"True enough," Marc began. "Why do the Carterets treat the Tressillian so disagreeably?—only because, though without their fortune, she makes ten times their coups; and get themselves up how they may, they know none of us care to waltz with them if she's in the room. Let's drink her health in Marcobrunnen—she's magnificent eyes."
"And first-rate style," said I.
"And a deuced pretty foot," cried Fred.
"Et une taille superbe," added de Tintiniac, just come in. "En vérité, elle est chouette cette Violette Anglaise."
So we chanted the Tressillian's praises. Telfer drank the toast in silence—I thought with a frown on his brow at the freedom with which we discussed his fair foe.
Little Countess Virginie's wedding was to come off in another month, and Marc begged us so hard to stay on till then, that, Telfer seeming very willing, I consented, though it would be the first September I had ever spent out of the English open since I was old enough to know partridges from pheasants. The Tressillian being Virginie's pet friend, after young ladies' custom of contracting eternal alliances (which ordinarily terminate in a quarrel about the shade of a ponceau ribbon, or a mauve flower, or a cornet's eyes, some three months after the signing and sealing thereof), was of course to be one of the filles d'honneur. So, as I said to Telfer, he'd have time for a few more battles before the two enemies parted to meet again—nobody could tell when.
I began to think that the Major had really been wounded, and that his opponent's bright eyes wouldn't let him come out of the fight wholly scathless, as I saw him leaning against the wall at a ball in the Redoute at Pipesandbeersbad, watching Violet with great earnestness as she whirled round in a deux temps, bewitching as was her wont all the frequenters of the Bad. Rich English dyspeptics, poverty-stricken princes, Austrian diplomats, come to cure their hypochondria; French décorés, to try their new cabals and martingales; British snobs, to indulge the luxury of grumbling,—all of them found some strange attraction in the "Violette Anglaise."
Violet sank on a seat after her valse. Telfer quietly displaced a young dragoon from Lucca, and sat down by her.
"I am going to stay on another month, Miss Tressillian; are you not sorry to hear it?" he said, with a smile, but I thought a little anxiety in his eyes.
The color flushed over her face, and she answered, with a laugh, not quite a real one: "Of course I am very sorry. I would go away myself to let you enjoy your last week in peace if I were not engaged to Virginie. Cannot you get me leave of absence from her? I know you would throw your whole heart into the petition."