With some curiosity she waited for him to speak; he interested her. A smile touched her lips as she thought of the gravity of their converse and the twenty years between them.
He accepted her with amazing good faith; in some things he must be very simple. It was not displeasing to her to reflect that she was the same to him as the irreproachable dames of his own country, whose velvets swept the floor in the ballroom.
“Shall not M. de Pomponne convey some message of duty from Your Highness to His Majesty?” she asked to probe his silence.
The colour deepened in his face. Madame Lavalette wondered why.
“His Majesty would not value the duty of one as unimportant as myself, Madame.”
“You are His Majesty’s cousin, Prince, and he would restore you to those offices M. de Witt has usurped. Do I now speak open enough?”
“His Majesty would do this—on conditions.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“On easy ones.”
“Perhaps, Madame—I should find them outside my power to fulfil.”