“I am sorry if I seemed rude,” Léonie apologized. “Did I, Monseigneur?”
“Very,” he answered, shutting his snuff-box with an expert flick of the finger, “But, unlike Fanny, beautifully frank.”
“Well, I am sorry,” she repeated. “It is not that I do not like Juliana, but I do not think it would amuse Dominic to marry her.”
“Amuse him!” Fanny turned with pardonable exasperation to her brother. “If that is all — ! Have you also forgotten the plans we made, Avon, years back?”
“Acquit me, Fanny. I never make plans.”
Léonie interrupted a heated rejoinder to say: “It is true, Fanny: we did say Dominique should marry Juliana. Not Monseigneur, but you and I. But they were babies, and me, I think it is all quite different now.”
“What is different, pray?” demanded her ladyship.
Léonie reflected. “Well, Dominique is,” she replied naïvely. “He is not enough respectable for Juliana.”
“Lord, child, do you look to see him bring home one of his opera dancers on his arm?” Lady Fanny said with a shrill little laugh.
From a doorway a cool, faintly insolent voice spoke. “My good aunt interests herself in my affairs, I infer.” The Marquis of Vidal came into the room, his chapeau-bras under his arm, the wings of his riding coat clipped back, French fashion, and top boots on his feet There was a sparkle in his eyes, but he bowed with great politeness to his aunt, and went towards the Duchess.