Part 53

And even as he stiffened, she unbent.

“But it is a matter of consequence to him, to us,” she said, faintly smiling. “We have hunted high and low for it. We feared it was lost for good. It must have fallen from his pocket when he was walking. He will wish to thank you.”

“I am more than thanked already,” said Peter. Alas (as Monsieur de la Pallisse has sagely noted), when we aim to appear dignified, how often do we just succeed in appearing churlish.

And to put a seal upon this ridiculous encounter, to make it irrevocable, he lifted his hat again, and turned away.

“Oh, very well,” murmured the Duchessa, in a voice that did not reach him. If it had reached him, perhaps he would have come back, perhaps things might have happened. I think there was regret in her voice, as well as despite. She stood for a minute, as he tramped down the avenue, and looked after him, with those unusually dark, grave eyes. At last, making a little gesture--as of regret? despite? impatience?--she went into the house.

“Here is your snuff-box,” she said to the Cardinal.

The old man put down his Breviary (he was seated by an open window, getting through his office), and smiled at the snuff box fondly, caressing it with his finger. Afterwards, he shook it, opened it, and took a pinch of snuff.

“Where did you find it?” he enquired.

“It was found by that Mr. Marchdale,” she said, “in the road, outside the gate. You must have let it drop this morning, when you were walking with Emilia.”

“That Mr. Marchdale?” exclaimed the Cardinal. “What a coincidence.”

“A coincidence--?” questioned Beatrice.

“To be sure,” said he. “Was it not to Mr. Marchdale that I owed it in the first instance?”

“Oh--? Was it? I had fancied that you owed it to me.”

“Yes--but,” he reminded her, whilst the lines deepened about his humorous old mouth, “but as a reward of my virtue in conspiring with you to convert him. And, by the way, how is his conversion progressing?”

The Cardinal looked up, with interest.

“It is not progressing at all. I think there is no chance of it,” answered Beatrice, in a tone that seemed to imply a certain irritation.

“Oh--?” said the Cardinal.

“No,” said she.

“I thought he had shown 'dispositions'?” said the Cardinal.

“That was a mistake. He has shown none. He is a very tiresome and silly person. He is not worth converting,” she declared succinctly.

“Good gracious!” said the Cardinal.

He resumed his office. But every now and again he would pause, and look out of the window, with the frown of a man meditating something; then he would shake his head significantly, and take snuff.

Peter tramped down the avenue, angry and sick.

Her reception of him had not only administered an instant death-blow to his hopes as a lover, but in its ungenial aloofness it had cruelly wounded his pride as a man. He felt snubbed and humiliated. Oh, true enough, she had unbent a little, towards the end. But it was the look with which she had first greeted him--it was the air with which she had waited for him to state his errand--that stung, and rankled, and would not be forgotten.

He was angry with her, angry with circumstances, with life, angry with himself.

“I am a fool--and a double fool--and a triple fool,” he said. “I am a fool ever to have thought of her at all; a double fool ever to have allowed myself to think so much of her; a triple and quadruple and quintuple idiot ever to have imagined for a moment that anything could come of it. I have wasted time enough. The next best thing to winning is to know when you are beaten. I acknowledge myself beaten. I will go back to England as soon as I can get my boxes packed.”

He gazed darkly round the familiar valley, with eyes that abjured it.

Olympus, no doubt, laughed.