“You look at one as if one were the horizon,” Desiree said to him long afterwards. But it was at this moment in the drawing-room in the Frauengasse that the comparison formed itself in her mind.
His face was rather narrow, with a square chin and straight lips. He was not quick in speech like Charles, but seemed to think before he spoke, with the result that he often appeared to be about to say something, and was interrupted before the words had been uttered.
“Unless my memory is a bad one, your mother was an Englishwoman, monsieur,” said Sebastian, “which would account for your being in the English service.”
“Not entirely,” answered d'Arragon, “though my mother was indeed English and died—in a French prison. But it was from a sense of gratitude that my father placed me in the English service—and I have never regretted it, monsieur.”
“Your father received kindnesses at English hands, after his escape, like many others.”
“Yes, and he was too old to repay them by doing the country any service himself. He would have done it if he could—”
D'Arragon paused, looking steadily at the tall old man who listened to him with averted eyes.
“My father was one of those,” he said at length, “who did not think that in fighting for Bonaparte one was necessarily fighting for France.”
Sebastian held up a warning hand.
“In England—” he corrected, “in England one may think such things. But not in France, and still less in Dantzig.”