Béthune, who was near, had heard the conversation, and wondered if Loswa were speaking falsely. He thought not; he felt an impulse to speak of what he had seen at Les Hameaux on the day his horse was lamed, but he refrained. Rosselin had invited his silence, and Rosselin was not a man of idle words, nor likely to give a caution without some good motive.
Yet he felt a sense of guilt and of complicity. He had gone back twice or thrice out of a sense of courtesy, as well as of interest, and he had learned easily, from the people of the hamlet, how and through whom she had been brought thither. The knowledge that it was Othmar who had placed her there had struck him first with amazement, then with anger.
He knew none of the circumstances which had brought Damaris Bérarde to Paris. She preserved an obstinate silence in regard to herself, and his good breeding would not allow him to put direct questions to her which were evidently unwelcome ones. It was only in the village that he heard the name of Othmar, and the chivalrous laws which governed his actions at all times did not allow him to try and learn what was withheld from him. The hostility to Othmar which had for so many years been so powerful a factor in his life was the strongest of all reasons with him to compel him to abstain from all investigation, to avoid the least semblance of inquisitiveness as to his conduct. But in the absence of knowledge he placed the natural construction of a man of the world on the little he knew, and the facts of her altered abode and manner of life, and he was angered against the man who could, as he thought, change for new amours the passion which he had given to his wife.
Of the faults of that temperament which left Othmar's unsatisfied and repelled, Béthune was too loyal a lover to see anything. Her very defects had always seemed beauties in his eyes. To desert such a woman as she was for even so lovely a child as Damaris seemed to him intolerably unworthy; and the secret conduct of such a connection seemed to him at once commonplace and coarse. He had always done justice to the rarity and delicacy of many qualities in his successful rival, and the discovery of what he supposed to be a mere intrigue in his daily life surprised and disgusted him. When he heard Nadège now speak of Damaris Bérarde he felt indignantly grieved for her deception, as men are always inclined to grieve for a woman who interests them before an infidelity which is not their own.
'Who would have believed that even she would fail to secure constancy?' he thought as he watched the light play upon the rings upon her hand as she gave back her cup to Loswa.
'You look interested in my inquiries,' said Nadine, observing his countenance with amusement. 'Is it possible that you followed up that idyl on an island of which I let you read the first chapter?'
'No, indeed,' said Béthune in haste, with a certain embarrassment which did not escape her observation.
'My dear friend, it would not be a crime if you did,' she said with a smile. 'Considering how many men saw that handsome child in my rooms, I know very little of human nature if some one at least of them did not return to the isle to write an epilogue to 'Esther.' Loris denies that he has done so. To be sure, men always deny that sort of accusation. But for once he looks innocent.'
'You never heard anything of her?' asked Béthune, conscious that he did not speak wholly at his ease.
'What should one hear? I dare say she has shut up her play-books and eaten her bridal bonbons by this. I remember she was quite stupid when one saw her close; she kept blinking in the light of my dancing-rooms like a little owl out at noonday. If she had had any real talent mere upholstery would not have had any power to strike her dumb.'