‘It must,’ returned Castiglione with great emphasis. ‘I see that you wish to call me to account, but I assure you that nothing will induce me to fight about such a matter.’
‘Nothing, sir?’
‘Nothing, sir.’
‘Then I have the honour to suggest that the lady had some ground for the assertion she made, sir.’ The Frenchman spoke quietly and coolly.
Castiglione’s blue eyes blazed and his throat grew very red above the line of his military collar. By a tremendous effort of will he controlled his hands.
‘You are mistaken, sir,’ he said in a rather thick tone.
‘In any case I am at your disposal,’ returned de Maurienne with contempt. ‘I shall be at home after five o’clock and shall not go out again. Good morning.’
‘Good morning.’
Castiglione breathed more freely in the street. The whole affair was utterly incomprehensible to him, for he was not clever enough to guess that Teresa Crescenzi had long nourished the hope of making Monsieur de Maurienne fight a duel for her as the surest means of forcing him to marry her afterwards, and that Castiglione’s unexpected appearance and the turn the interview had taken had afforded her the very opportunity she desired. After he had left the room it had been the affair of an instant to tell de Maurienne that the officer had brutally insulted her by a coarse allusion to her intimacy with de Maurienne himself.
As Castiglione walked down the street, his eyes still on fire and his neck still very red, he asked himself how far he was bound to keep his word to Padre Bonaventura. After all, no one would ever connect a quarrel between him and de Maurienne in Teresa Crescenzi’s drawing-room with Maria Montalto. Yet, in plain fact, the quarrel was the result of the very first step he had taken on Maria’s behalf. He must either fight or leave the regiment, unless de Maurienne would retract his words.