“I am sorry,” he went on. “For me it is different, I am a man. I have man’s work to do. I can occupy myself with ambition. At all events, I have a man’s privilege of nursing revenge.”
He saw her eyes light up, her breast heave with a sudden sigh. Something like a smile wavered for a moment beneath his waxed mustache.
Catrina’s fingers, supple and strong, struck in great chords the air of a gloomy march from the half-forgotten muse of some monastic composer. While she played, Claude de Chauxville proceeded with his delicate touch to play on the hidden chords of an untamed heart.
“A man’s privilege,” he repeated musingly.
“Need it be such?” she asked.
For the first time his eyes met hers.
“Not necessarily,” he answered, and her eyes dropped before his narrow gaze.
He sat back in his chair, content for the moment with the progress he had made. He glanced at the countess. He was too experienced a man to be tricked. The countess was really asleep. Her cap was on one side, her mouth open. A woman who is pretending to sleep usually does so in becoming attitudes.
De Chauxville did not speak again for some minutes. He sat back in his chair, leaning his forehead on his hand, while he peeped through his slim fingers. He could almost read the girl’s thoughts as she put them into music.
“She does not hate him yet,” he was reflecting. “But she needs only to see him with Etta a few times and she will come to it.”