’s protectress on the voyage was determined to see matters through. Useless for the girl to protest that she wanted no assistance in finding her seat. Overborne by the pressure of a mighty bust she was propelled the full length of the train, while a voice richly-oiled with kind intentions shouted for the benefit of all and sundry:

“Now, if only we’d met you sooner, dear, we could have had your place reserved along with ours. Such a pity! It’s just too dreadful to think of you travelling all this way by your little lonesome! Still it can’t be helped now, the train’s so jammed. Is this your seat? So it is. At any rate it’s a corner one. _Porter! Mettay le grand sac de Mademerselle ploos au coin, il y a un carton aussi._ These foreigners don’t give a hoot for your convenience, you have to show ’em everything.”

It was at this precise moment that, clogging the aisle with her immense mink coat and treading on one pair of toes after another, she had spied the retiring male in the opposite corner and shrilled with recognition.

“Why, if it isn’t Mr. Macadam! Now, what do you know about that? Been up to Havre on business? Well, well! Catherine, my dear--I want you to meet the very nicest man in all Paris, Englishman. Mr. Macadam, let me present a little friend of mine I’ve met on the boat, Miss West, from Boston. She’s on her way to visit a relative in the Avenoo Henri Martin--you know, Mrs. Harry Belmont Bender, whose husband was killed last year in that awful motor accident in Massachoosetts. So sad!”

Extremely painful, nor was this the end. Not content with entrusting her young friend to the Englishman’s care (“As though I were a congenital idiot,” thought Catherine bitterly), she had dragged her victim back into the corridor and confided a parting message at the top of her lungs.

“Now wasn’t that luck? Such a nice man for you to know. Macadam and Langtree. Lawyers. Everybody knows them. This one’s the son, quiet, you understand, but such perfect manners. Be nice to him… Well, au revoir, dear! Don’t forget to ring me up, and come to my very next At Home.”

So saying Mrs. Hugh Tyler Pope careened up the swaying corridor and out of Catherine’s life. Her part was played, nor did Catherine, inwardly cursing her, suspect what an important part it was.

Self-consciously, now, she sank into her seat. To her relief the Englishman had retired behind his magazine, so that she was able to settle herself calmly and collect her scattered thoughts.

To tell the truth, they needed collecting. Various uneasy qualms, hitherto stifled at birth, rose anew to trouble her, growing more insistent with each repetition.

_Had she done right to come?_

A guilty voice whispered that she had been unwisely precipitate over the whole affair, and might live to regret it.

“Yet why?” she argued crossly. “Germaine certainly wants me with her. There’s no doubt about that.”

Yes, Mme. Bender’s letter, for all its characteristic vagueness, had expressed an earnest wish for her company. She would have bothered no more about it if it had not been for this other, rather odd epistle now hidden in her bag, a communication she had shown to no one.

Ah, there she had been wrong, there was no blinking the fact. She ought to have confided in her married sister Barbara and her sober brother-in-law, John. Catherine made her home with these two, and usually asked their advice on matters. Only sometimes, when she foresaw the result, she omitted the formality.

To be frank, she had been feverishly eager to leave Boston behind and with it the irksome associations of an engagement just terminated. She felt she could not walk down Boylston Street or across the Common without encountering a certain injured young man or some member of his family, in bitter league against her. Yes, she had dashed off instantly to secure her passage, and when later this curious missive penned by a complete stranger had arrived she had kept silent about it for fear of shipwrecking her plans.

Oh, well, it was done now, there was no looking back. Besides there was nothing definite in the letter, no fact that one could get hold of, in spite of its emotional tone. Who was this woman, anyhow? Probably some excitable friend of Germaine’s, prone to exaggeration. The hysterical note spoke for itself. Naturally that accident last year had dealt poor Mme. Bender’s nerves a shattering blow, but there could be nothing worse. She would put the whole thing out of her mind.…

Why did her _vis-à-vis_ keep stealing those furtive glances in her direction? The covert survey, always quickly withdrawn, disturbed her like the prickings of her own conscience. There was a queer look of interest in his face, the same expression she had noticed a little while ago.

Discreetly she took stock of him. He was of slender build, wiry and muscular, his skin ruddy with health, features unremarkable, and eyes grey and keen, beneath strong bushy brows. His whole appearance had an air of restraint, extending to his clothing, which was well-cut, not too new, and by no detail claimed attention. Altogether he looked a man who would do nothing rash. Like John, she decided. John, too, was a lawyer. No, in a situation like her present one, he would undoubtedly have weighed the pros and cons carefully, and then--she was sure of it!--stayed at home…

“I beg your pardon?”

She started out of her reverie.

“Yes?”

He coloured in confusion.

“Nothing. I fancied you spoke.”

“No, I was only thinking.” Then she added with a little laugh, “You didn’t overhear my thoughts, did you?”

A glint of humour was her only answer. Still, a thaw had set in, and from now on the glances became more frequent and less furtive. Soon she was sure he had something to say, but that his reticence was fighting against it. Twice he cleared his throat, then at last the question came forth.

“I beg your pardon, but did I understand Mrs. Pope to say you are a relation of Mme. Belmont Bender?”

He had leaned forward, voice lowered, as though the matter were a private one.

“Mr. Bender was my cousin,” she replied in surprise. “Mme. Bender is French.”

“Yes. Oh, yes, of course!”

“Perhaps you know Mme. Bender?” she suggested.

“I have met her,” he said cautiously. “Not in a social way. You see,” he went on after a pause, “my firm--we happen to be solicitors--has had the handling of the Benders’ affairs for a very long time. Your cousin was one of our oldest clients.”

“Oh! So that’s it!”

Catherine’s eyes lit up, transforming her entire appearance miraculously. Her eyes were her most striking feature. Rather sombre in repose, with a brooding melancholy recalling the famous portrait of Beatrice Cenci, they had a trick of flaming up with the rise of any sudden emotion and becoming twin lakes of liquid fire.

“That’s extremely interesting,” she exclaimed, and bent towards him, flecks of red straining her cheeks. “I--I wonder if you’d mind telling me just how she seemed to you when you last saw her? I’d rather like to know.”

He was gazing straight into her eyes now, as though fascinated, half against his will, by their molten glory. He took a moment to reply.

“It was some time ago,” he answered slowly. “Before Mr. Bender’s death, in fact. Few people have seen her recently, and I am told that she’s by way of being a complete--” he hesitated, choosing the right word--“invalid. Probably you know more of her than I do.”

Her face fell.

“I know very little indeed,” she said uncertainly. “Except for one short note, I’ve had no news for almost a year.… You see, I have never known her well. She and Cousin Harry were seldom in America, and it wasn’t till after the accident, when she was ill in a sanatorium----”

“Sanatorium?” he repeated quickly.

“She was injured, you know--a bad concussion.”

She thought he looked a trifle embarrassed.

“But do you mean to say,” he ventured gravely, “that her mind was affected?”

“Certainly not!” she retorted with energy. “Why do you ask that?”

He reddened again.

“I’m sorry! In England a sanatorium usually means a home for mental patients.”

“Oh, I see! With us it’s simply a private hospital.”

It was odd, though, his suggesting such a thing. Suppose, after all…

“I interrupted you. Please go on.”

“I was only about to say that while Mme. Bender was recovering I used to go and see her every afternoon. She seemed so alone, so helpless and so crushed. You know, she had always depended on Cousin Harry for everything, gone everywhere with him, let him act for her, think for her even. Why, she’s never bothered to learn English properly. There was no need, her husband spoke such beautiful French.”

“I recall that he did.”

“She was so overwhelmed by grief and shock that she was utterly incapable of making any plans. She even turned to me for advice, like a little child, perhaps because I could talk French with her, and scarcely anyone else could. She wanted me to go back to Paris with her then, but it wasn’t possible.”

There was a far-away look in her eyes as she thought of her broken engagement, rejoicing that the ring she had worn for a year--its stone cut like a piece of rock quartz because her fiancé had thought it bad taste for diamonds to sparkle--was no longer on her finger.

He was watching her closely.

“But was Mme. Bender entirely alone in Boston?”

“Oh, no! There was a maid, a most excellent woman, who had been with her for years and understood her perfectly. Indeed, there were two servants, a man and a woman, who used to travel with the Benders wherever they went--Egypt, Biarritz, Cannes, all those places. The man was a sort of courier-valet, spoke a dozen languages--very efficient.… I wonder if those same servants are still looking after her?” she added, “because, poor dear, she had such a horror of strangers!”

“The servants? Oh, yes, they are still there,” he assured her quickly; then in reply to her look of surprised inquiry continued by way of explanation, “At least I saw them at her apartment a few months ago. Mme. Bender sent for me on a business matter, but when I arrived she was too ill to see me, so that the maid you mention had to speak to me instead.”

Inexplicably Catherine felt that he was withholding some item of importance. Moreover his interest in her had become so pointed that she grew positively ill at ease, and saying no more, resolutely directed her attention to the flying landscape.

They were in the heart of Normandy, which early spring had garnished with rainwashed tints delicate and vague. Through a mist of green, thatched cottages appeared, each with its little rectangle of farmyard, walled in by slender poplars. There was a flush upon the budding hedges, and here and there showed the pink bouquet of a flowering almond.

Catherine feasted her eyes, but her soul was troubled. The letter in her bag suggested anew such alarming possibilities that she was impelled to run through it again, hoping to fathom the writer’s real meaning.

No use. It was a tangled mass of contradictions, framed in extravagant phraseology which left her baffled and irritated. She sat staring at the blue pages as though they contained some strange hieroglyph she had not the wit to decipher.

Minutes passed. The other occupants of the carriage had lapsed into whole or partial somnolence, with the exception of the Englishman, who having donned a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles was frowning sternly at the cover of his magazine.

Suddenly Catherine addressed him.

“Do you happen to know anyone in Paris by the name of Cushing--Hermione Cushing?” she inquired.

He started violently, the copy of _The Bystander_ sliding to the floor.

“Hermione Cushing?” he echoed, obviously to gain time.

Their eyes met, and in a flash Catherine realized that there was something in the letter after all.