Octave de Périgny laughed. “Le beau Saint-Ermay lose his head! Not in the figurative sense! He is only amusing himself with that lady, and Madame d’Espaze knows it. They both understand the game.”
“H’m!” said D’Aubeville meditatively, “I have not been feeling so sure. I almost thought the butterfly was caught at last.”
“Had you known Saint-Ermay as long as I have,” returned De Périgny, smiling, “you would have thought that so often that you would have learned to distrust your own opinion on the matter. Though even I believed that last winter——”
“What? What?” cried his auditors in a breath.
The Comte de Périgny hesitated. “Considering who is present,” he observed with a significant glance, “I should be indiscreet if I finished the sentence. And, at any rate, I was wrong, for it never came to anything.”
“A good thing for all concerned,” observed D’Aubeville drily.
CHAPTER V
A MENTOR FROM THE PROVINCES
“He was the finest gentleman of person and wit I think I ever saw; but could not be long serious, or mind business.”
—Memoirs of Sir John Reresby.
Meanwhile the Vicomte de Saint-Ermay, finding his cousin still occupied, had drawn aside the window curtains and was looking out, or pretending to do so, with latent impatience. At last the hand which he had been expecting was laid on his shoulder.