The two sets of statements seemed inextricably linked together.
Lydie, certainly had been very strange and agitated in her manner, totally unlike herself: but this mood of course, though so very unusual in her, did not astonish M. le Duc so much, once he realized its cause.
It was the cause which was so singularly upsetting.
Milor Eglinton, his son-in-law, had sent in his resignation as Comptroller-General of Finance, and this without giving any reason for so sudden and decisive a step. At any rate Lydie herself professed to be ignorant of milor's motives for this extraordinary line of action as she was of his future purpose. All she knew—or all that she cared to tell her father—was that her husband had avowedly the intention of deserting her: he meant to quit Versailles immediately, thus vacating his post without a moment's notice, and leaving his wife, whom he had allowed to conduct all State affairs for him for over a year, to extricate herself, out of a tangle of work and an anomalous position, as best she might.
The only suggestion which milor had cared to put forward, with regard to her future, was that he was about to make her a free gift of his château and lands of Vincennes, the yearly revenues of which were close upon a million livres. This gift she desired not to accept.
In spite of strenuous and diplomatic efforts on his part, M. le Duc d'Aumont had been unable to obtain any further explanation of these extraordinary events from his daughter. Lydie had no intention whatever of deceiving her father and she had given him what she believed to be a perfectly faithful exposé of the situation. All that she had kept back from him was the immediate cause of the grave misunderstanding between herself and her husband, and we must do her the justice to state that she did not think that this was relevant to the ultimate issue.
Moreover, she was more than loath to mention the Stuart prince and his affairs again before M. le Duc. She knew that he was not in sympathy with her over this matter and she dreaded to know with absolute certainty that there was projected treachery afoot, and that he perhaps would have a hand in it. What Gaston de Stainville had conjectured, had seen and overheard, what she herself had guessed, was not to her mind quite conclusive as far as her father's share in the scheme was concerned.
She was deeply attached to her father, and her heart found readily enough a sufficiency of arguments which exonerated him from actual participation in such wanton perfidy. At any rate in this instance she chose ignorance rather than heartrending certainty, and as by her quick action and Gaston's timely and unexpected help, the actual treachery would be averted, she preferred to dismiss her father's problematical participation in it entirely from her mind.
Thus she told him nothing of milor's attitude with regard to the Duke of Cumberland's letter; in fact, she never once referred to the letter or to the Young Pretender; she merely gave M. le Duc to understand that her husband seemed desirous of living his future life altogether apart from hers.
M. le Duc d'Aumont was sorely disquieted: two eventualities presented themselves before him, and both were equally distasteful. One was the scandal which would of necessity spread around his daughter's name the moment her matrimonial differences with her husband became generally known. M. le Duc d'Aumont was too well acquainted with this Court of Versailles not to realize that Lydie's position, as a neglected wife, would subject her to a series of systematic attentions, which she could but regard in the light of insults.