South of the lands of the old troubadours, between the heights of the Southern Alps and the languor of the Mediterranean, lies the pretty town of Cannes. The year we tell of was in its first youth. The flower and chivalry of England and America were promenading in the sunlight of the pretty town or commenting at their ease on the brilliant tourneys of tennis and polo. Here and there about the links the sun lit up the brilliant Fair Isle sweaters of Jews, Greeks and Argentines where they were playing a friendly match for the empiry of the world. The mimosa was at its full glory of fresh-powdered gold. Brilliant sun-shades lit the walks. From the gardens of white villas could be heard the laughter of children and millionaires. The beach was strewn with jewels, and ladies walked in beauty. Great automobiles loitered between the Casino and the Carlton Hotel, while youth in swift Bugatti or Bentley challenged time to a race from Cannes to Monte Carlo. The waters slept profoundly in the full kiss of the afternoon sun. There, as a dove on a spacious lawn, rode a fair white yacht. From its stern hung a cluster of golden cherries, for such was the pretty nautical device of the young Duke of Mall.
It must be granted by the most fastidious that the scene was set for enchantment. The sea slept under the sun, the sun upon the mountains, the chauffeurs at their driving-wheels, the croupiers in the Casino, the diplomats at a conference, the demi-mondaines near the diplomats. Yet in the yacht raged a storm: the Duke of Mall was having a row with his lady.
It will be incredible that it was not their first. It must be incredible that it looked like being their last. At the moment of our intrusion, my Lord Duke, in point of fact, was saying:
“By Heaven, Leonora, I am sick and tired of it!”
That small, lovely head, those wide, deep, gentle eyes! Yet stern Juno herself did sometimes walk the earth in those very eyes. She was not more than twenty-four, this lady, yet with what proud calm and disdain she could at one glance enwrap her husband! Not, however, that it always advantaged her case, for sometimes it might be he was too sleepy to notice or maybe he would be too busily engaged in disdaining her, which on occasions he could do very handsomely.
Gently said she: “You say you are sick and tired of ‘it.’ ‘It,’ my dear, my well-beloved? Am I, by ‘it,’ to understand that you mean me?”
The young Duke pointed his indifference with the application of a match to a rough surface and the application of the match to a cigar. “You may,” said he, “understand what you like. I said what I said.”
Tenderness was never yet so fitly clothed as by this lady’s voice. “Shall I, then,” said she, “tell you all that I understand by what you said?”
The Duke need not have waved a hand skyward, need not have smiled, have yawned, and said: “Am I God, to stop you talking! But maybe it is not necessary for me to add that I wish I were, if only for that purpose.”
The Duchess said: “However, I will not be provoked. It is too hot. I will content myself merely with remarking that in my considered opinion the ancient Dukedom of Mall does at present grace one with the manners of a boor and the habits of a stable-boy.”