"The gossip of your menials!" the lady exclaimed. "The gossip of your menials? Will this fresh incident expose us to any further gossip, do you suppose? It is a long while since our names have been coupled together, Monsieur le Duc."
"Monsieur le Duc!" he repeated. "What a form of address! Monsieur le Duc! My name to you is--has ever been--Armand."
"Ay, 'tis so," she answered, while, even as she continued speaking a little bitterly to him, she shifted her feet upon the footstool, so that they should get their full share of the luxurious warmth of the fire. "'Tis so. Has been so for more years now than a woman cares to count. Desparre," she said, addressing him shortly, "how long have we known each other--how old am I?"
For answer he gave her a deprecatory shrug of the shoulders, as though it were impossible such a question should be asked, or, being asked, could possibly be answered by him; while she, her blue eyes fixed upon his face, herself replied to the question. "It is twenty years," she said, "since we first met."
"Alas!" with another shrug, meant this time to express a wince of emotion.
"Yes, twenty years," she continued. "A long while, is it not? I, a young widow then; you, Armand Desparre, a penniless porte-drapeau in the Regiment de Bellebrune. Yet not so penniless either, if I remember aright"--and the blue eyes looked steely now, as they gazed from beneath their thick auburn fringe at him--"not penniless. You lived well for an ensign absolutely without private means--rode a good horse, could throw a main with the richest man in the regiment."
"Diane," he interrupted, "these suggestions, these reminiscences are unseemly."
"Unseemly! Heavens! Yes, they are unseemly. However, no matter for that. You are no longer a poor man. Armand Desparre is rich, he is no more the poor marching soldier, he is Monsieur le Duc Desparre."
"More recollections," he said, with still another shrug. "Diane, we know all this. The world, our world, knows who and what I am."
"Also our world knows, expects, that there is to be a Duchess Desparre."