“I must leave you now, my friend,” he said to Gaston; “I am going for a promenade. I wish you would have your shoes made of Spanish leather—I don’t like these at all. And a gentleman should always wear silk stockings. That rascal of a valet of yours has twice brought me woolen ones. I am a patient man, but I can’t stand everything.”
To this Gaston replied: “Go to the devil.”
Jacques Haret went out.
Gaston Cheverny and I talked long and earnestly together. I did everything in my power to induce him to cast his fortunes with us. At every moment the sympathy between us grew keener. At last he said, blushing like a girl, and fingering the love locks that hung from his temple:
“To tell you the truth, Babache, I am set upon some adventure, out of which glory and fortune may be wrung. For I love a young lady, not indeed above me in rank, but as far beyond me in fortune as in merit, and I must bridge the gulf between us before I can aspire to her. It is—it is—Mademoiselle—”
“Francezka Capello,” I said.
He was very much surprised at my guess, but the young always think their elders have no eyes. Then he burst forth, as young men of twenty do, raving over her beauty, her wit, her grace, lamenting her venturesomeness as if he were Solomon and Methuselah in one. I felt not one pang of jealousy. Francezka Capello was not for me, nor I for her—but that was no reason why I should not love her as one loves a star.
“And why does not Madame Riano keep a closer watch over her?” he demanded angrily, as if I had something to do with it. “Jacques Haret says that because Madame Riano always ruled her father, her husband, her confessor, her lawyers, and her doctors, she thinks to rule this girl by mere precept; but Francezka has the spirit of a fiery Scot and a hot Spaniard in her, and no one can rule her except by gentleness and persuasion. Then she is a lamb.”
He then told me all about the château of Capello in Brabant. It was a superb estate, and his own modest country house was within sight of it. Castle Haret, which Regnard Cheverny had so cleverly acquired, was some distance off in the same province. In Francezka’s childhood, during her parents’ lifetime, she had lived at the château, where Gaston and his brother had often played with her as a little girl. Since she had been in 67 Peggy Kirkpatrick’s care she had lived in Paris. But it was known that her Brabant estate was dearer to her than any or all of her possessions, and the Brabant people said that when she was her own mistress she would live in Brabant. The night at the Temple, Gaston Cheverny had gradually recognized his little playmate of years gone by, and from that moment, he confessed, with shining eyes, he had thought only of her.