The piercing eyes gleamed. “It don’t please you much, eh?”
“Not much,” admitted Shield, coming back to the dais.
“It’s a good match,” offered Sylvester, “I’ve settled most of the unentailed property on her, and she’s half French, you know—understands these arrangements. You can go your own road. She’s not at all like her mother.”
“I never knew her mother,” said Shield discouragingly.
“She was a fool!” said Sylvester. “Never think she could be a daughter of mine. She eloped with a frippery Frenchman: that shows you. What was his damned name?”
“De Vauban.”
“So it was. The Vicomte de Vauban. I forget when he died. Marie died three years ago, and I went over to Paris—a year later, I think, but my memory’s not what it was.”
“A little more than a year later, sir.”
“I dare say. It was after—” He paused for a moment, and then added harshly: “—after Ludovic’s affair. I thought France was growing too hot for any grandchild of mine, and by God I was right! How long is it now since they sent the King to the guillotine? Over a month, eh? Mark me, Tristram, the Queen will go the same road before the year is out. I’m happy to think I shan’t be here to see it. Charming she was, charming! But you wouldn’t remember. Twenty years ago we used to wear her colour. Everything was Queen’s Hair: satins, ribbons, shoes. Now”—his lip curled into a sneer—“now I’ve a great-nephew who wears a green coat and yellow pantaloons, and a damned absurd sugar-loaf on his head!” He raised his heavy eyelids suddenly, and added: “But the boy is still my heir!”
Sir Tristram said nothing in answer to this remark, which had been flung at him almost like a challenge. Sylvester took snuff again, and when he next spoke it was once more in his faintly mocking drawl. “He’d marry Eustacie if he could, but she don’t like him.” He fobbed his snuffbox with a flick of his finger. “The long and the short of it is, I’ve a fancy to see her married to you before I die, Tristram.”