“A mistake with a meaning, then.”
Saint-Ermay faced round upon his cousin. “Do you seriously mean to tell me that, on the evidence of this wretched little slip, you expect me to believe the Gironde to be playing us false?”
“I most certainly think that it should at least make you pause and reflect.”
“Reflect!” echoed the Vicomte. “One might fancy from your tone, Gilbert, that reflection was the monopoly of the provinces. Give us credit here in Paris for having considered the matter for a moment or so before we entered upon it!”
“To say nothing, then, of the ‘mistake’ about my name,” pursued the Marquis imperturbably, “what of Madame d’Espaze?”
A fire leapt up in the Vicomte’s glance and became a challenge. “Well, what of her?” he demanded. “Ah, I suppose M. des Graves has educated your morals to the pitch of objecting to her because she is supposed to be Lecorrier’s mistress. But if I do not quarrel with her on that score, you need not.”
Château-Foix made an impatient gesture of dissent, but the Vicomte, ignoring it, went on with a rather feverish gaiety: “If that is so, come with me to-night. I wager she will convert you from your altitudes.”
At once the Marquis perceived this to be the issue on which he should win or lose. “Good heavens!” he ejaculated, “are you going there to-night, when you don’t know whether—— Louis, you can’t! Don’t you know that in ’84——”
A mutinous expression came over the face of his young kinsman. “I don’t care what she did in ’84,” he rejoined, smiling sweetly, “and I am going there to-night.”
A wiser or a more selfish man would have accepted his defeat. Not so Château-Foix, and in proportion as his agitation and anxiety grew greater, so did his manner become harsher. Moreover, he was painfully aware of it.