"My cousin!" broke in Horatia, laughing. "Whom do you mean?—That is tight enough, I think."
"Mais ce bon Tristram. He is your kinsman ... or have you all been deceiving me?"
"Certainly he is my kinsman, but a very distant one. His mother was my mother's third cousin, or something of the sort. I never think of him as a cousin, exactly; rather as a brother."
"Not in any other capacity?" inquired Armand, his eyes mocking her as he leant against her horse's neck. "I have no right to ask you, perhaps—si, I think I have the right." He laughed. "If he were never in love with you, he ought to have been."
Horatia looked away from his amused, lazily penetrating glance. "To tell you the truth," she said, flushing a little, "he was once—years ago. But that is all over, and the proof is, that we have been very good friends ever since."
"Ah, I wondered. I am glad he had the good taste to be a soupirant once. Were you very cruel to him? He is an original; but I am very grateful to him. Had he been a rival I should have found things much more difficult."
"No, you would not," said Horatia suddenly. "He would have behaved just the same, when he found that I really loved you."
The Comte lifted his expressive eyebrows. "Forgive me, my angel, but I am totally unable to follow you there. Men don't do those things nowadays; we are not in the pages of Scudéry. You have a soul of the most romantic, my Horatia, in spite of your Greek and Latin; but romance is not in harmony with facts. Your 'cousin' is a capital fellow, but if I believed him capable of that sort of thing, ma foi, I should be inclined to recommend him for a madhouse. As it is, shall we ask him to stay with us one day?"
"If you like," said Horatia, looking at her horse's ears. There was a vague trouble in her voice.
"If I like! But yes, that is perhaps what it comes to. I warn you, I shall be like a tiger for jealousy, and you will turn every man's head who sees you.... Par exemple, I am sure you must have had many more victims than you will acknowledge. Passe Mr. Hungerford, but what of that so dear friend of his at the college of Oriel?"