Eusebius was shocked at the irreverent tone, but there was a satirical smile on his cousin's lips that he didn't care to provoke. "I am come," he said, stiffly, "partly for health, partly to collect materials for a work on the 'Gurgoyles and Rose Mouldings of Mediæval Architecture,' and partly to oblige some friends of mine. Pardon me, here they come."
Vaughan lifted his eyes, expecting nothing very delectable in Ruskinstone's friends; to his astonishment they fell on his beauty of the Français! with the outlying sentries of father, governess, and two other women, the Warden's maiden sisters, stiff, maniérées, and prudish, like too many Englishwomen. The young lady of the Français was a curious contrast to them: she started a little as she saw Vaughan, and smiled brilliantly. On the spur of that smile Ernest greeted his cousins with a degree of empressement that they certainly wouldn't have been honored by without it. They were rather frightened at coming in actual contact with such a monster of iniquity as a Paris Lion, who, they'd heard, had out-Juan'd Don Juan, and gave him but a frigid welcome. Mr. Gordon had doubtless heard, too, of Vaughan's misdemeanors, for he looked stoical and acidulated as he bowed. But the young girl's eyes reconciled Ernest to all the rest, as she frankly returned a look with which he was wont to win his way through women's hearts, 'midst the hum of ball rooms, in the soft tête-à-tête in boudoirs, and over the sparkling Sillery of petits soupers. So, for the sake of his new quarry, he disregarded the cold looks of the others, and made himself so charming, that nobody could withstand the fascination of his manner till their dinner was served, and then, telling his cousins he would do himself the pleasure of calling on them the next day, he left the café to drive over to Gentilly, to inspect a grey colt of De Kerroualle's.
"La chevelure dorée is quite as pretty by daylight, Ernest," said De Concressault. "Bon dieu! it is such a relief to see eyes that are not tinted, and a skin whose pink and white is not born from the mysterious rites of the toilet."
Vaughan nodded, with his Manilla between his teeth.
"That cousin of yours is queer style, mon garçon," said Kerroualle. "How some of those islanders contrive to iron themselves into the stiffness and flatness they do, is to me the profoundest enigma. But what Church of England meaning lies hid in his coat-tails? They are, for all the world, like our révérends pères! What is it for?"
"High Church. Next door shop to yours, you know. Our ecclesiastics are given to balancing themselves on a tight rope between their 'mother' and their 'sister,' till they tumble over into their sister's open arms—the Catholics say into salvation, the Protestants into damnation; into neither, I myself opine, poor simpletons. Ruskinstone is fearfully architectural. The sole things he'll see here will be façades, gurgoyles, and clerestories, and his soul knows no warmer loves than 'stone dolls,' as Newton calls them. I say, Gaston, what do you think of my love of the Français; isn't she chic, isn't she mignonne, isn't she spirituelle?"
"Yes," assented De Kerroualle, "prettier than either Bluette or Madame de Mélusine would allow, or—relish."
Ernest frowned. "I've done with Bluette; she's a pretty face, but—ah, bah! one can't amuse oneself always with a little paysanne, for she's nothing better, after all; and I'm half afraid the Mélusine begins to bore me."
"Better not tell her so, mon ami," said De Kerroualle; "she'd be a nasty enemy."
"Pooh! a woman like that loves and forgets."