“No less,” frankly responded the Chamberlain. “Your Grace saved me a faux pas there, for Montaiglon is not what I fancied at all.”
“You were ever the dubious gentleman, Sim,” laughed his Grace. “And what—if I may take the liberty—seeks our excellent and impeccable Gaul so far west?”
“He's a wine merchant,” said the Chamberlain, and at that the Duke laughed.
“What, man!” he cried at last, shaking with his merriment, “is our ancient Jules from Oporto to be ousted with the aid of Sim MacTaggart from the ducal cellars in favour of one Montaiglon?” He stopped, caught his Chamberlain by the arm, and stood close in an endeavour to perceive his countenance. “Sim,” said he, “I wonder what Modene would say to find his cousin hawking vile claret round Argyll. Your friend's incognito is scarcely complete enough even in the dark. Why, the man's Born! I could tell it in his first sentence, and it's a swordsman's hand, not a cellarer's fingers, he gave me a moment ago. That itself would betray him even if I did not happen to know that the Montaiglons have the particule.”
“It is quite as you say,” confessed the Chamberlain with some chagrin at his position, “but I'm giving the man's tale as he desires to have it known here. He's no less than the Count de Montaiglon, and a rather decent specimen of the kind, so far as I can judge.”
“But why the alias, good Sim?” asked the Duke. “I like not your aliases, though they have been, now and then—ahem!—useful.”
“Your Grace has travelled before now as Baron Hay,” said the Chamberlain.
“True! true! and saved very little either in inn charges or in the pother of State by the device. And if I remember correctly, I made no pretence at wine-selling on these occasions. Honestly now, what the devil does the Comte de Montaiglon do here—and with Sim MacTaggart?”
“The matter is capable of the easiest explanation. He's here on what he is pleased to call an affair of honour, in which there is implicated the usual girl and another gentleman, who, it appears, is some ope, still unknown, about your Grace's castle.” And the story in its entirety was speedily his Grace's.
“H'm,” ejaculated Argyll at last when he had heard all. “And you fancy the quest as hopeless as it is quixotic? Now mark me! Simon; I read our French friend, even in the dark, quite differently. He had little to say there, but little as it was 'twas enough to show by its manner that he's just the one who will find his man even in my crowded corridors.”