“He drives very well,” Léonie said hopefully. “I do not think that he will break his neck, but you are quite right, tout même, Fanny: it makes one very anxious.”
“And not content with making absurd wagers, which of course he must lose — ”
“He will not lose,” cried her grace indignantly. “And if you like I will lay you a wager that he will win!”
“Lord, my dear, I don’t know what you would have me stake,” said Lady Fanny, forgetting the main issue for the moment. “It’s very well for you with all the pin money and the jewels Avon gives you, but I give you my word I expect to find myself at any moment in that horrid place Rupert used to be clapped up in. If you can believe it I’ve not won once at loo this past month or at silver-pharaoh, and as for whist, I vow and declare to you I wish the game had never been thought of. But that’s neither here nor there, and at least I have not to stand by and watch my only son make himself the talk of the town with his bets and his highwaymen, and I don’t know what more beside.”
Léonie looked interested at this. “But tell!” she commanded. “What highwayman?”
“Oh, it was nothing but just to match the rest of his conduct. He shot one last night on Hounslow Heath, and must needs leave the body upon the road.”
“He is a very good shot,” Léonie said. “For me, I like best to fight with swords, and so does Monseigneur, but Dominique chooses pistols.”
Lady Fanny almost stamped her foot. “I declare you are as incorrigible as that worthless boy himself!” she cried. “It’s very well for the world to call Dominic Devil’s Cub, and place all his wildness at poor Avon’s door, but for my part I find him very like his mamma.”
Léonie was delighted. “ Voyons, that pleases me very much!” she said. “Do you really think so?”
What Fanny might have been goaded to reply to this was checked by the quiet opening of the door behind her. She had no need to turn her head to see who had come in, for Léonie’s face told her.