“He laughed at it—he made me tell it him twice running. It was mortifying to me and cruel to his 393 absent brother; but he roared with laughter, and referred to it more than once, until I asked him not to speak of it again.”
“And he has not again spoken of it?”
“Oh, no. He always respects my wishes, when he knows them. But he does not seem to have any instinctive knowledge of them. He often troubles me by not knowing what I wish.”
“In short, Madame, Gaston Cheverny has not second sight, as the Kirkpatricks have.”
Francezka smiled a little at this, but I saw that her uneasiness was deeply rooted, and I had not succeeded in tearing it away.
Just then there was a shout of laughter, the winding of a hunting horn, echoing afar, a sound of scurrying feet up the great stairway. Involuntarily we both turned toward the window looking out upon it, which the reddening sun made bright. Madame Fontange, one of the beauties of the court, rushed up the stairway laughing and disheveled, her hoop awry, and her satin robe half torn off her back by a rascal of a little page, who had seized her and who was calling loudly for Monsieur Cheverny. Gaston Cheverny, wearing his hunting dress, his horn in his hand, was close behind, covering the great steps two at a time. As he dashed past the window and his laughing face flashed by in the blaze of the setting sun, I saw, as I am a living man, Regnard Cheverny’s soul shining out of Gaston Cheverny’s eyes. Francezka so expressed it, and I can not express it any better or any differently. I drew back from the window into the room, and avoided Francezka’s searching glance.
“You have seen it, I see,” she said calmly. “Do you wonder that I am a wretched woman?”
I gathered my wits about me, dismissed the strange impression I had got, and said, rising:
“Madame, you have, after long waiting, had the husband of your first youth restored to you. He is not precisely what he was when you lost him. All men change, and most women. You, perhaps, are the same, but Gaston Cheverny is not. He is, however, devoted to you, high-minded, honorable, of the same strong intelligence, but with seven years of hardship and adventure behind him. All that you have told me is fanciful. Dismiss it, I beg of you, from your mind. Let not a dead dog and a look of your husband’s eye, and an inconsiderate fit of laughter wreck your happiness.”