"Has any one seen Viscount Leyton lately?" he inquired.
Margaret had a piece of bread in her hand, and was breaking it, but the prince saw her hand fall, and her fingers close over the bread with a convulsive clutch.
"I saw him when I was in London a month ago, count," said the young attache.
"Indeed. And is he as strong and cheerful as ever? Dear me, I remember him singing a song—a stupid sort of song; but he sang it with that light-hearted chic which the French so pride themselves on, but which, after all, one sees oftenest in the English."
"Blair Leyton wasn't very light-hearted when I saw him last," said the young man. "He was awfully changed. He'd been ill, so they said, and very unlucky, too. Something had gone wrong with him, I fancy; an 'affection of the heart,' I suppose. Your Englishman, when he loses his mistress, invariably takes to drink or gambling. I don't fancy Blair would sink to the former, so I imagine he had been going in for the latter. You know the Green Table Club, general?"
The count made a significant grimace, and executed something very like a wink, and the attache nodded significantly.
"Poor fellow, he was always reckless and careless, but lately they say he was positively desperate. He must have been living pretty hard, for he is so fearfully altered; the mere shadow of his old self; and you know what a splendid fellow he was, general?"
"Ah, yes," assented the old soldier. "I thought when I saw him that I would give a good deal to have him in my brigade. And he was so altered and broken, you say?"
"Oh, terribly. I heard, too, that he had lost nearly all his property. He had a great deal in his own right, in addition to his heirdom of the Ferrers property."
"It is a dreadful thing to see a man so richly endowed go to the dogs in that fashion," said the general, who had borne anything but a character for steadiness in his youth.