“Said he knew me?” Madam Guiscardini coolly replied.
But as she spoke, her fingers so convulsively twitched, as if she were trying her utmost to curb the secret emotions of her mind, that they snapped the delicate, carved ivory handle of her parasol.
Paul Desfrayne, who had not once removed his eyes from her face, laughed cynically, bitterly. His laughter had in it more of menace than an uncontrollable outburst of violent anger.
He thought: “What can be the secret between them?” But aloud he said, affecting to ignore the accidental betrayal so direful as well as the agitation of his wife:
“He has barely mentioned your name, and then simply in a passing way.”
“May I ask your reason for supposing I was acquainted with him?”
“I had more reasons than one. But a chief reason was that I knew he came from your part of Italy; and in a village everybody knows everybody else. Had he been an old friend of yours—don’t curl your lip: you were once as lowly placed as he, perhaps more so—you might perchance have cared to hear something of him. The poor wretch has been in grievous adversity, it seems: without a friend, often without a shelter, without money; so it is probably a fortunate thing for him that he has found a friend in me.”
“I hope he will serve you well,” said Madam Guiscardini, in an ice-cold tone. “It shows good taste on the part of Captain Desfrayne to recall the fact that the Guiscardini was once a poor cottage girl in poverty—in——”
Her eyes flashed, and she stopped, as if afraid of rousing her indomitable temper did she proceed. One sentence might ruin her. She abruptly curbed herself, and swept another curtsy.
“I have the honor to wish Captain Desfrayne good morning, and shall be ready to receive his promised—his threatened visit——”