Foreseeing what was coming, Eustacie at once agreed with this pronouncement, and launched out into a eulogy of the Duke she would have married had her grandfather not brought her to England. The fact that she had never laid eyes on this gentleman did not deter her from describing him in detail, and it was fully fifteen minutes before her invention gave out and her cousin was able to interpolate a remark. He observed that since the Duke had gone to the guillotine, her fate, had she married him, would have been a melancholy one.
In this opinion, however, Eustacie could not concur. To have become a widow at the age of eighteen would, she held, have been épatant, and of all things the most romantic. “Moreover,” she added, “it was a very good match. I should have been a duchess, and although Grandpapa says—said—that it is vulgar to care for such things, I do think that I should have liked to have been a duchess.”
“Oh, I agree with you, ma chère! ” he said cordially. “You would have made a charming duchess. But in these revolutionary times one must moderate one’s ideas, you know. Consider, instead, the advantages of becoming a baroness.”
“A baroness?” she faltered, fixing her eyes on his face with an expression of painful intensity. “What do you mean?”
He met her eyes with slightly raised brows, and for a moment stood looking down at her as though he were trying to read her thoughts. “My dear cousin, what in the world have I said to alarm you?” he asked.
Recollecting herself, she answered quickly: “I am not at all alarmed, but I do not understand what you mean. Why should I think about being a baroness?”
He pulled up a chair and sat down on it, rather nearer to her than she liked, and stretching out his hand laid it on one of hers. “I might make you one,” he said.
She sat as straight and as stiff as a wooden puppet, but her cheeks glowed with the indignation that welled up in her. The glance she bent on him was a very fiery one, and she said bluntly: “You are not a baron, you!”
“We don’t know that,” he replied, “but we might find out. In fact, I have already recommended Tristram to do so.”
“You mean that you would like very much to know that Ludovic is dead?”