“Aye, and of improvisation—this day, this moment, if you will. Let M. Tiretta be summoned, and give us both a fair hearing.”
“Coquin, you dare the challenge, knowing he is gone.”
“On my faith, no, sir. I believed him at Colorno. Whither is he vanished?”
“To the devil—to Vienna—to anywhere, for what I care, so he remains to shock our sense of decorum no longer. Truth is the rascal claimed too many of the prerogatives of the troubadour—free sport among the petticoats for one. The scandal grew notorious. There was a wench, for instance—but ware, bully-boy! I tread on dangerous ground.”
“My ground, sir?”
“How he threats us with his brow! Spare us, good Charlot—I but quote the common report. Yet admit the fellow had an endearing way with him.”
“Curse him!”
La Coque was half caught in the snare of his own setting. He stood glowering sulkily, while Don Philip, with a little stealthy sidelong glance at his daughter, turned with a snigger to some other of his suite.
A flush of colour to her cheek; a just perceptible lift of the lip—the duke was scarce intelligent enough to read the signs.
That they could think her capable of being trapped by such a shallow artifice! Her heart swelled in her breast over the base wrong to him, the despicable meanness to herself. O, how fine and proud he appeared by contrast with these ignoble minds, how remote from them in his living intensity, his spiritual dignity! She would not even condescend to defend him in thought against a slander so gross and obvious. Its effect was to confirm her tenfold in her faith.