"Oh, mon oncle," he protested, "what time have I for anything like that?"
I rejoined that a man has always time for a pretty woman, and at that he laughed loudly.
"She asked me to dinner," says he, "but, of course, I shall not go. Why, my dear uncle, it would be very dangerous to do so. Do you not know that her friend is Prince Nicholas, who has sworn a vendetta against every Frenchman in Moscow? I should be a fool to do anything of the kind."
I agreed that he would be, and really I was not a little astonished at his common sense.
Captains of the Guard are rarely prudent where a pretty face is concerned, and Valerie St. Antoine was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in all my life. It was amazing to me that Léon should have learned so much wisdom in so short a space of time, and I plumed myself upon his sagacity. Oh, how easily do we old fogeys deceive ourselves! Not three days had elapsed before I learned that he had written to the lady, and on the fourth I heard with some regret that he had gone to dine with her.
II
Now, I do not know why it was, but this affair had caused me much uneasiness from the beginning, and when I heard, upon the evening of September 28, that my nephew had left the palace and gone to dine with Valerie, a disquietude quite beyond ordinary attended the discovery.
Possibly Léon's own words had something to do with it. He had said that such an invitation might be a trap, and although the opinion was expressed as a joke, there remained a doubt in my own mind which no mere assurance could remove.
Remember the circumstances. We had discovered already that Valerie St. Antoine was the friend, and more than the friend, of a man who had sworn to exterminate the French in Moscow. The reality of the tie which bound them had been made apparent to me when I was with her in Prince Boris's house, and I could conceive no honest circumstance which would justify the invitation to my nephew Léon. When I questioned his servant, Gascogne, that good fellow seemed no less uneasy than I myself.
"There have been five officers from this regiment lost in Moscow this very week," said he. "I warned Captain Léon, but he would not listen to me. A woman. Faugh! It is the usual story, major. They all have a rendezvous, and none of them returns. Why did not the captain consult you? I told him that it was a trick, and he answered me by putting on his best uniform and calling a droshky. Major, we shall be lucky if we see him again."