“It is,” Madame de Chantonnay had maintained throughout the months of January and February—“it is an affair of the heart.”
She continued to hold this opinion with, however, a shade less conviction, well into a cold March.
“It is an affair of the heart, Abbé,” she said. “Allez! I know what I talk of. It is an affair of the heart and nothing more. There is some one in England: some blonde English girl. They are always washing, I am told. And certainly they have that air—like a garment that has been too often to the blanchisseuse and has lost its substance. A beautiful skin, I allow you. But so thin—so thin.”
“The skin, madame?” inquired the Abbé Touvent, with that gentle and cackling humour in which the ordained of any Church may indulge after a good dinner.
The Abbé Touvent had, as a matter of fact, been Madame de Chantonnay’s most patient listener through the months of suspense that followed Loo Barebone’s sudden disappearance. Needless to say he agreed ardently with whatever explanation she put forward. Old ladies who give good dinners to a Low Church British curate, or an abbé of the Roman confession, or, indeed, to the needy celibate exponents of any creed whatsoever, may always count upon the active conversational support of their spiritual adviser. And it is not only within the fold of Papacy that careful Christians find the road to heaven made smooth by the arts of an efficient cook.
“You know well enough what I mean, malicious one,” retorted the lady, arranging her shawl upon her fat shoulders.
“I always think,” murmured the Abbé, sipping his digestive glass of eau-de-vie d’Armagnac, which is better than any cognac of Charente—“I always think that to be thin shows a mean mind, lacking generosity.”
“Take my word for it,” pursued Madame de Chantonnay, warming to her subject, “that is the explanation of the young man’s disappearance. They say the government has taken some underhand way of putting him aside. One does not give credence to such rumours in these orderly times. No: it is simply that he prefers the pale eyes of some Mees to glory and France. Has it not happened before, Abbé?”
“Ah! Madame—” another sip of Armagnac.
“And will it not happen again? It is the heart that has the first word and the last. I know—I who address you, I know!”