“Yes,” said Louise coldly, as an angry feeling of annoyance shot through her on her friend’s behalf. “Harry has no higher ambition than to lead a lap-dog kind of life in attendance upon Aunt Marguerite, and listening to her stories of middle-aged chivalry.”
“Thank goodness!” said Harry, as they rose from the table. “No, no, aunt, I don’t want any coffee. I should stifle if I stopped here much longer.”
Aunt Marguerite frowned as the young man declined the invitation to come to her side.
“Only be called a lap-dog again. Here, Vic, let’s go and have a cigar down by the sea.”
“Certainly,” said Pradelle, smiling at all in turn.
“Yes, the room is warm,” said the host, who had hardly spoken all through the dinner, being deep in thought upon one of his last discoveries.
Harry gave his sister a contemptuous look, which she returned with one half sorrowful, half pitying, from which he turned to glance at Madelaine, who was standing by her friend.
Aunt Marguerite smiled, for there was certainly the germ of an incurable rupture between these two, and she turned away her head to hide her triumph.
“She will never forgive him for speaking as he did about the beggarly trade.” Then crossing with a graceful old-world carriage, she laid her hand on Madelaine’s arm.
“Come into the drawing-room, my clear,” she said, smiling, and to Madelaine it seemed that her bright, malicious-looking eyes were full of triumph. “You and I will have a good hard fight over genealogies, till you confess that I am right, and that your father and you have no claim to Huguenot descent.”