This struck
from all three allusions to Edgar Poe and Jules Verne,
and such platitudes as naturally rise to the lips of the
most intelligent when they are talking against time, and
dealing with a new invention in which it would seem
ingenuous to believe too soon; and the question of the
telephone carried them safely back to the big house.
Mrs. van der Luyden had not yet returned; and
Archer took his leave and walked off to fetch the
cutter, while Beaufort followed the Countess Olenska
indoors. It was probable that, little as the van der
Luydens encouraged unannounced visits, he could count
on being asked to dine, and sent back to the station to
catch the nine o'clock train; but more than that he
would certainly not get, for it would be inconceivable
to his hosts that a gentleman travelling without luggage
should wish to spend the night, and distasteful to them
to propose it to a person with whom they were on
terms of such limited cordiality as Beaufort.
Beaufort knew all this, and must have foreseen it;
and his taking the long journey for so small a reward
gave the measure of his impatience. He was undeniably
in pursuit of the Countess Olenska; and Beaufort had
only one object in view in his pursuit of pretty women.
His dull and childless home had long since palled on
him; and in addition to more permanent consolations
he was always in quest of amorous adventures in his
own set. This was the man from whom Madame Olenska
was avowedly flying: the question was whether she had
fled because his importunities displeased her, or
because she did not wholly trust herself to resist them;
unless, indeed, all her talk of flight had been a blind,
and her departure no more than a manoeuvre.
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