'What indeed!' said the young man who had begun the conversation with a disagreeable enigmatical smile, stretching out his hand for another cigarette, and drawing it back with a look under his drooped eyelids—a look of cold impertinent scrutiny—at Catherine Elsmere.
'Ah! well—I don't want to be obtrusively moral—Heaven forbid! But there is such a thing as destroying the illusion to such an extent that you injure your pocket. Desforêts is doing it—doing it actually in Paris too.'
There was a ripple of laughter.
'Paris and illusions—O mon Dieu!' groaned young Evershed, when he had done laughing, laying meditative hands on his knees and gazing into the fire.
'I tell you I have seen it,' said Lord Rupert, waxing combative, and slapping the leg he was nursing with emphasis. 'The last time I went to see Desforêts in Paris the theatre was crammed, and the house—theatrically speaking—ice. They received her in dead silence—they gave her not one single recall—and they only gave her a clap, that I can remember, at those two or three points in the play where clap they positively must or burst. They go to see her—but they loathe her—and they let her know it.'
'Bah!' said his opponent, 'it is only because they are tired of her. Her vagaries don't amuse them any longer—they know them by heart. And—by George! she has some pretty rivals too, now!' he added reflectively,—'not to speak of the Bernhardt.'
'Well, the Parisians can be shocked,' said Count Wielandt in excellent English, bending forward so as to get a good view of his hostess. 'They are just now especially shocked by the condition of English morals!'
The twinkle in his eye was irresistible. The men, understanding his reference to the avidity with which certain English aristocratic scandals had been lately seized upon by the French papers, laughed out—so did Lady Aubrey. Madame de Netteville contented herself with a smile.
'They profess to be shocked, too, by Renan's last book,' said the editor from the other side of the room.