“You know, Camille, it is true that I am half a Frenchwoman,” said Kitty, quite bewildered, “but I never learned to speak the language with the least fluency, and I must own that I don’t perfectly understand what that may signify.”
“Farewell hope!” uttered the Chevalier.
Kitty found this dramatic phrase so strongly reminiscent of Miss Fishguard in her more sentimental moments that she was nearly betrayed into a giggle. After a short struggle with herself, she asked bluntly: “Why?”
He replied, with a hopeless gesture: “I have been permitted a glimpse of paradise! It is not for me!”
“I do wish, Camille, that you will speak more plainly!” said Kitty, rather exasperated. “If you mean that Olivia is paradise, and that it is she who is not for you, pray why should you say such a thing? Have you quarrelled with her?”
“A thousand times no!” he declared vehemently. “Would I quarrel with an angel from heaven? The very thought is a blasphemy!”
“Yes, very true, but Olivia is not an angel from heaven,” Kitty pointed out. “Is it that her lack of fortune makes her ineligible, or that you fear she would not be acceptable to your family? I own that Mrs. Broughty is a dreadful woman, but—”
“It is I who cannot be acceptable to Mrs. Broughty!” he interrupted.
A suspicion that he had been drinking crossed her mind. She looked anxiously at him, and said: “Come, you are talking nonsense, cousin! Perhaps you are not as wealthy as that odious Sir Henry Gosford, but I am persuaded, from what Olivia has told me, that Mrs. Broughty is inclined to look upon you with the utmost complacence!”
He gave a short laugh. “Without doubt! C’est hors de propos, ma chere cousine! It is the Chevalier she looks upon with complacence. You, of all people, must know that there is no Chevalier!” She was now more than ever convinced that he had been drinking deeply, and said in some concern: “Camille, I think you don’t know what you are saying! No Chevalier? But—are not you the Chevalier d’Evron?”