"Well, then," said Dieppe, with an air of courteous apology, "shall we say skulking?"
"You shall pay for that!"
"With pleasure, if you convince me that it is a gentleman who asks satisfaction."
Paul de Roustache smiled. "At my convenience," he said, "I will give you a reference which shall satisfy you most abundantly." He drew back, lifted his hat, and bowed.
"I shall await it with interest," said Dieppe, returning the salutation, and then folding his arms and watching Paul's retreat down the hill. "The fellow brazened it out well," he reflected; "but I shall hear no more of him, I fancy. After all, police-agents don't fight duels with—why, with Counts, you know!" And his laugh rang out in hearty enjoyment through the night air. "Ha, ha—it 's not so easy to put salt on old Dieppe's tail!" With a sigh of satisfaction he turned round, as though to go back to the house. But his eye was caught by a light in the window next to his own; and the window was open. The Captain stood and looked up, and Monsieur Guillaume, who had overheard his little soliloquy and discovered from it a fact of great interest to himself, seized the opportunity of rising from behind his bush and stealing off down the hill after Paul de Roustache.
"Ah," thought the Captain, as he gazed at the window, "if there were no such thing as honour or loyalty, as friendship—"
"Sir," said a timid voice at his elbow.
Dieppe shot round, and then and there lost his heart. One sight of her a man might endure and be heart-whole, not two. There, looking up at him with the most bewitching mouth, the most destructive eyes, was the lady whom he had seen at the end of the passage. Certainly she was the most irresistible creature he had ever met; so he declared to himself, not, indeed, for the first time in his life, but none the less with unimpeachable sincerity. For a man could do nothing but look at her, and the man who looked at her had to smile at her; then if she smiled, the man had to laugh; and what happened afterwards would depend on the inclinations of the lady: at least it would not be very safe to rely on the principles of the gentleman.
But now she was not laughing. Genuine and deep distress was visible on her face.
"Madame la Comtesse—" stammered the dazzled Captain.