“You young coxcomb,” I said, addressing him with that freedom which our relative positions and my age permitted me to use, “why must you anger madame at the outset, and so exile yourself from the house which enshrines your divinity? You are indeed a poor diplomat.”
“Sanctus!” he exclaimed, “that woman! If she were a man I could run her through, but she delights in the immunity of her sex. A termagant! A meddlesome vixen!”
“Upon my soul!” I exclaimed. “A French gentleman—a soldier, and calling a woman such names!”
His cheek flushed hotly, and he quickened his pace.
“She deserves them all, and more,” he said; and then I saw that he held a scrap of white paper in his hand, and in a moment divined the truth.
“Ah,” I said wickedly, “I see that madame’s vigilance is not unwarranted,—signs and tokens.”
For a moment he was embarrassed, and then threw himself upon my confidence without reserve.
“It is but a line,” he said, with some manly confusion that pleased me, “a line which I begged for—to tell me the reason of the change there of late. It is as I feared; the czar is interfering with my happiness. The Zotofs have announced to her that they have other schemes for her future and that she must not see me again, and she bids me farewell.”
He was deeply moved, and for the moment we walked on in silence.
“Mademoiselle does not strike me as one who would surrender so easily,” I remarked quietly.