“And with another significance—you imply something,” said the duke, after frowning at him awhile. “What is it?”
“Perhaps my ears,” replied la Coque, “are more sensitive than most to the subtle nuances of sound—to discords, disharmonies, so slight as to be imperceptible to less exquisite understandings. Perhaps her Highness is likewise constituted, so that within this Tiretta’s mellifluous tones she is able to detect a something insidious, incorrect, which at once fascinates and repels her.”
The duke did not answer; and presently he went on:
“I was over at Colorno yesterday, and listening—not to him, you may be sure, but to one who observes things, and reports to me in confidence. See clever Hyacinth laugh to himself there, as if he guesses who that someone may be. This Hyacinth of ours, monsieur, has a marvellous gift for detecting smoke by its smell. Put his fat nose above a hearth, and ten to one he will instruct you presently where the fire burns. That is not the case with her Highness’s governess, whom we may certainly commend for an old fool—saving her marquisate. She cannot see an inch beyond her nose in any direction; and, when it comes to smoke, a man may blow it in her eyes in the name of flattery, and she will go blind rather than not accommodate him.”
The duke, still staring with a perplexed expression and still silent, made a gesture to have the letter returned to him. Receiving it from la Coque’s hands, he sat awhile studying and frowning over its opening sentences. Presently he looked up.
“I find no shadow of justification here,” he said, “for such an innuendo.”
“What innuendo, monsieur?”
“That—that——” Don Philip rose suddenly to his feet, angry excitement in his eyes. “Are you daring to imply that this man is capable of such a mad abuse of his mission?”
La Coque, his lids stretched, his chin hanging, looked the picture of stupefied innocence.
“Why, what can your Excellency mean?” he said.