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  She went on and on in an excited French flood, and Valentine lay back against the cushions of the luxurious settee and felt peaceful and almost happy for the first time that day. She felt peaceful because the room, apart from the maid’s volubility, was a deliciously quiet room, furnished with impeccable taste—which was something Miss Constantia must have had all her life.

  The carpet was like a blue gray moss, the curtains were silvery gray cascades, and the standard lamp sent a flood of serene amber light across the pearl gray damask of the settee’s upholstery. And in the wide white marble fireplace burned a small fire of scented pine logs.

  Valentine thought, I am happy because Martine is happy, after being sunk in absolute misery, and because I can keep Fifi!

  Fifi had gone to sleep on her lap.

  Martine bent over and raked at the fire and then added another couple of logs to the warm rich glow. Outside, the stars in the Paris sky looked down through the gossamer haze of a spring night at the long lines of taxicabs and glittering opulent cars that were carrying people out to dine and to the theater; and in the quiet thoroughfare where the apartment was situated they looked down on towering chestnut candles gleaming pallidly in the gloom. The soft hiss of tires stole upward to the room where the girl lay on the settee, and in an adjoining apartment someone switched on a radio, and piano music drifted out into the night.

  Valentine became conscious of the weight of her eyelids, and they seemed determined to come to rest on her slightly wan cheeks. Black suited her, but it also made her look very pale, rather fragile. Martine, whose voice had died into silence several seconds before, moved quietly and covered her with a blanket, and Valentine tried to murmur her thanks. But all she could think was, he will have it all within the year. As if I would marry to keep a legacy! One that I never expected ...! And he will have Chaumont. Chaumont is such a lovely house, such a very dignified house. It will suit him! I detest him ...! He thinks of me as ...

  And then she was fast asleep.

  Martine tiptoed out and shook her head over the sandwiches that Fifi had nibbled.

  Barely a quarter of an hour later the apartment bell rang. It had a very discreet method of ringing and, sunk deep in slumber, Valentine never heard it.

  She never heard Martine, when she opened the door and looked at her, say in a slightly reproving voice, “It seems a pity to wake her, monsieur. She came in looking exhausted. She has not even touched the tea I made her, and the dog has eaten all her sandwiches. It seems a pity that she should not be left in peace, when all she desires to do is sleep.”

  “I won’t disturb her, Martine,” Dr. Daudet said quietly. But he crossed the room until he stood beside the settee and could look down on Valentine, with her long eyelashes resting on her cheeks and glinting golden at the tips, her flowerlike mouth pale because she had not once restored her makeup throughout the day.

  Leon Daudet’s eyes narrowed as he stood close beside her, but the expression on his face, even if she could have seen it, would have struck Valentine as quite inscrutable.

  “I will let her sleep,” Martine whispered at his elbow. “It seems a pity to wake her, monsieur. Even if she sleeps throughout the night she will be all right here.”

  He nodded. Then he himself bent and arranged the blanket more closely around her.

  “She will be all right,” he agreed, “if you do not allow the fire to die down, in which case she will become chilled. And in the morning she must rest in her room.”

  “I will see to it, monsieur,” Martine promised him.

  He stood for perhaps a minute longer looking at Valentine, and then he turned and moved with his catlike strides out into the quietness of the hall.

  “Good night, Martine,” he said as she held wide the front door.

  “Shall I tell Miss Brooke that you called, doctor?” she asked.

  He seemed to think the matter over for a minute and then he shook his head.

  “No, Martine, there is no need for you to tell her. I only looked in to have a little conversation with her, but since she has not been disturbed it is better. I think, that you do not tell her I called.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A week later Valentine had become slightly accustomed to herself as a woman with sufficient means to live as she pleased for a year—if for no longer than that.

  It would be a very unusual year, for it would never be repeated, and therefore it would be unique. Everything that she did in it, everything that she bought for herself, every time she went for a walk with the peculiar thought eddying in her head that she could walk wherever she pleased, and there would be no employer to whom she need give an account of her morning’s exercise, or to whom she need apologize if she was a little late in returning to the apartment, was something that, when the year was out, would never happen again.

  She was so sure of that that anyone who knew just how determined she was might have thought it strange. For she was, after all, only twenty-three, and at twenty-three marriage is very natural. But not marriage in order to secure the bulk of a legacy ...! And in any case, Valentine had never even been in love. She had never even fancied herself in love, and for five years she had been working to support herself. She had worked in various offices where there were attractive young men who had sometimes produced theater tickets, or taken her to a dance, and she had stayed with old school friends who had brothers. But not one of them had so much as touched the outer fringes of her heart.

  “I like to be free,” she had told her great friend, Jane Beverley, when they had discussed the matter. “I like to feel that I shall be free to see something of life and the world before I settle down. The world is so wide, and there is so much I want to see ...!”

  That was why she had taken the job in Paris. Paris was a beginning to seeing things, and Paris itself was an experience one wouldn’t easily forget. Now she would never forget it under any circumstances!

  “And besides,” she had added to Jane, “I’m the sort of person who believes that marriage is, well, it doesn’t leave room for outside experiences. It’s something that claims you absolutely, and how can you enter into it unless you are sure—absolutely sure—” in a slightly frightened voice “—that you’re not making a mistake? My mother and father made one of the worst kinds of mistake! My father was a country doctor who was utterly content when he was in the country, jogging around seeing his patients and taking me to the pantomime once a year. My mother loved life—so they parted!”

  “That was unfortunate,” Jane, who was ten years older than Valentine and worked for a firm of accountants, had to admit. “But it doesn’t prove anything. We all have to buy our own experience, and the exciting part about it is that you can’t know in advance how things are going to turn out. If you did, you’d remain in a rut and miss some of the finest experiences life can offer.” As Jane had had two short years of very happy marriage and then lost her husband in an airplane crash, she had a right to express her views.

  But Valentine had shaken her head.

  “I don’t know ... I don’t know. You didn’t spend most of your young life in a boarding school and have the news of the final breakup of your home conveyed to you through your head mistress! Believe me, that is an experience that is very searing, and you don’t get over it quickly. And you vow you will be very cautious about your own future life!”

  Jane had smiled at her.

  “Rubbish!” she had said softly but distinctly. “When the time is ripe you’ll fall head over heels, like the rest of us! And just look at yourself—” taking her to a mirror “—do you imagine that with a face like that you’re going to be permitted to get away with an old maid’s portion? I know there aren’t any old maids nowadays, but whatever the true designation for them is, you won’t be one of them. Somewhere in this world there is a man who’ll knock a lot of nonsense out of your head—one day!”

  But as she walked along the rue de Rivoli in the soft spring sunshine, Valentine was by no means certain of this. She
wasn’t even certain that she liked men—or the men she had met so far! Dr. Leon Daudet, for instance, was a type who filled her with a feeling like prickly hostility. It was possible that his success comparatively early in life had given him a superiority complex, and if it was true—as Miss Constantia had said it was—that women made up the vast majority of his patients, then no doubt he thought he knew all there was to know about women and divided them into categories as soon as he met them.

  To him, Valentine was the type who was out for her own advancement, and that was why he had snubbed her in the beginning. If he had known about Miss Constantia’s will earlier, he would probably have urged her to put it right before it was too late, and her money would not have gotten into the grasping claws of a little English adventuress.

  It was quite possible that he was embarrassed by the bequest Miss Constantia had made him, because he didn’t really need it; but no doubt he would put it to excellent use when his first squeamishness over accepting it had worn off. He was not, so far as she knew, a married man, but as a fashionable doctor he almost certainly did a lot of entertaining and maintained a bachelor establishment suited to his status. If his car was anything to go by, the best was just about good enough for him!

  And he looked like a bachelor—hard, resistant, self-sufficient. If his life brought him in contact with so many members of her sex, from all walks of life—and some of them, no doubt, very highly placed ladies indeed—he had probably experienced a certain amount of difficulty in remaining single. But a man would have to be of more pliant material than he was to exchange a way of life that suited him for one that probably wouldn’t. She could imagine him being, above all things, in complete control of his head, whatever his heart might dictate on occasion.

  She had decided, on the whole, Frenchmen were rather like that. They were brought up to assess value, rather than to be dazzled by appearances and soft beguiling ways. That was why they took so naturally to marriages of convenience. They were like sensible shoppers who always paused to ask the price and to be quite sure about it before committing themselves to buying anything. And afterward, when they were married, their wives developed the same characteristics and became the most wonderful bargainers for goods for their households, never being stuck with the inferior article, or succumbing to the weakness of purchasing something expensive just because it was expensive!

  Even Miss Constantia, lover of France, its ways and everything about it, had admitted that. Frenchmen were the most exacting husbands, although the emotional demands they made of their wives quickly lessened to more suitable proportions. After all, marriage was not an emotional affair—emotion was often outside the home! And wives didn’t object because the running of a home and the bringing up of a family really was fun to them.

  Valentine had seen them in the market going through the lettuces and examining the fruit. She had been faintly horrified by the earnestness they brought to their shopping expeditions.

  The wife of Dr. Daudet, if he ever possessed one, would never be expected to examine lettuces or fruit, but she would have to give value if she ever became a part of his life.

  Thinking these things, Valentine wandered on in the sunshine, and she was glad that she had not taken a taxi. She had just spent a full hour with Maitre Dubonnet in his office. Maitre Dubonnet was a very charming Frenchman, and whether his charm was all on the surface she didn’t know, but he had been very kind and understanding from the moment he called to visit her in the apartment earlier that week. He plainly didn’t think she had done anything to influence Miss Constantia, or get her to alter her will in her favor within a few weeks of being taken on as her secretary-companion; on the contrary, he had assured her that Miss Constantia had confessed to a great attachment to her young employee.

  Miss Constantia was not the sort of elderly person who formed violent attachments, and he had every reason to believe that her reasons for altering her will had been perfectly sound and logical according to her views. It was not unnatural that she should remember her doctor so generously, for she had admired him for years, and their brief acquaintance had obviously taught her to admire Valentine as well. Maitre Dubonnet, with the gallantry of all Frenchmen, had expressed his own opinion that the legacy would not pass out of Valentine’s possession at the end of a year, for it was quite certain she would marry. To him there could be no shrinking from marriage when an extremely comfortable income was involved, to say nothing of a house whose contents alone were worth many more thousands of pounds in English money, and millions of French francs. He laughed outright when Valentine said that one didn’t just pick up a husband in the same manner that one picked up a new piece of furniture for the home, or even a new outfit of clothes.

  “My dear Miss Brooke,” he said at parting, “you will find husbands, or prospective husbands, shall we say, lurking under every gooseberry bush—” this would have amused her extremely under ordinary circumstances “—from now on, and it will only be a matter of selecting the one you find the most pleasing to yourself. You are a young woman whose future is very well endowed, and you are—if I may say so—utterly enchanting! You may call me at any time if there is any advice I can offer you!”

  BUT AS SHE WANDERED beneath the colonnades of the rue de Rivoli, looking into the windows of the shops that catered to every sort of tourist appetite, Valentine felt, as she had felt from the moment she first heard of her legacy, in a kind of fog of bewilderment.

  Why had Miss Constantia left her the money, and why had she made the stipulation about marriage? Because she had never been married herself, and her money had never really brought her any happiness? Because she wanted a little of it to bring happiness to a young woman whom she favored?

  But to rush into marriage in order to oblige Miss Constantia would almost certainly bring disaster in its train!

  She stepped off the curb near the Hotel Meurice and very nearly put an end to her existence there and then, because a big car swept past her and only just avoided touching her when she stepped back quickly. She felt perturbed as she stood there on the edge of the curb, wondering whether she would ever get used to the swiftness and purpose of Paris traffic. The big car had slowed, and an elegant young woman in the seat beside the driver’s was looking backward with curious eyes, and Valentine knew that it was she herself who had aroused the curiosity. She also knew whose car it was and who was at the wheel. Her heart beating with a mixture of nervousness and strange sluggish resentment, she plunged out into the middle of the stream of traffic and managed to throw herself into a taxi and give instructions to the driver.

  As the taxi shot past the big car she kept her head averted, but even so she had an impression of delicate dark eyebrows that arched and a scarlet mouth that smiled with amusement. Dr. Daudet, she had the very definite impression, was frowning.

  She countermanded her instructions to the driver long before they reached the destination she had given him, and he set her down near a little open-air restaurant where the tables were already filling up rapidly, although it was early for lunch.

  She liked the look of the restaurant, its gay awning and the vines that had been trained to run along the supporting columns. The little tables were spruce with check cloths; there was a vase of flowers on each, as well as a bottle of vin ordinaire. She sat down at one of the tables. The sunshine dappled her, finding its way through the vines and under the awning, and she took off her hat and shook out her soft gold hair. A waiter with admiring eyes appeared instantly to receive her order.

  Valentine hadn’t meant to lunch out, but all at once she decided that she didn’t want to go home yet. Martine wouldn’t worry, because she was always suggesting that she take little excursions, and from the point of view of a Frenchwoman, the shops were irresistible. She would have understood perfectly if Valentine, having come into so much money, disappeared into one or two of the more exclusive shops and started to accumulate an entirely new wardrobe.

  But Valentine hadn’t yet begun to realize
properly that the money was hers to spend. One day perhaps, she might begin to feel the urge to do what any really feminine woman would do under the circumstances, and start buying a few new things for herself, but that would only happen when the shock of all that had happened to her recently had passed off.

  She ordered an omelet and a salad, and although they had none of the perfection of Martine’s omelets and salads, she was enjoying her outdoor meal and thinking that this was the sort of thing she must do more often, when a young man sat down facing her at the table, after apologizing for inflicting himself on her. He made the apology in English, with a cultured English voice, and she looked up with that sudden warm feeling of pleasure that one always experiences when encountering a fellow countryman in a foreign capital.

  “Of course I don’t mind,” she assured him swiftly. “And in any case, all the tables are filled, aren’t they?” she said, looking around her.

  “Yes, I’m afraid I’m a little late today—normally I get here earlier!” He smiled across at her, his teeth very white, like blanched almonds, his face rather thin and brown, his eyes as blue as her own. “It would be much too obvious if I made the observation that you’re English! I should think anyone could tell you are English before you so much as part your lips!”

  “Oh!” She laughed. “Yes; I suppose I do give my nationality away rather easily. I have absolutely no characteristics that could stamp me as Latin—but then neither have you.”

  “Neither have I,” he agreed, and they both laughed.

  They looked at one another while the waiter hovered.

  He saw a young woman who was obviously in her very early twenties, with a cloud of soft gold hair that swung on her shoulders and eyes as blue as a summer sky. Her skin made him think of apple orchards in Kent, and the delicacy of her features recalled something perfect, like a cameo. Her mouth was particularly delightful, because it curved easily into a smile, and there was a dimple at one corner of it that could play havoc with a susceptible man’s feelings, especially if they were not rigidly controlled. She wore a trim tailored suit and a white blouse, and although Frenchwomen were supposed to deserve the palm for chic, she was something more than chic. She looked as if Nature had fashioned her for its own pleasure and had then provided her with all the gentle attributes of a careful upbringing and the instincts of what is still known as being a “lady.”