“Indeed I should.”
“Very well. It won’t edify you, I’m afraid; but it’s quite right you should know the truth about me. Innocent souls like you are apt to take too much on trust—to judge all men by their pure self-standards. It’s time, perhaps, you grew up, Louis-Marie.”
“Nay, Gaston,” muttered his friend. “If to be grown up is to be wicked, I’m a giant already. Prove yourself what you like—the worse, the nearer to me.”
Trix laughed.
“Listen to this, then,” he said. “I was born in Mayfair, in London—during the absence of my mother. That was why she would never acknowledge me. My father always believed that I was her son by him; but, as he was not her husband, she had no difficulty in proving an alibi. He may have been mistaken, for he had many irons in the fire; but the upshot of it for me was that, as no one would claim me, I was pronounced a changeling and put out to nurse. From that state di Rocco rescued me—for reasons of his own. I was very like him, for one—an extraordinary coincidence. He brought me up, and treated me as if I were his son. Paternity always came easy to him. I grew up under his tutelage. The result is what you see; but, in case its expression lacks eloquence, I may tell you that I am a very accomplished person—a scholar, a wit, a capital swordsman, a rakehell and a star-gazer. There is no folly of which I am incapable but love; no hypocrisy but self-sacrifice. I owe the world nothing but myself: and that is a debt I pay back, with interest, on each occasion of its demand. Enfin, I am your very faithful servant, M. Louis.”
He rose and bowed, with a grace of mockery. His feeling towards this blood-brother of his was always mixed of devotion and contempt. He could resist one no more than the other. But he loved the poor fool: that sentiment predominated.
Saint-Péray looked down and away from him, his jaw a little fallen. At that moment his hostess entered, carrying his bread and coffee. He raised his head and saw her, uttered an exclamation, and then, like a lost child who recognises a friend in a crowd, suddenly burst into tears.
No, it was certain that Louis-Marie would never ascend Mont Blanc.
CHAPTER IV
And Yolande of the white hands! How was it faring with her, the lily gathered to perfume a Saturnalia, the victim of as heartless a casuistry as ever committed a clean virgin to outrage?