To avoid them was impossible; they met face to face; and Sir Joseph stopped, and immediately reminded him that it was three days since they had seen him, as if to reproach him for so unprecedented a neglect. And it seemed that Edith, though she said not as much, felt the same. And Coningsby turned round and walked with them. He told them he was going to leave Paris on the morrow.
‘And miss Monsieur de Sidonia’s fête, of which we have all talked so much!’ said Edith, with unaffected surprise, and an expression of disappointment which she in vain attempted to conceal.
‘The festival will not be less gay for my absence,’ said Coningsby, with that plaintive moroseness not unusual to despairing lovers.
‘If we were all to argue from the same premises, and act accordingly,’ said Edith, ‘the saloons would be empty. But if any person’s absence would be remarked, I should really have thought it would be yours. I thought you were one of Monsieur de Sidonia’s great friends?’
‘He has no friends,’ said Coningsby. ‘No wise man has. What are friends? Traitors.’
Edith looked much astonished. And then she said,
‘I am sure you have not quarrelled with Monsieur de Sidonia, for we have just parted with him.’
‘I have no doubt you have,’ thought Coningsby.
‘And it is impossible to speak of another in higher terms than he spoke of you.’ Sir Joseph observed how unusual it was for Monsieur de Sidonia to express himself so warmly.
‘Sidonia is a great man, and carries everything before him,’ said Coningsby. ‘I am nothing; I cannot cope with him; I retire from the field.’