“At all events,” replied the Englishman, “let me not lose the opportunity of improving our acquaintance which now offers. It is true that our friend Lemercier, catching sight of me in the Rue de Rivoli, stopped his coupe and carried me off for a promenade in the Bois. The fineness of the day tempted us to get out of his carriage as the Bois came in sight. But if you are going back to Paris I relinquish the Bois and offer myself as your companion.”
Frederic (the name is so familiarly English that the reader might think me pedantic did I accentuate it as French) looked from one to the other of his two friends, half amused and half angry.
“And am I to be left alone to achieve a conquest, in which, if I succeed, I shall change into hate and envy the affection of my two best friends? Be it so.
“’ Un veritable amant ne connait point d’amis.’”
“I do not comprehend your meaning,” said the Marquis, with a compressed lip and a slight frown.
“Bah!” cried Frederic; “come, franc jeu; cards on the table. M. Gram Varn was going into the Bois at my suggestion on the chance of having another look at the pearl-coloured angel; and you, Rochebriant, can’t deny that you were going into the Bois for the same object.”
“One may pardon an enfant terrible,” said the Englishman, laughing, “but an ami terrible should be sent to the galleys. Come, Marquis, let us walk back and submit to our fate. Even were the lady once more visible, we have no chance of being observed by the side of a Lovelace so accomplished and so audacious!”
“Adieu, then, recreants: I go alone. Victory or death.” The Parisian beckoned his coachman, entered his carriage, and with a mocking grimace kissed his hand to the companions thus deserting or deserted.
Rochebriant touched the Englishman’s arm, and said, “Do you think that Lemercier could be impertinent enough to accost that lady?”
“In the first place,” returned the Englishman, “Lemercier himself tells me that the lady has for several weeks relinquished her walks in the Bois, and the probability is, therefore, that he will not have the opportunity to accost her. In the next place, it appears that when she did take her solitary walk, she did not stray far from her carriage, and was in reach of the protection of her laquais and coachman. But to speak honestly, do you, who know Lemercier better than I, take him to be a man who would commit an impertinence to a woman unless there were viveurs of his own sex to see him do it?”