Helia had heard the end of the conversation. She came just as the duke was speaking of a possible invasion.
“And you, Mlle. Helia,” he added, with a smiling air of protection, “what would you do if you were attacked? You know there is going to be fighting in our country.”
“That’s very easily settled, monseigneur,” Helia said, with a voice in which there was a thrill as of self-sacrifice. “If there’s question of fighting, I will do my part!”
“What an Amazon!” the duke said, looking at Helia with a smile. “So if the occasion demanded you would do like my ancestresses: you’d sleep on the mountainside, in the snow and rain night and day, to give an example!”
“Yes, monseigneur,” said Helia.
The duke made his final bows, with a diplomatic sense of degrees answering to the differences of rank between grandma and Ethel and Helia, and then went down to his boat, which was rowed rapidly away.
There was not a cheer on the shore for the duke. A dull silence reigned on the jetty, broken only by confused expressions of anxiety. Fingers pointed to the yacht, as if to say, “What is it?” No doubt they imagined it to be some powerful envoy of the great nations. Meanwhile the duke disappeared in the night.
The searchlight wavered for a moment, and then fell on the castle. The people on the jetty were no longer visible, lost in the shadow. But the murmur of the crowd was still heard, and a dim reflected light gave the city a phantasmal look, while beyond might be divined the deserted country, the mountains and valleys.
“I don’t understand the duke,” said Ethel, in a low voice. “He should be thrilled at the thought of recreating a people. The duke must be wanting in resolution. I seem to see him in his castle regulating questions of etiquette, brightening up a little the faded gilt of his stage-setting, and regretting Paris—a stranger to his people’s aspirations. Yet how many things are to be done here—wretchedness to console, ignorance to enlighten! In his place I would never have waited for them to come to fetch me back from Paris.”