"Incompatibility. Come, the carriage is waiting. Let us be gone."
"You have spoilt the evening for me," said the count, as he threw her cloak across her shoulders.
"On the contrary, I have added a peculiar zest. Now, let us go and appear before the world, and smile, and laugh, and eat, and gossip. Let the heart throb with a dull pain, if it will; the mask is ours to do with as we may."
They were, in my opinion, two very unusual persons.
[Illustration: "Lay the rose on the table"—Act II.]
XVII
DINNER IS SERVED
"Ha!"
Monsieur Pierre, having uttered this ejaculation, stepped back and rested his fat hands on his fat hips. As he surveyed the impromptu butler, a shade of perplexity spread over his oily face. He smoothed his imperial and frowned. This groom certainly looked right, but there was something lacking in his make-up, that indefinable something which is always found in the true servant—servility. There was no humility here, no hypocritical meekness, no suavity; there was nothing smug or self-satisfied. In truth, there was something grimly earnest, which was not to be understood readily. Monsieur Pierre, having always busied himself with soups and curries and roasts and sauces, was not a profound analyst; yet his instinctive shrewdness at once told him that this fellow was no servant, nor could he ever be made into one. Though voluble enough in his kitchen, Monsieur Pierre lacked expression when confronted by any problem outside of it. Here was the regulation swallow-tail coat and trousers of green, the striped red vest, and the polished brass buttons; but the man inside was too much for him.
"Diable! you luke right. But, no, I can not explain. Eet ees on zee tongue, but eet rayfuse. Ha! I haf eet! You lack vot zay call zee real. You make me t'ink uf zee sairvant on zee stage, somet'ing bettair off; eh?" This was as near as monsieur ever got to the truth of things.