"A good name. Is it possible that Beatrix told you?" exclaims his mother.
"No; I heard it once, by the merest accident, on one of my trips to New York," St. Leon answers, with bland indifference.
"And—a—ah!—what kind of a man is he, St. Leon? As black as he was painted?"
"By no means—they say even the devil is not that, you know," with a short, dry laugh. "I have even seen the fellow. He is comparatively poor—I should say that that is the worst there is to him."
"Handsome?"
"As Apollo—and better still—young," he answers, with a short, dry laugh that has a ring of bitterness in it.
The mother's heart, quick in instinct, catches the subtle intonation of almost envy in that one concluding word.
She lays her white hand on his shoulder and looks up into the handsome, proud, world-weary face with its cold, curled lips—not pityingly—St. Leon has never borne pity in his life—but with fondest love and admiration.
"As young as you, St. Leon?" she asks, speciously solving his unacknowledged wound.
"Why, mother, how you talk!" he says, not unkindly. "Why, I am old. Thirty five my last birthday, and the crow's-feet, and gray hairs not so far away!"