“His mistress!” exclaimed M. de Kersaint sharply. “That she never was!”
The Comte looked a rather mocking surprise. He had not expected to draw de Kersaint thus, for he believed what he said. “What, you can answer for your kinsman’s private life to that extent, Marquis! You must have known him pretty well, then, after all!”
“I knew him well enough to be sure that that story has no foundation,” retorted his companion with a frown.
“Ah! Was he then such a puritan, the Duc de Trélan?”
“Certainly not. But every man draws the line somewhere.”
“I see,” observed M. de Brencourt, looking down with a smile at the tablecloth. “Your noble relative thought too highly of himself to lay his purse at the feet of an opera singer, yet he did not scruple to leave his wife to years of penury. The world, as you must recognise, would have thought nothing of the first—a mere peccadillo—the second——” He shrugged his shoulders.
Obsessed with the ineffaceable picture of the Duchesse in her shabby dress, he looked up to see how it was faring with his victim after this venomous thrust. The latter was gazing at him, sufficiently ghastly indeed, but with so much astonishment that the Comte realised his slip.
“Years of penury!” said the Marquis harshly. “What are you talking of, de Brencourt? Mme de Trélan was amply provided for during the two years of the Duc’s emigration, and at her . . . death” (it was evident that he could scarcely bring out the word) “she certainly was not poor!”
And at that M. de Brencourt himself went white. Good Heavens, supposing that in the delight of torturing him he let out something vital, as he had almost done now. He must curb his tongue. “No, no, that is true, I suppose,” he stammered. “I ought to beg M. de Trélan’s pardon for saying that. . . .”
“I think you ought to beg his pardon for a good deal else that you have said about him,” remarked M. de Trélan’s kinsman stiffly.