"Eh bien!" went on Armand de la Roche-Guyon more lightly, "it is Fate. Our house has served the Lilies for a thousand years, and I suppose the time has come to die with them. You can understand that too, you whose ancestors fought for the Stuarts."
None of Miss Grenville's ancestors—persons distinctly Hanoverian in sympathy—had ever supported that romantic cause, but for the moment, moved by the voice, she almost believed that they had.
"But Louis-Philippe is a Bourbon," she suggested. "You would not——"
"Serve the son of Egalité!" exclaimed the Comte. "Serve the man who has usurped the throne of France! Sooner would I die!—— But I do not wish to talk of my affairs. Tell me of yourself, Mademoiselle, of your life here. It is vain that you try to disguise from me that you surpass other women in intellect and character as you surpass them—pardon me that I say it—in beauty. Chez nous, that superiority is recognised; but with you, is it not, you must hide it from people that you do not frighten them by your attainments. But we Frenchmen understand."
His tone and manner were perfect; grave, respectful, sympathetic, quite without commonplace gallantry. Horatia was amazed at his penetration.
"You are quite right," she said, laying down her work. "It is very ridiculous that my small accomplishments should have the effect of walling me off, as it were, from the rest of the world, but so it is. I am no cleverer than other girls, but, thanks to my kind father, I am better educated. You cannot imagine, M. le Comte, how that fact hampers me in ordinary life. When I stay with my cousins in Northamptonshire they think it a joke to introduce me as a 'bluestocking,' as one who knows Greek. Every man—every young man at least—that I meet is frightened of me, or pretends to be so, which is sillier still; every woman in her heart dislikes me. I suppose they think that I am 'superior.'"
"Ah, the women, I can believe that," said Armand de la Roche-Guyon quickly. "But the men, no, that I can never understand; no Frenchman could understand it."
In a flash Horatia was aware how intimately she had been talking to him. But he went on:
"You should have been born a Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle. In Paris you would occupy your proper place, reigning at once by beauty and by wit, as only our women do."
Horatia coloured. "Do you then notice so much difference in England?" she asked, for the sake of saying something.