There, before an open fire, his hands behind his back, in that after-dinner attitude which some men assume, M. de Joyeuse stood. He was telling of a stag hunt that had been held at Monplaisir, his estate.
The duke was not an impressionist, his description lacked colour. But de Fresnoy, who had been present, resaw it all; the sheen of the horses, the green of the whippers-in, the pink coats of the sportsmen, the blue dolmans of the officers that had ridden over from a garrison near by, the verdure of the forest’s edge, the view, the scramble, the run, the quarry, the hallali of the huntsman, the leaping hounds, the fastidious ceremonial of the death and the sky of pale silk which draped with faint gold the magnificent brutality of the scene.
“It was just my luck to have missed it,” Silverstairs threw in.
De Joyeuse turned to him. “We count on you next autumn. And on you also, mon vieux,” he added to Tempest who had approached.
Tempest nodded. He was lighting a cigar. The operation concluded, he drew a chair beside Silverstairs. “Now, tell me all about Madame B.”
Silverstairs eyed him quizzingly. “She interests you?”
“Enormously.”
“Then look out for Barouffski whom she interests still more.”
Tempest shrugged his shoulders. “Was it her interest in Number One or Number One’s interest in her that declined?”