“I will be all discretion—all delicacy. I will only say that I was the unsuspecting, the involuntary witness of the incident; and that, as your friend, almost, I might say,”—he hesitated, seeking a forcible word in place of the one he dared not use,—“your son, I must ask him how much Claire knows of it—how far it should interfere with your confidence in him.”
She was silent for a long moment, her head still turned from him to a silhouetted profile against the sky; it was now so much darker that he could see little more than its vague black and white, yet he thought that, in her stillness, she flushed deeply. In her voice, when she spoke, there was the steadiness that nerves itself over a tremor, yet there was, too, a greater relief. “Well,” she said. The word assented to all he asked. She did not look at him again, and presently, as the music had ceased, rose and went into the room. Claire was pointing out to Monsieur Daunay a picture in a magazine, apparently all placidity; but in a moment near the parting, while Madame Vicaud, with an equal calm, stood speaking to Monsieur Daunay near the piano, Claire said to Damier, quietly but intently:
“You have not betrayed me to Mamma?”
“Betrayed you?” Damier questioned, ice in his voice.
“Him, rather,” she amended. “Not that there is anything to betray, only Mamma would find it so shocking that a married man should be in love with me; he is so bête—Monsieur Daunay—to have forgotten that you were out there.”
“I must tell you that your mother guessed that I had seen something. I told her what I had seen, that he loved you, though not that you seemed to accept his love.”
For a moment she gazed into his eyes, at first with a gravity that studied him, and then with a light effrontery. “Accept it! par exemple!” she exclaimed, and she put her hand on his arm with a half-caressing reassurance. “Set your mind at rest! I am only sorry for him. Meet me to-morrow morning at ten at the Porte Dauphine; we can have a little walk in the Bois. I want to tell you all about it.”
Monsieur Daunay was going, and Damier, as he turned from Claire, met Madame Vicaud’s eyes. Their wide, dark gaze was, for the instant in which she let him see it, piteous and almost wild. He interpreted their fear, though he could not quite define their question. All the mother was in them. Did he despise her child, as others did? He mustered his bravest, most gravely confident smile, in answer to them, as he pressed her hand in parting. For another instant they met his, saw his smile, and answered it with a look tragically grateful in one so proud. He had never stood so near her as at that moment.
Damier went out with the Frenchman, and once in the cool, dim street, he dashed at the subject: “Monsieur Daunay, I must at once tell you that inadvertently this evening, through your own indiscretion, I discovered your secret. You are a married man; you are Madame Vicaud’s trusted friend; and you love her daughter.”
Monsieur Daunay stopped short in the street, exasperation rather than embarrassment in his face. He fixed Damier with very steady and very hostile eyes.