“I beg your pardon. Of course I did not mean it. But still . . . am I to understand that you persist in going to Madame d’Espaze’s salon to-night?” His tone was acridly cold, his manner galling in the extreme. An unbiassed observer might have thought that his young kinsman now displayed beneath it a surprising patience; indeed the latter, completely recovered from his sudden heat, looked at the Marquis with something like an amused forbearance in his glance. The next moment he had summoned up a demeanour to match his cousin’s.
“I have already had the honour to inform you, mon cousin, that I intend to do so,” he retorted with a sarcastic bow. But as he straightened himself there was a tiny imp of laughter looking out of his eye. “Your expression, Monsieur le Marquis, is that of the outraged guardian saying, ‘Your blood be on your own head!’”
“My looks may possibly reflect my thoughts, then,” returned Château-Foix drily. “Where shall I find M. de Larny?”
The Vicomte indicated his whereabouts. “You are going?”
“Since you will not be warned.”
“My dear cousin, I am warned,” retorted Louis, with a shade of irritation. “I assure you that your forebodings are graven on my heart. But I am not sufficiently alarmed to break my word—and, by the way,” he added, pulling out his watch, “it is nearly time for me to keep it.”
The Marquis made no reply, and moved towards his host. Louis, following him, stopped to speak to an acquaintance, and when their brief converse was over he saw that his cousin’s figure, accompanied by the gayer and more rotund bulk of the Comte de Larny, was at the door. He hurried across the intervening space; he was not really angry, either with Gilbert or himself, and he did not wish the rest of the company to divine that there had been a difference of opinion between them. To Louis de Saint-Ermay few things in life were worth the trouble of remaining angry about.
“Good-night, Gilbert,” he said pleasantly.
“Good-night,” replied the Marquis, scarcely looking round. He took his hat and cane from a lackey, the folding-doors clapped to behind him, and the Vicomte turned away with a slightly clouded brow, to find, to his vexation, that he had become the centre of attention. A chorus of raillery greeted him as he came back.
“What crime have you been committing now, Saint-Ermay, to bring down so solemn a visitation?”