"But, my dear boy, you have been very—by which I mean dangerously—ill, and you know it. It is of no use to deny it, for M. de Courtomer has admitted the fact."
"I hope that you are being very charming to M. de Courtomer," responded her grandson, shifting the ground a little. "If I have been as ill as you say, all the more credit and thanks to him that I am well now. He nursed me with a devotion for which there are no words."
"You consider, in short, that you owe your life to him?"
Aymar smiled a little. "If I cannot give him his due without making the admission which you are so anxious to wring out of me, Grand'mère yes, I do—to him and the doctor. So be kind to him—for he is not leaving us to-day after all, I am glad to say."
"No friend of yours shall have anything to complain of from me, Aymar," responded his grandmother, "particularly one to whom you are so much indebted. He seems a well-bred young man, for all his English upbringing. The name, of course, is good. I suppose he bears sinople, three lions argent?"
"I suppose so," said Aymar with a smile. "The one thing which I do know for certain that he bears is—a heart, or."
A smile flickered over Mme de la Rocheterie's face also. "What a pretty speech! M. de Courtomer ought to be here.—Now I will peel you a peach, and if it does not tire you to talk, you shall tell me of this unfortunate business of Pont-aux-Rochers. We have heard the most unpleasant rumours about it here."
The young man twisted a trifle in the chair. "Rumours of . . . treachery?"
"Yes," continued the Vicomtesse, selecting a peach from the basket. "And from all the details we could gather, from the completeness of the disaster—and from the fact that you were not there in person—it seems to me probable that they are true. But I should like to know." However, it was with a very undisturbed air that she began to peel the peach.
Aymar watched her for a moment. "I understand that the idea might have arisen," he said at last. "But it is a false one. There was no treachery over the business."