Counsellor looked back into the smiling blue eyes. Most men would have succumbed to their innocent flattery. To the Major they only suggested an infinite capacity for foolishness.
'Don't you think we could exchange our Duke for another, a more interesting one?' she added, misled perhaps by his look. 'Duke Gustave is so wrapped up in his stupid gambling, and altogether there are many things——' her speech tailed off inconsequently into a confused silence.
'Wanting? Certainly! For example, we have no Duchess,' said Counsellor gallantly. 'We need a pretty Duchess. But is it not possible that Maäsau may yet boast the most adorable Duchess in Europe?'
Countess Isolde started and flushed like a pleased child, and her eyes lit up as she laid her fan on Counsellor's stout knee with a confidential impulsive gesture.
'But England does not like the idea of pretty Duchesses?' she ventured reproachfully. 'And you are only a flatterer after all!'
The Major raised his bushy white eyebrows.
'Have I that reputation?'
'No, they say you are terribly frank;' then a design to sound this difficult and usually unapproachable diplomat came into her irrational head. Older men than he had been vanquished by her beauty ere now. 'England has not yet recognized my husband's claim as next heir,' she whispered. 'Major Counsellor, do you think your nation could ever be brought to recognize me as Duchess?'
'If the occasion arose,' answered the wily old soldier softly, 'I do not see—speaking as a man—how any request of yours could be refused. But I cannot answer for my nation. Still, if the occasion arose——' he hesitated as if searching for words, but in reality, waiting for his companion to take up the unfinished sentence.
The Countess trembled with excitement. This was indeed a triumph. She, 'silly Isolde,' as old Sagan was ever ready to call her, had gained a little bit of information they would give their ears to possess, but she would keep it and use it at her leisure. Meanwhile she must strike while the iron of old Counsellor's nature was yet hot.