There was a momentary pause.
“No,” said M. de Kersaint, without moving. “The Duc de Savary-Lancosme, his cousin-german, would have come into most of his property.” And he shut the window again.
“Is Savary-Lancosme alive?”
“He was guillotined in ’94.”
“Humph. He must sleep more soundly, then, than his cousin.”
The Marquis de Kersaint dropped the curtain over the moonlit casement and half turned round. “I really do not know why he should,” he said shortly, yet speaking, as was evident, with the most careful self-restraint. “Shall we say good-night now, Comte?”
A very little more and he might do it, if he could only hit on the right thing. So, instead of taking this broad hint, the Comte de Brencourt sat down carelessly on the table.
“I wonder,” he observed slowly, and with a sort of casual reflectiveness, “if that was the reason of de Trélan’s . . . poltroonery.”
He waited, after that last substantive, either for an explosion, or for a question as to what he meant. Neither came. But, glancing across the zone of lamplight to the window, he saw the smitten rigidity of his victim, and was filled with hope.
“I mean,” he explained, “the fact of the late Duchesse’s childlessness . . . Poor lady!”