"I am glad you think so," she said. "Alas, I am too dark. I can never be as charming as Adèle must have been at my age. You seem to have forgotten her."
"Oh no," protested Cosmo carelessly. "A marvel of fairness, wasn't she? I remember you telling me years ago that she married an upstart."
"That was Father's expression. You know what that means, Cosmo."
"I do know what it means, exactly," he said, laughing. "But from what Father said this afternoon it seems as if he were a rather nasty upstart. What made Adèle do it?"
"I am awed," confessed Henrietta. "I don't know what made her do it. I was never told. Father never talked much about the D'Armands afterwards. I was with him in the yellow drawing room the evening he got the letter from the Marquis. After he read it he said something very extraordinary. You know it's full nine years ago and I was yet a child, yet I could not have dreamed it. I heard it distinctly. He dropped his hands and said, 'Austerlitz has done it.' What could he have meant?"
"It would be hard to guess the connection," said Cosmo, smiling at his sister's puzzled face. "Father must have been thinking of something else."
"Father was thinking of nothing else for days," affirmed Henrietta positively.
"You must have been a very observant child," remarked her brother. "But I believe you were always a clever girl, Henrietta. Well, I am going to see Adèle."
"Oh yes, you start in the morning to travel ever so far and for ever so long," said Miss Latham enviously. "Oh Cosmo, you are going to write to me—lots?"
He looked at her appreciatively and gave her another brotherly hug.