It seemed unnecessary, but madam had that way of grudging its perfect bloom to harmony, to which certain minds, having a mistaken sense of humour, are wont, seemingly irresistibly, to be moved. She could not forego her grumble, even where policy counselled silence. She would deliberately invite offence, and then, resenting being treated as offensive, would study, though she had to bide her time for it, to make herself as unendurable as possible.
“Am I self-willed?” asked Isabella, appealing to the minister. But, though she spoke plaintively, there was a spark of ominous colour in her cheek.
“You are your mother’s true daughter,” answered du Tillot, with a glance of annoyance at the marquise. “You will yield to loving reason what you would ever refuse to dictation. But that is neither here nor there in the light of my present business, which is to introduce to your Highness’s good favour—” he wheeled, with an expressive gesture—“the person of the Chevalier Tiretta, a gentleman of the Viennese Court, and as admirable a musician and improvisatore as he is a soldier of tried merit.”
Isabella was conscious of a little thrill and shock, as she turned to the hitherto unregarded stranger. Then a flush mantled her face from chin to brow, and she dropped a curtsey quite repellent in its frigidity. She knew him at once; how could she fail to? or to associate this and that in the sudden leap of recognition? A sense of indignation, of recoil as from an astounding revelation, were the predominant emotions in her mind. Then Fanchette’s gossip, and the one conclusion to be drawn from it!—she hardly heard the purring phrases of the Secretary of State, as he improved upon his opening:
“His Excellency, your father, deploring his prolonged absence from his child, sends her this voice to interpret sweetly for him the love his heart is withheld from expressing. He entreats her to share with him a treasure his affection will not permit him to monopolise, and to preserve and honour it against his soon return.”
Isabella’s cheek, as if to vindicate Fanchette’s claim, had gone from red to white. She turned her back on the stranger.
“I needed no such proof of my papa’s love,” she said to du Tillot; “or of any instrument, however accommodating, to interpret it to me. But you will assure him from me, monsieur, that his daughter will not fail to give honour where honour is due.”
“Heyday!” cried the marquise—she had been effervescing where she sat, her eyes glassy, and a mirthless smile on her fat old lips. “This is not self-will, to be sure! This is a graceful yielding to reason, and a fine reception of his Excellency’s honoured protégé. What do you mean, child, abusing your father’s consideration and insulting his deputy in this fashion?”
All this, to be sure, was grievously embarrassing to the stranger, who had to stand during this dispute, feeling very much like an actor who has come forward to make an unwelcome explanation and holds his ground biding an abatement in the storm of hisses and orange peel which greets him. His mouth twitched, it is true, and there was a ghost of a twinkle in his mournful eyes; otherwise his aspect was one of profound wonder and deprecation. But the Gonzalès, wrought up now to the full fury of her resentment, would by no means consent to forego, in the face of this wounded appeal, the moral triumph it afforded her. She got to her feet, fuming and ejaculating, and, while M. du Tillot arched his brows in lost amazement over the scene, hurried across to the chevalier, and, seizing his two hands in hers, panted out a flurry of apology, explanation, protest:—
“No wonder you look surprised, monsieur; no wonder you look hurt. This reception of his Excellency’s gift, of an honoured subject and comrade moreover of one whose least recommendation should entitle its bearer to our utmost attention and consideration—it is unaccountable, it is infamous, it reflects upon my careful tuition in a way which is humiliating to a degree. I beg you to attribute to nothing but a spoilt caprice this seeming abuse of a favour, which others, less self-willed, can appreciate at its worth; to forget a slight——”