Madame la Duchesse moved her head towards the empty chair.
"He is a great friend of yours—the Marquis de Sogrange?" she asked, with a certain inflection in her tone which Peter was not slow to notice.
"Indeed, no!" he answered. "A few years ago I was frequently in Paris. I made his acquaintance then, but we have met very seldom since."
"You are not travelling together, then?" she inquired.
"By no means," Peter assured her. "I recognised him only as he boarded the steamer at Cherbourg."
"He is not a popular man in our world," she remarked. "One speaks of him as a schemer."
"Is there anything left to scheme for in France?" Peter asked carelessly. "He is, perhaps, a Monarchist?"
"His ancestry alone would compel a devoted allegiance to Royalism," the Duchesse declared; "but I do not think that he is interested in any of these futile plots to reinstate the House of Orleans. I, Monsieur le Baron, am Spanish."
"I have scarcely lived so far out of the world as to have heard nothing of the Duchesse della Nermino," Peter replied with empressement. "The last time I saw you, Duchesse, you were in the suite of the Infanta."
"Like all Englishmen, I see you possess a memory," she said, smiling.