"How can you suppose me capable of such want of tact!" Zoë rejoined hypocritically, "unfortunately I have not been able even to find out how the land lies. If you had commissioned me a little sooner--just a little sooner,--but there is nothing to be done now, for Gabrielle Truyn is already betrothed!"
"Nom d'un chien!" muttered Arthur; he had been no less impressed by Gabrielle's beauty than by her lofty descent--"nom d'un chien!"
"Indeed, already betrothed," his father said coldly, slowly putting his eyeglass upon his nose and scanning the baroness mistrustfully as he asked, "betrothed to whom?"
"To her cousin, Oswald Lodrin."
"To Oswald Lodrin," he repeated quickly. "You cannot, indeed, enter the lists against him, my poor Arthur!"
"Perhaps not as far as arrogance is concerned," growled the Vicomte, "he is the haughtiest human being I ever came across."
"That may be, but--" the Conte smiled oddly, "he is also one of the handsomest and most distinguished of Austrians, and he is renowned as such."
Whilst Arthur continued to mutter unintelligibly, but in evident ill-humor, Capriani senior left his arm-chair and taking a low seat beside Zoë, said, "To-morrow the X---- railway stock is to be issued. The shares will be in great demand; shall I save you a couple of hundred?"
CHAPTER IV.
The fragrance of the elder blossoms floated sweet and strong upon the air in the dim warm stillness of the Avenue Labédoyère. The poetry that breathes in the odour of flowers no words can reproduce, music alone can sometimes translate it; it ascended from the full white panicles in the little garden before the Hôtel Truyn and breathed through the open window into Gabrielle's chamber like an exultant yearning, like a song filled with love's delicious pain.