Captain Ferrers looked from Downey to Cornbury, only to see verification written upon their faces. He pushed back his bench from the table, his countenance fairly blazing with anger, and cried, in a choking voice:
“Mornay again! To drag her name into every ordinary and gaming hell in London! Coxcomb!—scoundrel!—upstart that he is! Mornay, always Mornay—”
The candles flickered gayly as Monsieur Mornay entered. His figure and costume were the perfection of studied elegance. The perruque was admirably curled, and the laces and jewels were such that a king might have envied him. A black patch extending along the forehead gave him an odd appearance, and the white brow seemed the more pallid by contrast. His features in repose bore the look of settled melancholy one sometimes sees on the faces of men who live for pleasure alone. But as his eyes turned towards the table a smile, full of careless good-humor, came over his features. He advanced, pausing a moment as Wynne and Heywood pushed Ferrers down by main force into his seat.
“Messieurs,” said Mornay, smiling quizzically, “your servitor.” He stopped again. “I thought my name was spoken. No?” He looked from one to the other. “My name I comprehend, but, messieurs, my titles—my new titles! To whom am I indebted for my titles? Ah, Monsieur le Capitaine Ferraire, mon ami, I am glad that you are here. I thought that I had fallen among enemies.”
He laughed gayly. It was rippling and mellow, a laugh from the very cockles of the heart, full of the joy of living, in which there lurked no suspicion of doubt or insincerity—the situation was so vastly amusing. Cornbury laughed, too. He was an Irishman with a galloping humor; nor was Downey slow to follow his example.
For Heywood and Ferrers it was another matter. The elder man sat rigidly, glaring at the Frenchman with eyes that glittered from lids narrow with hate. Ferrers, disconcerted by the defenselessness of the Frenchman, sat stupidly, his features swollen with rage, his lips uncertain and trembling for a word to bring the quarrel to a head. But before he could speak, Sir Henry Heywood, very pale, had thrust himself forward over the table to Mornay in a way not to be mistaken, and said, briefly:
“Gad, sirrah, your laugh is the sign of an empty mind!”
Mornay was truly taken by surprise. But as he looked up at this new enemy he found no difficulty in understanding Heywood’s meaning. He rose to his feet, still smiling, and said, coolly, with a sedulous politeness:
“I am empty of brains? It takes a wit like that of monsieur to discover something which does not exist.”