The visitor glanced about with many a smirk of approbation, and some wise shrugs of the shoulder; but said nothing aloud, preserving his breath for more important speech.
Margaret was sitting listlessly over her needle-work when the footman brought her a card, upon which was discernible, amid flourishes of the wildest fantasy, "Ludovic, Chevalier de Calembours."
She started up with a wild flush mantling her cheek, and a smothered cry of wrath.
The elegant little gentleman clad in the Hungarian velvet costume, beribboned, bejeweled, flaunting with many a badge of mystic significance, got upon his crooked little legs, and held out his white hands dramatically to the flashing, palpitating, queen-like creature who swept through the great drawing-room to greet him for the first time.
"Chevalier de Calembours! accomplice of Roland Mortlake, I have heard of you before!" she panted, not deigning to touch him.
"Mademoiselle Walsingham, champion of Colonel Brand, all the world has heard of you before!" rasped the bland-faced Hun.
"Why have you come here, heartless man!" cried Margaret.
"To see the dear mademoiselle whose actions so wise, so unselfish, so heroique, have won my heart?"
"Am I to accept praise from the enemy of St. Udo Brand? Never! You murdered him among you!"
"Softly, my heroine! The chevalier was not on the field when the admirable colonel was stabbed! Ma foi! he was lying bleeding on his litter amid his Southern friends, who had captured him for the second time. The first, the dear mademoiselle knows, the chance of fortune wooed me to the South; but the second, mon Dieu! no one asked me my will, but they hacked and hewed over my shackled body, and then the South won me from my captors."