"I beg you, Raoul—a little patience. Postpone your decision till to-morrow. By to-morrow, perhaps, I shall have persuaded you."
She kissed the Countess de Chagny, then beckoning to the three strangers, she introduced them.
"I bring you guests, madame. Our cousin George Errington, of London. Our cousin Marco Dario, of Genoa. Our cousin Archibald Webster, of Philadelphia. Knowing that you were to come here, I was determined that the family should be complete."
Thereupon she introduced Raoul Davernoie, Count Octave and his wife. They exchanged vigorous handshakes.
"Excellent," she said. "We are united as I desired, and we have thousands and thousands of things to talk about. I've seen d'Estreicher again, Raoul; and as I predicted he has been hanged. Also I met your grandfather and Juliet Assire a long way from here. But perhaps we are getting along a bit too quickly. First of all there is a most urgent duty to fulfill with regard to our three cousins who are bitter enemies of the dry régime."
She opened the cupboard and found a bottle of port and some biscuits, and as she poured out the wine, she set about relating her expedition to Roche-Périac. She told the story quickly and a trifle incoherently, omitting details and getting them in the wrong order, but for the most part giving them a comic turn which greatly amused the Count and Countess de Chagny.
"Then," said the Countess when she came to the end of her story, "the diamonds are lost?"
"That," she replied, "is the business of my three cousins. Ask them."
During the young girl's explanations, they had all three stood rather apart, listening to Dorothy, pleasant to their hosts, but wearing an absent-minded air, as if they were absorbed in their own thoughts; and those thoughts the Countess must be thinking too, as well as the Count, for there was one matter which filled the minds of all of them and made them ill at ease, till it should be cleared up.
It was Errington who took the matter up, before the Countess had asked the question; and he said to the young girl: